The shifting CFO landscape in European tech: Talent Trends & Market Insights

2024 could be described as a cautiously optimistic year for our ecosystem. On a macro level, many investors believe that we are nearing the end of the huge period of correction which had loomed over the industry for a number of years. In its wake is a cohort of startups with healthy balance sheets, a clear path to profitability and strong foundations from which to scale, when the markets open up once more. 

Investors proceeded cautiously, deploying capital selectively, focusing on SaaS startups, with big addressable markets and strong unit economics, and applied AI, offering transformational change across a broad range of industries waiting to be disrupted. While the green shoots of recovery sprouted in the early stages, looking at the other end of the spectrum, exit markets remained subdued. The optimistic outlook was that the European IPO backlog was building, comprised of a cohort of scaleups with realistic valuations and strong financials that have weathered the recent storm.  

For the CFO talent market, these market dynamics drove a number of interesting trends. Late-stage founders needed heavy-weight CFO talent to right some of the wrongs from the heady heights of the post-pandemic era, and many were also looking to hire their exit-ready CFO, getting ahead in preparation for the markets opening. During 2024 they were faced with the challenging reality that the muted IPO and M&A activity in our ecosystem has a direct impact on top CFO talent availability.

In the early stage SaaS world, founders were still being funded and focused on finding senior finance talent earlier in their journey to nail fundamentals like critical deal pricing, go-to-market strategy, and watertight financial modelling to protect all-important cash flow. “AI” was everywhere. But CFOs considering SaaS opportunities were cutting through the marketing headlines and doubling down on genuine AI application and product-led growth.

Bucking the CFO talent shortage trend were startups with impact at their core. We saw a marked increase in Climate Tech and Health Tech founders looking for their CFOs in 2024. An increase in appetite from top CFOs in the European ecosystem to move into impact-led organisations could signal an exciting few years ahead for the sector, especially if other top-tier C-Suites follow suit. 

In this roundup, we’ll dig further into these CFO talent trends with insights from our partners, clients, and VC network and explore themes related to later-stage payments and early-stage AI. And, we’ll lift the lid on what the top CFO talent in Europe found compelling in their job specs last year. 

The CFO liquidity challenge in later-stage tech. 

Exit levels in Europe have been low over the last three years, with the IPO market essentially closed, along with the subsequent lack of M&A activity from Big Tech and Private Equity players. According to PitchBook’s recent analyst’s note, 373 companies in Europe have a high probability of exiting via IPO in 2025. 

Exit events of any kind are career-defining moments for CFOs, possibly on par with that of a founder. There is no reputational incentive for a CFO to leave a business on the cusp of an exit. Throughout 2024 our pipeline filled with later-stage founders looking for CFOs who had been on the exit journey before, with their sights set on achieving this goal within the next 18-24 months. They needed strong, experienced operators and were looking at the top-tier candidate pool as their targets.

As this supply and demand struggle persisted through the year, founders had to get creative about where to find their senior finance talent. 40% of our searches last year were Series D or later and that required creativity from both our team and our client’s hiring team too. It required exploring different talent pools, such as high-potential number two finance leaders or CFOs from analogous industries like Big Tech. This meant hiring for potential and transferable skills rather than a like-for-like experience alone. 

Broadening the talent pool for later-stage searches will be overwhelmingly positive for the industry. Helping our clients identify up-and-coming CFO talent is always incredibly rewarding and critical for new talent progressing up through the ranks. Similarly, introducing candidates from outside of the scaleup ecosystem, or complimentary verticals means introducing fresh perspectives, deep experience and lots of new opportunities for scaleups to capitalise on. 

Last year, we helped a market-leading FinTech lender hire a top B2B SaaS CFO, to help understand and utilise the key metrics they needed to scale their go-to-market engine. We supported one of the UK’s leading listed FinTechs in landing a CFO from a global food delivery marketplace, with deep expertise in scaling an organisation with a high volume of transactions and international payments. And, we helped a business banking challenger land their new CFO from a listed marketplace, who will help them plot the path to IPO. 

2024 was a year of thinking outside the box to find stand-out candidates with transferable skills and experience to move into some truly exceptional later-stage scaleups. 

The year of the late-stage payments rocketship

FinTech remained a strong vertical for us in 2024, making up 25% of our searches for the year, almost half of which were later stage. Payments software dominated, with our team supporting the likes of Wise, Trustly, Tide and others over the year. 

This spike in demand for CFOs could be attributed to a number of factors. Firstly, the FinTech sector received record levels of funding during the post-pandemic boom. In 2021 payments scaleups received $21.1B worth of funding globally, according to Dealroom’s Fintech Guide.  A number of those well-funded scaleups have begun to reach maturity and have started to consider planning for an exit. In parallel, there has been very little M&A activity from traditional Fintech buyers like Amex, Visa and Mastercard over the last few years. As Fintech is a famously competitive vertical, and as the markets hopefully begin to open up again through 2025, consolidation is on the horizon, so many leading Fintechs wanted to ensure they had the right CFO in place to lead these critical conversations. 

But what else could have caused this uptick in later-stage FinTechs looking for their CFO in 2024? We asked Kaushik Subramanian, Partner at EQT Ventures for his take. 

"The FinTechs in our orbit which needed CFO expertise last year, could broadly be categorised into two cohorts. Cohort one was the top percentile, receiving a lot of investor interest and the biggest cheques. Suddenly these founders had raised large amounts of funding and needed a CFO to deploy this capital effectively. The second cohort, the top decile, were founders who ordinarily would have raised but couldn’t, or weren’t able to raise at the desired valuation. Many of these founders raised an internal round and focused on implementing financial discipline to help them on the path to profitability. Either, they needed a CFO to help them implement these changes, or once profitable, needed financial expertise to responsibly invest these profits to drive further growth."

As late-stage FinTech founders looked for CFOs who could support them in capital deployment and exit planning, many were also focused on candidates with strong core finance fundamentals. CFOs who could balance prudent financial management with sustainable and responsible growth. Working capital management, cash flow forecasting, profitability focus and tight regulatory compliance were some of the top skills required for candidates looking to progress to the final stages in these searches. Rabia Elahi, Search Partner at Altima comments:

"In 2024, later-stage FinTech founders and CEOs were really keen to strike a healthy balance between finding a CFO who could enable sustainable growth and ensure the company maintained strong financial vitals at the same time. On many of these searches, we were looking for individuals who had strong operational experience, who could build and lead high-performing finance teams as well as offer the strategic thinking in order to take these businesses to the next phase in their journey."

CFOs wise up to AI-washing in early-stage SaaS. 

With the comfort of recurring revenue and multiple growth levers, SaaS has always been an attractive proposition for both investors and CFO talent. According to Pitchbook, in 2024 SaaS remained the number one vertical by deal value in Europe. During 2024, 24% of CFO searches we saw last year were SaaS. Unlike the later stage Fintech opportunities last year, 45% of the SaaS searches we received were Series A. There was no shortage of senior finance opportunities in the SaaS space, but establishing which had the most growth potential was critical. 

Mike Powell, our SaaS Search Partner at Altima comments, 

“The general sentiment from our SaaS candidates last year was that it feels like there is a product for everything now, and there is an abundance of opportunities for them to choose from. That said, as the SaaS industry evolves, so does our understanding of the success indicators. It’s easier to estimate if a solution can scale past that £10M ARR point and CFOs were definitely more excited by offerings with true product-market fit and those focused on product-led growth. We saw CFOs engaging much more with key product metrics and really interrogating a company’s sustainable growth channels”

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We also saw an increase in applied AI software within the SaaS space last year. AI-washing has become a hot topic in the ecosystem, with many startups selling ahead on their AI and ML capabilities, or merely using the buzzword to drum up more interest in their product. But last year marked a step change in how CFOs were analysing these AI-powered opportunities. Mike said: 

“We definitely noticed a difference in the types of questions CFOs were asking about AI-led offerings. It felt like there was a deeper understanding of the value of this technology and the impact it could have on a company’s bottom line. CFOs were interrogating how AI was being used to drive customer value and increase product adoption. The opportunities which were truly using applied AI to solve a huge problem, were incredibly popular with our network which led to some very impressive shortlists on some roles we worked on”.

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Mission-driven tech bucks the talent challenge trends

With a pressing CFO talent shortage issue in the later stages and SaaS CFOs being inundated with opportunities last year, mission-driven tech boomed as the sector of choice for some of the most experienced CFOs in our orbit. With 15% of our searches sitting in this category, Health Tech and Climate Tech led the pack, with many CFOs asking only to see purpose-led opportunities. 

John Watkins, founder and CEO of Altima commented, 

“In a year where moving top talent proved to be quite a challenge at times, mission-driven tech was the total antithesis. We had some seriously impressive growth-stage CFOs very interested in moving back to earlier stage  Clean Tech businesses, ready and motivated to roll up their sleeves again to build something with impact.” 

So what is so attractive to CFOs about mission-driven tech? We asked Ingeborg Dybdal Oie, who moved to Agreena, a regenerative agriculture fintech, in January last year why she made the move. Ingeborg said 

“For me, the climate is one of the biggest challenges ahead of us, and that is what attracted me to Agreena. Any scale-up CFO role has interesting problems to solve and business challenges to navigate, but in companies with purpose, you're not just aiming for an exit or financial success. Working in an organisation focused on solving one of society's biggest challenges means you're on a mission to deliver benefits to millions of people and have a net positive effect on the world we live in, and this gives more meaning to everything you do. Purpose-led tech also attracts diverse talent, who are not purely driven by financial incentives. This creates a very unique culture and working environment, which is exciting to be a part of.  When it comes to climate change, I want to be part of the solution and not put my head in the sand or focus on escaping to Mars!”

What did the best CFOs find compelling in 2024?

As well as some sector-specific trends per vertical last year, there were also patterns in the types of opportunities which garnered the most interest from some of tech’s best CFOs. 

Below are the key four most common CFO expectations that we saw time and time again throughout 2024

1. Genuine growth stories: Founders and CFOs have been spending a lot of time cost-cutting, restructuring and preserving cash for the last four years. CFOs are now looking for exciting (but sustainable) growth stories, with a clear potential to profitability and exit.
   
   
2. Clean cap table: CFOs were focused on investor details last year, favouring straightforward cap tables, fewer investors and a well-structured board. Opportunities backed by leading investors remained attractive and played a big role in landing some of the highest-profile offers we helped facilitate last year. There was also an enhanced focus on realistic valuations to better assess their equity packages.
   
   
3. Experienced leadership teams: CFOs favoured professional business leaders last year, be that either a CEO or the senior leadership team around them. Sustainable growth was still a top priority for founders, and they were looking for CFOs who could help facilitate this. So CFOs wanted to collaborate with practical, responsible and strategic business leaders who could effectively manage the tension between good growth and fiscal responsibility.
   
   
4. Hybrid working patterns: The majority of CFOs we interacted with last year weren’t interested in remote opportunities, favouring roles where they would be geographically close to the CEO and Senior Leadership team. Many CFOs favoured at least 2 days in an office environment to boost collaboration and higher quality decision-making. 

So, what’s in store for 2025? We believe that the CFO seat is more closely linked to market dynamics than any other C-Suite role. If exits pick up, we could see a large number of top-tier CFO come to the market looking for their next opportunity. Without a crystal ball, it's hard to predict which opportunities will be most compelling to them, but if the AI and Clean Tech verticals continue to flourish, as they have in 2024, there could be some interesting placements this year. 

Working across such a broad spectrum of searches in 2024 was a real privilege, from supporting a range of burgeoning startups hire their first CFO, to partnering with some of our ecosystem’s leading scaleups, hiring for an exit. Although the shortage of top CFO talent was a challenge at times, through creative and agile thinking, our team was able to make some incredible placements for some truly standout CFOs. We’d like to say a big thank you to our team, ecosystem partners, clients and candidates for all of your support last year.