Share a CFO, says the expert!
A recent interview in Dagens Industri with Sting founder Pär Hedberg puts a finger on a problem many growing companies recognise: raising capital takes so much time that it crowds out both product development and sales. The solution doesn't always have to be an in-house CFO – sometimes the right external expertise for the financing part is enough ✅
In a fast-growing company, raising capital is often one of the founders' most important tasks. According to Pär, the problem is that the financing work eats up time:
đź’° It is usually the CEO who carries the full responsibility for bringing in capital
⏱️ It takes so much time that other goals promised to investors risk not being met on time
â›” At the same time, the need isn't big enough to justify a full-time finance director
His solution: several fast-growing companies could share a CFO đź’ˇ
Pär's reasoning is essentially about equity and investor relations. But the same pattern applies at least as much when companies raise debt financing. The difference is that debt financing requires a different network and a different kind of relationship expertise than most internal finance functions have day to day: contacts with banks, credit funds and family offices, an understanding of different lenders' credit appetite, and the ability to run several parallel processes at once to secure competitive terms 📊
Just as Pär describes the investment world as a trust-based industry where not even AI can replace relationship-building, the same applies to the lending market. That is one of the reasons we at TicWorks see ourselves filling a role similar to the part-time CFO he calls for, but specifically on the debt side, and whether the company is at the startup or scaleup stage or much further along 🚀
What it means for you as a founder or CFO:
🤝 No CFO yet? An external debt advisor can take full responsibility for the financing process, so you as a founder can focus on product and sales
âś… Already have a CFO in place? Debt financing often requires a network and negotiating capacity that are hard to build internally, especially if the company rarely raises debt
At TicWorks, we run the entire debt raising process – from structuring to signed agreement – so that neither founders nor CFOs need to become experts on the lending market on their own 📋
Read the full interview in Dagens Industri (in Swedish).
