Founders & Finance – Building Blocks Before Your First CFO

​Join Finnish Startup Community and Greenstep for a practical breakfast session designed for early-stage founders and operators who don’t yet have a CFO but are responsible for the company’s finances.💰

​If you’re building your finance setup while growing the business, this conversation is for you, provided by FSC and Greenstep.

​Through a fireside discussion with founders and finance experts, we’ll unpack the practical finance foundations startups need before hiring their first CFO, and the mistakes that often appear when finance is treated as “just admin” for too long.

​We’ll focus on the essentials: cash visibility, bookkeeping hygiene, budgeting, and reporting that actually supports decision-making, without over-engineering processes too early.

​Agenda ⏰

• ​8:30 – Breakfast & arrivals

• ​9:00 – Fireside chat

• ​9:45 – Audience Q&A

• ​10:00 – Networking & informal conversations

​Language: English

​Speakers 🎙️

• ​Jarkko Antila, CEO at Kuva Space

• ​Vilhelmiina Kilpeläinen, Head of Finance at Distance Technologies

• ​Teemu Myllymäki, Co-Founder & CEO at Measurlabs

• ​Oliver Lindholm, Partner at Greenstep

• ​Moderated by Tanja Piha, Greenstep

​What we’ll cover ✍️

• ​Runway illusions: why startup cash forecasts often lie, and how founders accidentally misread their burn

• ​The finance basics that quietly break at scale: where bookkeeping, reporting, and budgeting start failing as companies grow

• ​Investor readiness before Series A: what investors actually expect to see in your numbers (and what they don’t care about)

• ​Finance setups that scale: the few processes worth implementing early so you don’t rebuild everything later

• ​Spreadsheets vs finance tools: when Excel works perfectly — and the signals it’s time to upgrade

• ​Life before a CFO: how far founders can realistically go without a finance lead and the signs it's time to bring in help

​Who should join 👇

• ​Founders (pre-Seed to Seed) who want financial control without a CFO

• ​Operators and early hires who “own the numbers” and want confidence

​Questions? Contact: [email protected]