The question of what does a startup CFO do usually gets asked about three months too late, on the day an investor's diligence list lands and the model doesn't tie to the bank balance. The fix at that point is expensive. The cheaper path is knowing which slice of finance work you need now, and buying only that slice.
This page splits finance into the jobs it's really made of, says what the CFO owns at each stage, lists the signals that justify a hire, and puts published prices next to each way of hiring. It ends with what a finance tool can take off the person doing this work, and what it can't.
Three finance jobs on three time horizons
CRV, a venture firm, splits finance by how far ahead each role looks. A controller owns the month-end close and works in the present. A VP of finance runs budgeting and forecasting and works in the near future. A CFO sits above both, owns capital allocation, and leads strategy, fundraising and M&A on the longest horizon.
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics adds a useful line on accountability: CFOs are responsible for the accuracy of an organization's financial reporting, while controllers direct the preparation of financial reports. In other words, a controller produces the numbers and a CFO answers for them.
At a startup one person often does slices of all three, which is where hiring goes wrong. A founder hires a strong controller, calls them CFO, and then wonders why nobody is thinking about the Series A model. Or they hire a strategic CFO and give them a month-end close that a bookkeeper should own. Pilot, which sells bookkeeping and CFO services, makes the related point that clean books are the foundation, and that a CFO costs more when the books are messy. Fix the books first.
What a startup CFO owns at pre-seed, seed and Series A
Pre-seed: no CFO, but someone owns cash
Nobody needs a CFO here. One founder owns the bank account, a bookkeeper or accounting firm keeps the books, and the founders know runway to the month. The finance jobs are setting up the books properly (how to set up startup books), tracking burn, and keeping the cap table accurate as SAFEs come in.
Seed: a fractional CFO for the strategic work
CRV's guidance for seed is clean bookkeeping plus a fractional CFO until the work becomes strategic. The fractional CFO builds the model the Series A will be judged on, checks pricing and margins, writes the board finance pack and gets the data room ready. That's a few days a month, not a full-time job.
Series A: a head of finance or VP of finance
For most early-stage companies, CRV says the first finance hire is a VP of finance or head of finance. This person owns the budget by department, prices the hiring plan, runs forecasting against actuals and manages the outside accountants. The CEO stops being the finance department.
Series B and later: a full-time CFO
CRV puts the full-time CFO at the point where multi-entity structures and audit readiness arrive, typically around Series B. By then the job includes treasury, debt, audit, tax structure and a seat at the board table on capital decisions.
When do you need a CFO? Signals that hold up
CRV calls an upcoming fundraise the clearest signal, because diligence exposes a weak model exactly when there's least time to fix it. The others on its list:
- Runway is shrinking and nobody can say exactly why.
- Burn drifts month to month without a decision behind it.
- Founders spend a real share of their week on finance.
- Revenue is growing while margins stay unclear.
- The company now has more than one legal entity.
Notion Capital, another venture firm, put the full-time hire at around $10 million to $20 million of annual revenue in a 2015 piece, while saying there's no rigid trigger and that rising complexity is the key indicator. Our read: if two of the signals above are true and you're before Series A, start with a fractional CFO and plan the switch to full-time before it becomes urgent.
Here's why timing matters, with made-up but typical numbers. Say you have $1.8 million in the bank and net burn of $120,000 a month, so 15 months of runway. Add a full-time CFO at $300,000 a year all in, and burn rises by $25,000 a month, which cuts runway to about 12.4 months, a loss of 2.6. A fractional CFO at $8,000 a month cuts it to about 14.1, a loss of under one month. On a tight runway, that gap can decide whether you raise from strength or in a hurry. The runway calculator does this sum for your own numbers.
What a CFO costs: fractional, part-time and full-time
Published prices vary by source and scope, so the table names each one. Most come from firms that sell finance services, which makes them sellers' list prices rather than neutral surveys. The BLS line is the only government figure and covers all US employers, not just startups.
| Model | Typical scope | Published cost | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fractional, light | Strategic support for a pre-Series A startup | Closer to $3,000 a month | Pilot, 2025 |
| Fractional, typical | Planning, investor reporting, the model | $3,000 to $12,000 a month; $5,000 to $8,000 cited as the early- to mid-stage average | Pilot, 2025 |
| Fractional, about a day a week | Fixed monthly fee for roughly one day each week | $8,000 to $16,000 a month, or $250 to $350 an hour | Kruze Consulting, 2024 |
| VP of finance, full-time | Budgets, forecasting, the close | About $200,000 to $300,000 a year | Kruze Consulting, 2024 |
| CFO, full-time, earlier stage | Strategy, fundraising, the board | $250,000 to $400,000 all in, plus 0.6% to 1.25% equity | Kruze Consulting, 2024 |
| Financial managers, all US employers | BLS category that includes CFOs and controllers | $166,570 median wage, May 2025 | BLS |
Kruze also gives a late-stage benchmark for a CFO preparing a company to go public: a $400,000 base salary, a 50% bonus and 0.8% equity. That's a different job from the seed-stage one, and paying for it early is the expensive mistake. For a side-by-side of the two main models, read fractional CFO vs full-time CFO.
CFO compared with controller, VP of finance and bookkeeper
| Role | Main question | Time horizon | Usually first appears |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bookkeeper or accounting firm | Is every transaction recorded and categorized? | Last month | Pre-seed |
| Controller | Are the books closed and the reports accurate? | The present | Seed to Series A, often outsourced |
| Fractional CFO | What's the plan, and will it survive diligence? | The next raise | Seed |
| VP or head of finance | Are we spending to budget, and what's the forecast? | The next year | Series A |
| Full-time CFO | How should we allocate capital, and on what terms do we raise it? | Several years | Series B and later |
The controller line is the one most often confused with the CFO. There's a full guide on CFO vs controller if you're deciding between them.
How Nautis helps whoever runs finance
At most startups the person reading this is a founder doing finance on top of everything else, or a fractional CFO with several clients. Nautis covers the operating side of finance in one place. It doesn't keep the books.
Monthly numbers and runway
Startup Health is a monthly check-in of cash balance, MRR and burn. Nautis turns those into runway, growth and burn trends, and raises alerts when, for example, runway drops below six months. Each month can become an investor snapshot with sections for overview, execution, growth, burn, team and next month's focus, shared by link with an expiry and an option to let investors see earlier months. Runway also feeds the Chief of Staff's morning briefing.
The model
The Financial Planner builds a three- or five-year projection from revenue items and model inputs, and calculates the P&L, balance sheet, cash flow and loan schedule. Scenarios work by copying a project and comparing two side by side. Export Excel gives investors or your accountant a workbook, and Shared Access lets an outside accountant edit the same project.
Money in and money out
Invoices handles billing customers: recurring invoices, partial payments recorded with Record Payment, credit notes and an aging view of what's overdue. It doesn't chase late payers on its own; you send the reminder. Expenses logs spend with Scan a Bill, routes it through approval rules such as amounts over a threshold you set, warns on policy breaks, tracks budgets by category and exports a CSV for your accountant.
Ownership and diligence
The Cap Table, on the Voyage and Fleet plans, records stakeholders and instruments, converts SAFEs and notes, and models dilution and exit waterfalls in scenarios that don't touch the live table. Data rooms, on every plan, share folders by passcode link with an expiry and show who opened which file. Investor Readiness lists the diligence documents expected at your stage and checks which ones your data rooms already hold.
What still needs a finance professional
Nautis isn't an accounting system. There's no bookkeeping, month-end close or tax filing, so you still need a bookkeeper or accounting firm and, later, auditors. Employee management tracks pay cycles and payouts, and Process marks a run as paid, but it doesn't move money or handle statutory payroll filings, so a payroll provider stays in the stack. The cap table doesn't issue legal share certificates, and a dedicated cap table administrator will go deeper on compliance work.
The judgment calls stay human too: which investor terms to accept, how to price, when to cut burn, how to read a bank covenant. An AI advisor can help you think those through, and that's a different thing from a person who answers for the numbers. The guide on AI CFO vs fractional CFO covers where that line sits.
Nautis is also young, publicly launched in July 2026, and its finance modules are broad rather than deep. If you want to see whether it fits, there's a 14-day trial; plan details are on the pricing page.
FAQ
What does a startup CFO do that an accountant doesn't?
An accountant records what happened and makes sure the books and filings are right. A startup CFO uses those numbers to plan: the model, runway, pricing, how much to raise and on what terms. The CFO also answers to investors and the board for the numbers.
How much does a fractional CFO cost?
Pilot puts typical fractional CFO pricing at $3,000 to $12,000 a month, closer to $3,000 for light pre-Series A work. Kruze Consulting quotes $8,000 to $16,000 a month for about a day a week, or $250 to $350 an hour. Both firms sell the service.
Does a seed-stage startup need a CFO?
Usually not a full-time one. CRV recommends clean bookkeeping and a fractional CFO at seed, moving to a head of finance around Series A. The exception is a company with heavy capital needs or several entities, where the complexity arrives early.
How much equity does a startup CFO get?
Kruze Consulting's published benchmark for an earlier-stage full-time CFO is 0.6% to 1.25% equity on top of $250,000 to $400,000 all in. For a late-stage CFO preparing to go public it gives 0.8%, with a $400,000 base and a 50% bonus.
Can a founder act as the CFO?
Yes, and most do until seed. It works while the finance job is tracking cash, burn and a simple model. Once a raise, a board pack and diligence are all due in the same quarter, bring in at least fractional help so the founder isn't the single point of failure.