8 Fractional CFO Firms You Should Know if You're a Startup

Everyone knows the importance of a Chief Financial Officer or CFO. A good CFO could mean the difference between early success and costly failure.

CFO’s also advise key stakeholders on critical company decisions, financial reporting and financial operations. A lot of times, a good CFO will take the lead in finding creative ways to fund key business operations.

As a startup founder, you know that finding the perfect CFO - one who understands your business from top to bottom and can maximize long-term value - is essential. But hiring a full-time executive can be daunting - cue Fractional CFOs!

What is a Fractional Executive?

What does fractional CFO mean? A Fractional Executive is an experienced leader who works on your team for a fraction of their time helping them achieve their goals and achieve success without the c-level costs or pushing limits on workloads. 

There are many types of fractional executives but the most popular one is no doubt, the Fractional CFO. 

The Importance of a Fractional CFO

Fractional Chief Financial Officers can give entrepreneurs an edge in understanding financial metrics, making better strategic decisions, and driving growth through improved cash flow management. They also bring the expertise of an experienced professional at a fraction of the cost, giving growing businesses access to high caliber professionals without breaking the bank.

Outsourcing a CFO on a fractional basis allows startups to add an experienced CFO to their team without breaking the budget.

A fractional CFO offers the knowledge and expertise of a high-end CFO at a portion of the cost. Not all companies need 2,000 hours from a full-time CFO every year. 

With fractional leadership, you only pay for what you need, and (depending on who you use) they may also be able to provide fractional resources for other financial tasks, such as bookkeeping.

At TaxTaker, partnership is the foundation of our company - we love bringing good people together. Since one of our highest requests for referrals are fractional CFOs, and because they are one of our favorite partners, we wanted to share some of our highly recommended fractional CFOs and what makes them special.

TaxTaker's Preferred Partners

Located in Menlo Park, California, Launch Finance is a woman-owned financial services firm serving startups at all stages of growth specializing in Venture Capital, Private Equity, Mergers & Acquisitions and Initial Public Offering (IPO) support. If you're looking for a female fractional CFO, look no further!

Headquartered in Providence, RI, GrowthLab offers Finance-as-a-Service of (FAAS) and is an absolute master in Unique Workflow Automation to help find integrations that work around specific workflows to help save time. Growthlab is a part of Growthlab Ventures and also runs Youtube & Podcast as helpful resources. 

These guys are some of the best at what they do and we can’t recommend them enough!

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Punch Financial offers “The Modern Bookkeeping Experience” and can be found in San Francisco, CA. Specializing in Startup Tech and SAAS, Punch uses cutting edge technology and financial processes to help streamline their clients bookkeeping while simultaneously reducing their costs.

Punch even helped to accelerate the growth of Honey, purchased by PayPal for $4B and dubbed ‘the missing piece of their puzzle’. 

FullSend Finance is a company that provides a unique approach to financial planning and investment management. Their product offerings include personalized financial planning, investment management, and tax services, all aimed at helping clients reach their financial goals while minimizing risk and maximizing returns. What sets FullSend Finance apart is their focus on using cutting-edge technology and data-driven strategies to provide tailored financial solutions for each individual client.

Based in Boulder, CO, Solid Ratio is a team of Chief Financial Officers, Controllers, Analysts & Accountants with over 20 years of experience who also help businesses optimize their people, processes & technology.

These folks are experienced finance leaders and work with a variety of industries like D2C, Manufacturing, Apparel, CPG and more.

Mighty Startup is headquartered in Boston, MA even offers Outsourced Finance Services for CFOs (for fulltime and fractional CFOs) to make their job easier. They support angel investors, VCs, and PE firms to improve the financial infrastructure of their portfolio.

With a focus on SaaS startups, Mighty provides sound advice founded on their experiences, industry-standards, and the leading information trends 

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In New Orleans, LA, Countabl work with your existing software and technology partners that you already use to seamlessly integrate their expertise into your business.

They can even analyze your techstack & integrations to help improve business efficiency.

Next Round CFO are our local neighbors in Austin, TX, offering tech-forward, white glove service to Seed and Series A Software-as-a Service (SaaS) companies to help optimize cash flow and accelerate growth.

‍Watch out for these guys, they’re going places!

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Know other fractional CFOs who should be on the list? We love making new connections.