First in Finance Hire – Martech Scaleup

• First-in-finance hire for high growth founder led business
• Delivered candidate in 6 weeks from briefing
• Model used: Elevate

Our client was a bootstrapped, founder-led Martech business operating across the UK and US, with a growing client base of high-performance consumer brands.

The company had reached a point where client sophistication and revenue growth were outpacing internal financial infrastructure, creating pressure on the founder to make increasingly complex commercial decisions without structured finance support.

The business sits at the intersection of:

• Marketing performance analytics
• Customer behaviour tracking
• Revenue optimisation for D2C brands

The Business Problem

This was a zero-to-one finance build. The founder was operating without:

• Dedicated finance leadership
• Structured reporting or forecasting
• Commercial challenge on pricing, margins, or client profitability

As the business scaled:

• Client expectations increased
• Revenue streams became more complex
• Decision-making risk intensified

Risk if unresolved:

• Founder becoming a bottleneck for all financial decisions
• Lack of clarity on client-level profitability and performance
• Inability to scale credibly with larger D2C brands
• Reduced confidence from clients expecting data-backed commercial insight

Why the Market Was Difficult

This role sat in a highly nuanced gap:

• Needed a first finance hire, but with credibility of a seasoned FD
• Required hands-on execution (no team, no infrastructure)
• Simultaneously client-facing, representing the business externally
• Salary band (£80–90K) below typical FD-level expectations
• Required personality capable of challenging a founder constructively

Additionally:

• Candidates from corporate environments lacked agility
• Startup operators often lacked client-facing gravitas

The Capability Required

✔ Experience as a number one finance hire or early-stage builder
✔ Ability to operate across financial control + commercial finance
✔ Strong communication skills for client interaction
✔ Confidence to challenge founder decisions constructively
✔ Understanding of D2C or marketing-driven revenue models
✔ Hands-on, low-ego operator comfortable in ambiguity

This was effectively a hybrid FD / commercial partner / operator role.

Our Strategic Approach

Delivered through a retained Elevate model we deployed a wide range of tools and committed significant resource to help the client shape the EVP and job spec before drawing on our extensive talent pools to build a shortlist.

This included:

• Positioning the opportunity as:
  • A founder’s right hand
  • A build-and-shape finance mandate
  • A role with direct impact on client delivery and growth
• Conducting targeted market mapping across:
  • D2C brands
  • Martech businesses
  • Agency and client-facing finance roles
• Prioritising candidates who had:
  • Operated in lean environments
  • Balanced internal finance with external stakeholder exposure
• Assessing heavily on:
  • Communication style
  • Commercial judgement
  • Ability to influence without hierarchy

Key shift:
We avoided over-indexing on title and instead focused on profile elasticity, people who could stretch into the role.

The Impact

Immediate (0–3 months):

• First finance function successfully implemented
• Founder supported with financial visibility and structure
• Introduction of basic reporting, controls, and forecasting
• Improved confidence in client-facing financial conversations

Strategic (6–18 months):

• Clearer understanding of client profitability and pricing strategy
• Enhanced ability to scale with higher-value D2C clients
• Founder unlocked to focus on growth and product rather than finance
• Stronger foundation for future finance team build