TechCFO Unplugged is our series getting inside the minds of scale-up CFOs. The real stories, tough decisions, and lessons that define modern finance leadership.
In this session, we sat down with Graeme Scott, an experienced CFO, now a portfolio CFO, trustee and non-executive director. Across his career, Graeme has worked in multiple high-growth and private equity-backed businesses, including taking an HR software business from a £10m valuation to £125m and a property software business from £20m to £75m.
He shared what he has learned about creating value, using data to influence commercial decisions, working with CEOs and investors, preparing for exits and developing the next generation of finance leaders.
From Accountant to Portfolio CFO
Graeme’s route to CFO wasn’t linear.
He qualified as an accountant in 1995 before joining a start-up electronic trading platform in fixed income. The business was pre-revenue, but when his boss left just as revenue began, Graeme found himself stepping into the head of finance role early in his career.
Later, he deliberately stepped outside finance. He launched an electronic trading platform for equity derivatives and found himself signing $1m worth of sales contracts. The experience taught him something useful:
“I’m not a salesperson, I’m not a product builder. I’m also really nosey.”
That curiosity was what brought him back to finance confirming that he enjoyed putting his nose into every part of the business to understand what was really going on.
In his 40s, Graeme then made an intentional career move towards private equity-backed businesses. He originally planned to complete three CFO roles before moving into a portfolio career of non-executive roles. That plan took longer than expected, but ultimately became the portfolio career he has today.
The takeaway: there isn’t one route to CFO. The common thread is curiosity, commercial exposure and learning how the whole business works.
The CFO as a Commercial Operator
For Graeme, the CFO’s value comes from being involved in the decisions that actually move the business.
That means looking beyond the P&L and understanding what’s happening across sales, product and technology.
He gave the example of working with a CTO who had a number of major pieces of functionality to build. Rather than simply accepting the resource requirement, Graeme’s approach was to work through the cost of building it, whether anything could be bought or partnered externally, and what the commercial upside would be.
The same principle applied to sales. When one salesperson was generating around £100,000 of ARR while the strongest was generating around £500,000, the question wasn’t simply whether the lower performer was hitting their target.
It was what opportunities they were wasting.
Those opportunities might have been worth significantly more if they had been given to the stronger salespeople. That is an entirely different way of looking at sales performance – through opportunity cost rather than just individual targets.
For Graeme, this is where finance earns its seat at the management table. The CFO doesn’t need to be the person making the sale or building the product. They need to help the people who do those things make better decisions.
The takeaway: the CFO creates value by connecting financial information to commercial decisions. The goal isn’t to own every decision. It’s to make the decisions better.
Stop Managing Through the Rear-View Mirror
One of Graeme’s strongest messages is that historical reporting only gets you so far.
Revenue tells you what happened. Leading indicators tell you what’s coming next.
For software businesses, that could be pipeline health, demos booked, conversion rates or customer engagement trends. The earlier a CFO spots changes in those metrics, the earlier the business can respond.
Good data matters too.
As Graeme puts it, if the quality of information going in is poor, the insights coming out won’t be much use either.
The takeaway: Exceptional CFOs focus less on explaining yesterday and more on predicting tomorrow.
Understand What Really Drives Valuation
Value creation starts with understanding what investors are paying for.
At the HR software business Graeme helped scale, analysis revealed smaller opportunities were consuming significant sales resource while generating lower returns. Refocusing effort on larger opportunities helped drive higher-value contracts and stronger growth.
He also stresses that valuation drivers differ between businesses.
If investors value a business on an ARR multiple, then ARR growth is the priority. If they’re focused on EBITDA, then growth, profitability and operational efficiency take centre stage.
The takeaway: Before chasing valuation growth, understand what’s driving valuation in the first place.
Build a Finance Team That Scales
As businesses grow, finance functions need to evolve with them.
Graeme’s approach is simple: understand where time is being spent, identify bottlenecks and make sure work is being completed at the appropriate level.
The ultimate goal isn’t creating more process. It’s building a team that can operate effectively without every decision landing on the CFO’s desk. The CFO can then focus on value creation.
The takeaway: If everything still flows through the CFO, the finance function hasn’t truly scaled.
Exit Readiness Starts Now
“Exits are all about preparation, so start now.”
The preparation can be much more straightforward than it sounds. If the business has a previous deal folder, keep it fresh. If it doesn’t, ask the corporate lawyer for a legal due diligence questionnaire and use that as the basis for building a data room.
Much of what buyers will eventually ask for should already exist if the finance function is operating well: clean management accounts, reliable historical data and clear supporting information.
Graeme saw the benefit directly. On one transaction, he was able to put around 1,000 documents into the data room on day one. That bought the team time while the buyer worked through the information.
There is also a people dimension. Graeme recommends keeping the number of employees who know about a potential transaction limited until there is a reason to involve more people. But within finance, the workload needs to be shared. The CFO cannot become the single point of failure.
The takeaway: exit readiness is really business readiness. Build the systems, information and team capability now, and the transaction becomes something the business can respond to rather than something that overwhelms it.
Tell a Story You Can Defend
Good data is only the beginning. The CFO also needs to understand the story underneath it.
Graeme’s view is that a credible valuation story combines words and numbers. The business needs a strong underlying performance record, clear trends and assumptions that can be explained.
If you forecast £2m of ARR, you should be able to break it down: how many customers, at what average price, and why that price makes sense. If the average price is increasing, what is driving it? More functionality? Higher-value customers? Price increases?
The same applies to growth. A business with a consistent track record can explain why that trend might continue. A forecast that suddenly jumps away from historical performance will be difficult to sell to new investors.
Graeme is also a strong believer in clear financial models in Excel. Investors, advisers and buyers need to be able to easily access and understand the numbers and test the assumptions.
And sometimes, the CFO needs to know when not to accept the framing being offered. One of the best pieces of advice Graeme received from another CFO was to respond to a difficult investor question with: “We don’t look at the business that way”.
That only works if you understand the business deeply enough to explain why.
The takeaway: financial storytelling isn’t about dressing up the numbers. It is about supporting the business narrative with defensible assumptions that frame the growth narrative and make the value of the business believable.
The CFO-CEO Relationship Is Everything
For Graeme, one relationship matters above all others: the CEO.
“If you haven’t got a good relationship with the chief executive, you’re screwed.”
His view is that the CFO should spend the vast majority of their time in the business.
That relationship looks different depending on how the CEO operates. One of Graeme’s CEOs liked to think by talking. Graeme would spend hours batting ideas around with him, sometimes effectively helping him prepare for board meetings.
It wasn’t formally part of the CFO job description. But it was part of being useful.
The same applies to communication. Graeme is particularly clear that the CFO cannot become caught between the CEO and investors so must ensure everyone is on the same page.
The takeaway: the CFO-CEO relationship is the most critical working partnership. The more trust there is, the more value the CFO can add beyond the numbers.
How to Level Up as a CFO
For aspiring CFOs, Graeme’s advice is less about trying to suddenly look like a CFO and more about gradually behaving like one.
His starting point is relationships. If you can build relationships with investors early in your career, do it. The junior person working on the numbers today may become the senior person you deal with in the future.
He also recommends asking questions.
When junior CFOs and aspiring CFOs are told to have “more impact”, Graeme’s advice is not to try to go from zero to 100 overnight. Start asking questions that show you have thought about the issue.
“Why aren’t we doing this?”
The answer might reveal something you didn’t know. But the question also shows that you have a view and are thinking about the business rather than simply processing information.
There will also be times when your advice is overruled. Graeme’s approach is to give the advice clearly, recognise that the CEO ultimately makes the decision, and then move forward.
The takeaway: levelling up is about moving from being the person who knows the numbers to being the person people trust to help them make decisions.
Closing Thoughts
The businesses that scale successfully tend to have one thing in common: finance leaders who look beyond the spreadsheet.
They understand what drives growth. They spot opportunities early. They know what creates value and what destroys it.
Most importantly, they help shape decisions before the results appear in the accounts.
How can you go beyond reporting what happened, and start influencing what happens next?
