How Do Start-Ups Choose CFO?

For any enterprise that is in its infancy or a start-up, the most important question before them is what type of people they should hire to serve as their CFO.

CFO is a crucial position for an enterprise that is still in its infancy. However, at present, many enterprises fail to realize the importance of this problem correctly.

Many companies, of course, focus their focus on the company's technology or product development, which will directly affect the type and quality of the products or services that the company is developing.

Generally speaking, the company's CEO is not a financial person. They do not understand or are familiar with the complicated financial information.

Those who can appear in front of CEO and apply for CFO positions are often the first to impress people.

In fact, it is easy to find people with very rich work experience, but such people are totally unsuitable for CFO.

In my opinion, when choosing a suitable CFO, there are 5 aspects that need attention: qualification (Qualifications), background (Background), personality (Personality), ability (Competencies) and company business environment (Company business environment).

If a CFO without these 5 qualities is to be an enterprise, their existence can sometimes even threaten the survival of an enterprise.

For startups, how to choose a suitable CFO is a very important issue.

In fact, whether a person is a suitable candidate for CFO is not necessarily related to whether he has a university degree or not. Even a CFO candidate with a high degree of education is not necessarily qualified for the job.

But for those companies who want to expand their businesses rather than just run a small family business, a person with professional financial qualifications is the most basic requirement.

Most CFO candidates need to have 3 professional qualifications, namely, CPA, or the equivalent title of China, the qualification of Registered Financial Analyst (CFA) or the equivalent title of China, and the master of Business Administration (MBA).

A CFO with these 3 different kinds of professional qualifications is usually able to have distinctive values and capabilities.

CPA has a very professional ability in the accounting field.

However, the general registered accountants lack or even have no relevant business experience, and little is known about the financial problems or business problems of large enterprises.

If they work for a small company or a large company, their work will be very effective, but they can only focus on the correctness of the figures. It is difficult for business, human resources and most other matters to be considered, and it is very difficult to have professional advice.

If a start-up employs a certified public accountant, especially an experienced accountant, there may be some exceptions, but most of the less experienced CPA can only focus on financial data.

We usually call this kind of technology CFO.

Registered financial analysts tend to focus on two aspects of Finance and evaluation, not accounting.

Although registered financial analysts do not pay much attention to accounting problems, they still have a thorough understanding of valuation, and they also have a deep understanding of financial problems in business.

Of course, a registered financial analyst should first be trained in a financial service environment similar to an investment bank, and it needs to be carried out in an enterprise that runs a traditional manufacturing entity product or provides non-financial services.

Compared with this kind of training, there is still a certain difference.

Therefore, a registered financial analyst is usually more than most.

More rigorous.

We usually call this kind of value CFO.

The general MBA will focus more on business, not just financial problems in a narrow sense. Usually, such a person does not qualify as an accountant, or at least has no degree in accounting.

But the general MBA will have more extensive vision than CPA and registered financial analysts, and the views on many problems will be more comprehensive.

But if you want MBA to be able to take up CFO positions in start-ups, they usually need to find a regular accountant to help them do some pure accounting work, but this combination means increasing costs for those small companies.

We usually call this kind of business CFO.

If one

The establishment time is very short, or a very new company, so for it, it needs a CFO that can play an important role in the development of the company's business. It is a CFO that can find business partners for the company, raise capital, meet with business customers, and at the same time enable them to have confidence in the development of the business.

In this case, a business type CFO with master of business administration should be a better candidate.

If the enterprise is in the late stage of development, it will need a CFO that can control the accounting operation. At the same time, it can leave the company's business development problems to CEO and marketers, which means that those technology CFO will be more suitable for these companies.

If an enterprise is already in the stage of financing and planning to go public, or in a financial related field, then a value CFO with certified financial qualifications is the best choice.