What are the reasons startups can't hire good finance people? Or at least contract with an expert? In the early stage, when your total team is 2-5 people, ther

What are the reasons startups can't hire good finance people? Or at least contract with an expert? In the early stage, when your total team is 2-5 people, there's rarely enough work to justify spending a full time, senior salary on a good finance person. You probably have close to zero revenue/billings, so the main jobs are around payroll, taxes, a few accounts payable, and cash-flow projections. You can (and should) hire an accountant to do the first 2, and work with your accountant to do the second 2, but 1) Pushing all of payable through the accountant is an easy way to lose track of what your outgoings looks like, and end up with dangerously high expenses. At an early stage startup, the founders should be aware of every expense. 2) The founders definitely need to own the projections. Some help from an accountant is going to make a big difference, but they can't do it for you. But the more important issues are: - You aren't likely to drag your external accountant into investor presentations. You might (should) get the accountant to review the financials that go into the presentation, but they won't be there to talk about them, so the founders need to know what they mean, and use the right words. - The average accountant cares about accounts, not investor terms. You cannot really expect your external accountant (who you hired based on their ability to keep the books to an appropriate legal standard) to know whether that piece of paper in your drawer )that they had no part in producing) is a contract or LOI or MOU. Nor would they necessarily know whether certain income streams should be classed as revenue or GMV unless they are quite familiar with your business. They know about income & expenses & liabilities, but those aren't the same thing and part of the problem for founders is that they seem like they should be.