Finance Leadership Blog

Most startups don't have a KPI problem.

They have a KPI overload problem.

I've seen board packs with 40 KPIs, dashboards full of charts, and management teams spending hours discussing numbers.

Yet ...

Startup forecasts are usually wrong.

This is not a groundbreaking idea. Most finance leaders know it the moment the budget is signed off.

The issue is not that forecasts are wrong.

The issue is whe...

One of the biggest misconceptions in startups is, “If revenue is growing, we’re fine.”

Not necessarily.

I’ve worked with startups that were growing quickly and still came dangerously close to runnin...

A lot of finance professionals want to become a CFO.

But very few actually understand what the role looks like day to day.  I know I certainly didn't earlier in my career.

It’s easy to assume it’s:

Most finance professionals think they’re doing the right things to get promoted.

• They work hard. 
• They improve reporting. 
• They fix processes.
• They keep everything running.

And then they get ...

A lot of finance professionals assume that becoming a CFO is the natural next step in their career.

You move from Finance Manager to Financial Controller, then Finance Director… and then CFO.

But in...

If you’re working in finance at a startup and aiming for a CFO role, the gap isn’t technical.

Most people already have the accounting, reporting, and modelling skills.

The real shift is how you thin...

A lot of finance professionals have the same long-term goal: becoming a CFO.

But the path to becoming a CFO in a startup or scaleup looks very different to the traditional corporate route. In large c...

I’ve had quite a few people ask me the same question recently:

Why did you go fractional in 2019, build a successful company, and then decide to go back into a full-time role this month?

This post i...

If you’re leading finance in a startup or scaleup, chances are you’ve asked yourself some version of this question:

Do we need better systems, or do we just need to fix our processes?

It’s a fair qu...

One of the quickest ways for a finance leader to lose credibility in a startup or scaleup is poor data quality.

The tricky part is that the numbers usually exist. There are reports. There’s a P&L. Th...

One of the things I love most about the Financial Leadership Foundations community is seeing finance professionals step into roles that stretch them far beyond what they thought they were ready for.