The person writing the brief is often not the person you will be working for.

A backed company hires differently, and the difference is rarely written down. The seat looks the same on paper. What changes is who wants it filled, what they want proved, and how quickly somebody expects to see the numbers arrive in a format they recognise.

What is different here

Find out who is actually driving the hireA founder wanting help and an investor wanting assurance produce the same job advert and two completely different jobs. If the fund raised it first, the real brief includes something that is not on the page, usually reporting quality, cash discipline or a specific worry from the last board meeting. Ask early and ask plainly. Nobody is offended by the question, and the answer changes who is right for it.

The reporting burden is the job for the first two monthsMonthly investor reporting, a board pack that survives scrutiny, and a model somebody outside the company can follow. In a founder-led business that arrives gradually. In a backed one it is expected immediately, and it is the single most common reason a first finance hire is judged before they have done anything else.

The hundred-day plan is real here, not a clichéPE-backed businesses in particular run to one, and it is usually written before the executive arrives. Ask to see it. An operator who reads it and disagrees with part of it before accepting is worth more than one who agrees with all of it, and the disagreement is a better interview than any question you could write.

Exit readiness changes what good looks likeIf a sale or a raise is on a two-year horizon, the finance seat is partly a data-room seat: clean records, defensible numbers, no surprises in diligence. That is a different skill from running a lean monthly close, and somebody strong at one is not automatically strong at the other. Say which you need.

What to ask, that you would not ask elsewhere

Which of your engagements ended in a raise, a sale or a refinancing, and what did you personally own in it?
Show me a board pack you have built. What did you take out of it, and why?
A fund and a founder disagree about a number in front of you. What do you do that week?
How do you handle it when the hundred-day plan turns out to be wrong at day thirty?
Who were you actually reporting to in your last backed company, and who did you feel accountable to?

Where it goes wrong

Hiring for the raise rather than the year of operating between raises. Most of the work is the second thing.
Letting the fund brief the role without the founder in the room, then expecting the hire to serve both.
Assuming a big-company CFO can operate without a finance team. In a backed company at this stage there often is not one yet.
Underbuying the seat before a diligence process, then paying far more to fix the records under time pressure.

Which seat you are actually hiring

The sector changes the conditions, not the job. What each seat covers, what it costs and when it is the wrong hire is set out across the eleven seat pages, and the cost calculator will tell you whether the work you have described is really a fractional one. If the job turns out to be five days a week and permanent, we find full-time executives too.

Common questions

Find out who is actually driving the hire?

A founder wanting help and an investor wanting assurance produce the same job advert and two completely different jobs. If the fund raised it first, the real brief includes something that is not on the page, usually reporting quality, cash discipline or a specific worry from the last board meeting. Ask early and ask plainly. Nobody is offended by the question, and the answer changes who is right for it.

What should I ask when hiring for pe and vc-backed companies?

Which of your engagements ended in a raise, a sale or a refinancing, and what did you personally own in it? Show me a board pack you have built. What did you take out of it, and why? A fund and a founder disagree about a number in front of you. What do you do that week?

What goes wrong when hiring into pe and vc-backed companies?

Hiring for the raise rather than the year of operating between raises. Most of the work is the second thing. Letting the fund brief the role without the founder in the room, then expecting the hire to serve both.

The bench

Operators who have worked in pe and vc-backed companies

Filter the bench by sector: Venture capital & private equity, B2B SaaS, Fintech. Every operator checked by hand against their LinkedIn and CV, booked direct, with nothing taken from their rate.