5 ms·
Hire a CFO or head of finance would be a good start - if possible. With 30 employees you are probably missing a lot of opportunities related to accounting and e
by officialchicken 4y ago
Hire a CFO or head of finance would be a good start - if possible. With 30 employees you are probably missing a lot of opportunities related to accounting and expenses.
In the meantime, clearly setup and define spending controls as it pertains to bizdev. Create -per-department/-per-project budgets and limits (e.g. approvals required over $X amount) with incentives to stay below these lines.
- m00x 4y agoI've never seen a company with a CFO at 30 employees, that's extremely wasteful. A good accountant would do at that point. It's a huge mistake to hire a CFO too early unless you're a fintech.
- conductr 4y agoFractional CFO is an option. Someone needs to be doing the CFO job at the strategic level. An accountant is usually not right for that.
- m00x 4y agoMost tech companies don't need to do very complex financials. Accountants are often good enough, or at least advisors. Maybe your idea of a fractional CFO is the same of my idea of an advisor, in which case it's just a term difference.
- MacsHeadroom 4y agoAs a former fractional CFO at a 12 person company I saved many multiples of what I cost despite the company having a great accountant whom the CEO spent a lot of time with. Advising can only get you so far, especially if the CEO is incapable of taking action on it. Sometimes even smaller companies can benefit from more constant accountability.
- m00x 4y agoMy old company hired a CFO at ~800 employees, and the cost-cutting measures looked great on paper, but we lost a ton of excellent talent from them. The CFO eventually left, thinking she had done the company a huge favour and made a blog post about how well she did and how she did it, but we were objectively in a much worse spot.
- MacsHeadroom 4y agoI wouldn't know where to start with an 800 employee company. For a dozen person tech start-up, it isn't too hard to figure out how a dozen recent college grads are being financially irresponsible without getting in the way. Mismanaging cash flow, paying for things they can get for free as a start-up, failing to file for tax credits and other literally free money from the government for start-ups, buying things they could have rented, overpaying for certain things, etc.