I’ve been talking with peers who went through significant transitions like restructuring, fundraising, and international expansion, and one pattern keeps coming up: the companies that navigated those changes best weren’t necessarily the ones with the biggest internal finance teams, but the ones that brought in experienced strategic financial leadership at the right time. That made me wonder whether we should think beyond the traditional accounting role and focus on high-level financial insight.

Exactly — the idea of bringing in a fractional cfo during business transitions can be a game-changer for companies in flux. What stood out to me in the discussion I read was how fractional CFOs don’t just manage numbers; they help shape strategy, evaluate risks, improve financial processes, and serve as trusted partners to founders and boards. They can support everything from financial modeling for new initiatives to structuring debt or preparing for investment rounds, which is far more than what typical financial managers handle.

That broad perspective is really what we’re missing. We have smart people crunching the daily figures, but when it comes to interpreting those numbers in the context of strategic growth — prioritizing where to deploy capital, how to adjust pricing, or which metrics matter most — we’ve been learning by trial and error. A fractional CFO could fill that gap quickly and efficiently, helping us align our financial framework with our business ambitions without the long hiring cycle or fixed salary of a full-time executive.