Who to Hire First in Finance

Hint: not an accountant

Your first finance hire isn’t a finance hire.

It’s a business hire.

And most startups get this wrong.

They hire someone to “do finance.”

Which usually means close the books, run payroll, file taxes, and maybe—if you're lucky—send a monthly P&L.

That’s accounting. And it's not what you need.

What you need is someone who tells you:

“This growth rate is too expensive.”

“We’re hiring ahead of pipeline.”

“If we churn this customer segment, we’ll be better off.”

“Here’s how we hit $20M ARR with the team we’ve got.”

Someone who can navigate ambiguity.

Who can take murky metrics like ARR, NRR, churn, etc. and make them make sense for your business.

That person is not your accountant.

That’s your first operator.

Accounting ≠ Finance

Many founders still think accounting = finance.

Yes, you do need to send your investors monthly financials.

But that doesn’t mean you need a full-time accountant.

Outsource it. Automate it.

Spend as little as possible on accounting until it starts to hurt.

You should be reacting faster than your books close anyway.

By the time your P&L is ready, the real questions have moved on.

You Don’t Need Financial Statements. You Need a POV.

The truth is that most early stage startups never look at or need their true financial statements. What they really need are rough frameworks. Approximations for how their business works. And those frameworks need to be developed. There aren’t hard and fast rules for how to make them work. And so in that ambiguity, this first finance hire needs to thrive.

In fact, I call that first finance person your CFO: Chief Frameworks Officer.

Said again, their job is to make the business legible. To help you see the system. To build shared language for hard decisions.

And for SaaS companies, here are 5 of the frameworks they should own:

1. Growth x Burn x Valuation

This is the most fundamental tradeoff in SaaS. It’s the existential question.

• How fast do we want to grow?

• What does that do to burn?

• Will we be fundable when the runway ends?

A great finance hire doesn’t just create a forecast. They help shape the entire conversation on this topic, and they give you a framework for how to trade off all the hiring and money that needs to be spent to get to certain outcomes.

2. ARR Build

In order to answer the previous, most fundamental tradeoff, you need to understand where and how Revenue comes to be. The ARR build is probably the most important and essential framework for measuring a SaaS business. It helps make ARR actionable. And so, looking at ARR in its component parts (New, Expansion, Contraction, Churn, Restart), and establishing the rules for how that gets measured is critical. And then this person creates a cadence for looking at and understanding what drives ARR.

3. Customer Segmentation

Not all revenue is created equal. One of the most powerful things your first finance hire can do is help you understand which customers are actually good for the business. Who expands? Who churns? Who generates endless support tickets and never upgrades? When you start slicing your business by customer segment—by plan type, industry, size, geography—you begin to see where the real signal is. This insight doesn’t just stay in finance. It influences pricing strategy, GTM focus, and even product roadmap. Customer segmentation turns ARR from a blunt number into a strategic asset.

4. Sales Capacity Planning

Sales hiring is expensive—and often wrong. Most companies throw bodies at a number without really understanding what it takes to hit it. A great finance hire brings discipline to the process. They build a model for how reps ramp, what productivity should look like, and how pipeline translates to bookings. They help you answer key questions: Should we hire more AEs or increase quotas? Are we underinvesting in enablement? Are we pacing ahead or behind plan? Sales capacity planning turns your headcount plan from a wish list into a strategy.

5. Unit Economics

Unit economics are your scoreboard. But only if someone defines the rules. A great finance operator sets the targets—CAC payback, LTV/CAC, Magic Number—and helps the rest of the org understand what good looks like. They tailor benchmarks to your business model and growth stage. They give you context: not just what the numbers are, but what they mean. And most importantly, they connect the dots between today’s performance and tomorrow’s fundraise. Without clear unit economics, it’s impossible to know if your business is actually working.

Who You’re Really Hiring

This isn’t about spreadsheets. Or dashboards. Or some wizard with a finance degree who can automate your board deck. Your first finance hire is someone who can look across product, sales, marketing, and operations—and make sense of the chaos. They don’t wait for perfect data. They don’t ask for permission. They see the second- and third-order effects of decisions before others do. They know when to zoom in on a broken process and when to zoom out and reshape a strategy. They can explain CAC to your SDR and your board in the same day. This is the person who brings coherence to your business. Not through analysis alone, but through insight. Through judgment. Through speed.

When to Hire Accounting

Accounting matters. But not at the beginning. Until you're dealing with multi-entity consolidations, deferred revenue waterfalls, or audit prep, you don’t need it in-house. And definitely not full-time. In the early days, accounting should be good enough. Done, not perfect. Close your books. File your taxes. Report the basics. But don’t build a finance org around compliance. That’s overhead. Instead, keep it lean. Outsource where you can. And use the savings to buy time and clarity—by investing in someone who helps you run the business, not just record it.

The First Finance Hire Isn’t a Numbers Person.

They’re a truth-teller. A strategist. A company builder. Their job isn’t to give you answers—it’s to help you ask better questions. The kinds of questions that make hard tradeoffs clearer. That align your team. That move you forward. They take the abstract and make it concrete. They take the chaotic and make it legible. That’s the value of a great finance partner in the early days. Not to keep score. But to help you win.