Webinar: There's No Such Thing as a Startup CFO
Join Charlie O’Donnell of nextNYC and Chris Fenster of Propeller Industries for a 30-minute webinar exploring the challenges of building capable finance teams in subscale companies. Rather than treating “startup CFO” as a fixed job title, they’ll explore it as a shifting set of responsibilities that evolve with stage, complexity, and context.
The discussion will focus on:
Why finance breaks down most often between early traction and true scale
What founders misunderstand about hiring senior finance leaders too early—or too late
How standardization, context, and systems matter more than titles
What the AI transition changes (and doesn’t change) about financial decision-making
The patterns that repeat across companies once they pass ~$30M raised
This session is designed for CEOs and founders who are already operating at scale and are feeling the tension between growing complexity and limited internal finance leadership. The goal is not to sell a solution, but to surface the kinds of questions and tradeoffs that experienced CEOs should be debating as they build their next phase.
About Chris Fenster:
Chris founded Propeller Industries in 2008 after realizing he could be a more effective early-stage CFO by building a dedicated team to deliver finance and accounting services across multiple companies, supported by a scalable technology platform. Since then, he has served as a consulting CFO to more than 50 early-stage businesses across a wide range of industries. Chris brings deep pattern-recognition from 20 years of experience helping startups navigate similar growth challenges.
This is event is hosted by nextNYC. To learn more about nextNYC and/or sign up for their newsletter, visit http://next.nyc