The Best Time To Hire a CFO? When You Need Finance Support.
Level Pros Kim and Sarah debunk the arbitrary milestones that are keeping owners and founders from getting the finance support they need to grow.
Much has been written about when and how to hire strategic finance leadership. On LinkedIn, you'll find competing opinions from funders, founders, and CFOs who all claim to know the magic number, stage, or headcount that signals it's time to hire a CFO. Some say it's never too early for a fractional CFO. Others insist you need $10M revenue to consider the role, or that $10M is when you switch from fractional to full-time. Still others cite complexity as the key readiness indicator.
The conversation is noisy because professionals have seen bad advice hurt good businesses—and because there's no one-size-fits-all answer. What, then, actually helps you decide? Our best advice: a clear understanding of your team's skills and capacity, your business's complexity, and your comfort level with critical finance decisions.
Level Pros Kim Stanley and Sarah Jordan discuss the myths behind these milestones and confirm that the best time to hire a CFO is when you feel ready for one. They cover:
Why ARR fails as a hiring readiness metric
Why complexity works better—but may not fit your unique situation
What CEOs lose by handling CFO responsibilities themselves
Why advisory boards, mentors, and angel investors can't replace a CFO partnership
What hiring decisions look like across three models and stages: SaaS, retail, and restaurants
This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
Q: Let’s start by breaking down the mythology around $10M and CFO hiring. Why does this myth exist? Is there a revenue goal we should be anchoring on instead?
Kim: Most often, I hear this assumption about hiring a full-time CFO; it's an easy benchmark suggesting your finances are complex enough to fill a CFO's time. But I've also heard it for fractional hiring, underpinned by the assumption that reaching $10M ARR means you know how to build.
It also assumes, frankly, that someone, likely the founder, has the finance acumen to pull it off. That assumption is deeply flawed. I've actually heard people say that founders without this skillset have no business starting a company at all.
Sarah: Right. I've heard this too, and it's such an asinine view. When I hear that, I think, "You've never actually worked in a business or with a founder or CEO." Most owners, founders, and CEOs I know are incredibly brilliant, driven people—they know strategy, understand vision, and are consummate leaders—but numbers aren't usually their thing. And that's fine. They shouldn't spend their time tracking cash flow or modeling new revenue channels.
Kim: Absolutely. Because to have all of those deep, important skill sets plus finance acumen actually makes you a unicorn.
Sarah: 100% a unicorn. High-level strategic finance expertise isn't a requirement for being a founder or CEO. Understanding the basics helps, obviously—but that's why the CFO function exists. Let us model the revenue channel. Let us obsess over cash flow. That's the relationship. That's the dynamic.
Kim: It's also obvious that if anyone took this advice seriously, nobody would hire CFOs. Numbers vary, but we've heard whispers and roars that upwards of 95% of companies never hit the $10M goal.
If it’s true, that statistic tells me that lots of businesses need CFOs for financial strategy. Building requires understanding your levers and how to pull them. How do you maintain cash flow? What are real revenue drivers? Without a partner to answer these questions, you'll stay stuck at whatever plateau you've reached, whether $2M or $20M.
One more thought: I don't think you need a full-time person at $10M ARR either. Most companies at this level don't have 40 hours of CFO work weekly. Even at $50M, you might need just 20 hours a week. CFOs need support from a good controller, maybe a financial analyst. Finance support doesn't start and end with a CFO. With those positions in place, you may only need 5 hours of CFO time monthly to keep growing.
Sarah: Honestly, assigning any revenue marker as a hiring milestone for the CFO role is a fallacy. No matter what the number is, it’s just not an accurate metric for understanding your need for the role.
Q: Ok - so, revenue is not a reliable indicator of the need for a CFO. How can we understand how to make this hiring decision?
Sarah: When I’m working with potential clients to assess readiness, I focus on two things: diagnosing plateaus and complexity.
What’s a plateau? Put simply, it’s a mismatch between your growth and your goals. If a client comes to me with this problem, I know there’s a need for my support. No matter where you stall out – $500K or $50M – if you want to grow and can’t crack the formula, you need a CFO.
Kim: I agree—it's different if you're happy where you are. I've worked with groups that reach contentment and don't want to do more. They exist! Not every business owner wants to scale. If you're happy with your profits and can maintain your margins yourself, you don't need that external resource.
Sarah: I love that you’re reminding us all that happy, content business ownership is an option we can choose. That’s an entirely wonderful goal to have for your business.
Can we talk about complexity? This is where many anchor as the primary CFO-readiness indicator, and I resonate with that argument. Complexity doesn't necessarily correlate with scale—small businesses and especially nonprofits can be very complex—and it's always a finance problem to solve. A $5M healthcare organization with Medicaid reimbursement revenue will be extraordinarily complex. A $5M retailer managing supply chains and tariffs is complex. Multiple sales channels with inventory? That's complex.
Kim: That makes sense for me too—calming the chaos that technical complexity brings is absolutely in the CFO job description, fractional or full-time.
Founders and owners also need a gut check about the level of complexity that feels like too much for internal resources. You might be a seed-funded startup with $1M in the bank and one or two employees, but you still must manage cash intensely. You might not feel confident doing that. When you feel that confidence crisis in your internal skillset, look for a fractional CFO who can give you targeted attention weekly.
Q: Could you talk through the decision point for a couple of different kinds of businesses, to give our readers a sense of how to apply this guidance to their situation?
Kim: Yes, absolutely; that's fun. First example: early-stage SaaS. To even potentially get investor money, you need a compelling financial model someone will believe. Nobody writes a $2M check without understanding your business's financial basis. You need CFO support then, especially as a first-time founder or as a founder without a finance background. At this stage, you probably need a few hours with a consulting CFO to build your models. Ensure that person understands what investors look for.
Sarah: Let's do a retail example for some insight into complexity. You're a small retailer selling socks, manufacturing overseas. You need to understand cash intensely to make this work. You need cash for manufacturing, shipping, tariffs, etc. before sales, and won't see post-sale cash for months. This complexity warrants CFO support now. But say your socks are successful and you need more inventory; if your margin can't cover new inventory, you're behind. A smart CFO will help find financing options (commonly asset-based loans) because cash is always needed well before completing sales.
Kim: One more: small business, local restaurant. You've been in business 20 years and know your books inside out. But you're ready to franchise by opening two, five, ten more locations. That's when you need CFO-level support. Because even opening one location one town over means a completely different operating model. It will behave entirely differently.
Q: I have support – a mentor, an advisory board, angel investors. I even have some finance expertise myself. Do I still need to look into a partnership with a CFO?
Sarah: If you or a founder is a former CFO, you may not need an external resource. But I'd argue that as a founder, you can't also be a CFO, and vice versa. You don't realistically have time to do both jobs well. It's inefficient and can cause costly mistakes.
For argument's sake, say you're a unicorn founder with tons of financial acumen, great at sales or marketing, maybe you’re great at running product. But you don't have a superhuman brain that doesn't get fatigued and overwhelmed. You're not an exception to biology. There are only so many quality decisions one brain can make daily.
You need a sounding board. Even if you can model a new revenue channel, your work needs vetting, your idea needs validation, you might be missing something. All the MBAs say it for a reason: scaling businesses can't rely on the founder for everything. It's a recipe for failure.
Kim: I had a client who was a very successful COO who started her own business. Within two years, she called me saying, "Can you help?" She didn't have a partner to vet things with yet and had made unfortunate decisions that lost her money. She had a wonderful, valuable skillset—she just needed a partner to help make key decisions.
Sarah: Right. A sounding board is invaluable. And your advisory committee or your angel investors are not those people. They are not the group who is going to work through a model with you.
Realistically, most founders/owners aren't jazzed about numbers. They want to produce what they want to produce. Make fabulous socks. Build powerful technology. Cook incredible meals. Make people happy and do what's fun. They don't want to worry about materials costs or shipment timing. That’s entirely within the purview of finance—and we love that kind of work.
Q: I’m a small, brick and mortar business owner. Do I really need a CFO? How do I find a fractional CFO that knows my business and industry?
Kim: I've worked with several restaurants over the years, and I want SMB owners to know there's tremendous benefit in working with a CFO. You gain finance expertise you might not have accessed before and see growth areas you might not have identified. My job is helping you ask questions about making money—including "Am I making enough? How much do I want to make?"—and creating the vision and plan to reach your goals. It's about helping small business owners take a leap of faith in changes that will drive new results.
Sarah: Kim, tell us: If you were an owner, how would you vet a fractional CFO? Most fractional CFOs come from big corporate—how do I find someone who'll know my business and location to help me grow now?
Kim: Number one: make sure that this person has not just reported on results, but actually owned decision making. Ask them: “describe a time when you changed financial results through your strategic choices.” If they haven’t done that, they’re not ready for you.
Sarah: Many finance skills translate across industries too. Managing a P&L is managing a P&L. What's critical is that the person you're talking to has previously influenced and directed a positive outcome. This can only be learned by doing—and any fractional CFO worth their salt has done it well, with examples to share.
The Only Signal Worth Listening Too
Kim: For any business, the best indicator for CFO readiness is that you’re stuck, and you don’t know how to move forward. You don’t need to reach a milestone to explore a CFO partnership. You don’t need the blessing of influencers, MBAs, or even your advisory board, in most cases. There is very little downside to working with a high-quality CFO at any stage of your business’s lifecycle: I hope every reader feels empowered to get the partnership that’s going to help them thrive.
Sarah: Exactly. And remember, getting CFO support doesn't have to mean a massive commitment. Start with a few hours a month if that's what makes sense. Test the partnership. See if it moves the needle. The goal isn't to check a box or hit some arbitrary benchmark—it's to get unstuck and build something sustainable. If you're wondering whether you need help, that's probably your answer.
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