The CFO Track

Tom Hunter

0.0 (0)
Careers
Updated Weekly

Most finance people never get mentors who have lived and learnt through capital raises, IPOs, administrations or ACCC scrutiny. The CFO Track changes that. I am Tom Hunter, and every week I sit down with top Australian CFOs to unpack what happened and what they learned. Clear steps, real lessons and as always, free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube and LinkedIn Live.

4d ago

Starting part-time to 20x revenue in two years – Lakun Agrawal (Hello Clever)

You made 100,000 dollars profit last year, so where is it? That's how Lakun Agrawal started his finance journey. He is now the CFO of Hello Clever, an Australian fintech building real time payments across the world. He joined when the business had about 40 people, as a fractional CFO 2 or 3 days a week, because the founder knew she needed his skillset before she could afford it full time. Within about 4 months he was full time. 2 and a half years on, the team has grown to over 110, revenue is up 20x and there are offices in Australia, Vietnam, Singapore, Japan and New York. But he got there the long way. Lakun spent more than 20 years in big multinationals, through telco booms and busts and a company bankruptcy on his first day in Hong Kong. Then working in a number of CFO roles with WPP, before making the jump to startup land. Early on, when he was completing the accounts for his dad's business. His dad saw a $100,000 profit and asked, “So where is it?” That confusion between profit and cash is still what he translates for founders today. But it taught him the importance of communicating complexity in a simple way. If you’re a finance leader wondering whether fractional can turn into something bigger, this episode is a great place to start! Highlights: • Hear how he helped Hello Clever grow revenue 20 times in two years, from 40 people to 110 across five countries • Understand why he joined as a fractional CFO 2 days a week, and how that scaled to full-time in about 4 months • Get the cash versus profit lesson his dad taught him with a single question, so where is it • Learn why translating the numbers into plain English is the finance skill that matters most to founders • Hear the Hong Kong story of walking into a new job the morning his company filed for bankruptcy • Explore the real difference between an FD and a CFO, and why it comes down to your time • Find out how he helps founders weigh debt against equity, and why it is ultimately their call • See why even large companies get caught out ignoring cash flow Tom Hunter, Story Recruitment - first-CFO and first-finance-hire search for Australian tech, fintech and deeptech startups. Host of the CFO Track Podcast. Storyrecruitment.com.au
Oct 6

Building from 100 million to 10 billion in payments - Ed Trick (pay.com.au)

He joined pay.com.au at 100 million dollars in payments and built the finance function as it scaled to 10 billion. Ed Trick is the CFO of pay.com.au, one of the fastest growing fintechs in Australia. He came in around the 100 million mark, when the business was about 2 years old with 20 to 30 people and no finance function. So he got on the tools and into the model, running every number himself. That founding knowledge is hard to replicate. The business is a different beast now. Over 250 staff, circa 100 million dollars raised, a US expansion underway and 10 billion dollars in payments last financial year. His route in was anything but planned. He started off in investment banking and private equity, but a move to Melbourne a couple months before COVID changed his career trajectory. He was contracting with a NDIS provider, which turned into a CFO role at an aged care business. Earlier this year, Pay had a prospectus ready and were looking to list on the ASX. They made the call to pull it when the market turned and raised private capital instead. How he walked through that decision and managed the pivot with his team accordingly is worth a listen in itself. If you love working in fast-paced environments, this episode is for you! Highlights: Hear how he built pay.com.au’s finance function from scratch, joining at 100 million dollars in payments and scaling to 10 billionUnderstand why doing every number himself early gave him knowledge he says is hard to replicateGet the story of the ASX float that was ready to go, and why he pulled it and raised private capital insteadLearn how he kept the team steady after the IPO came off the tableFind out why he thinks Excel courses will be a thing of the past, and what replaces themSee how a private equity placement at 22 shaped the way he reads a businessExplore his early run of rejections, and why he now calls it luckyHear how backing himself into new industries, from disability to aged care, set him up for pay Tom Hunter, Story Recruitment - first-CFO and first-finance-hire search for Australian tech, fintech and deeptech startups. Host of the CFO Track Podcast. Storyrecruitment.com.au
Sep 29

Zero Local Experience to Scaling a Fintech 15x - Arjun Adhia (Eftsure)

When he first arrived in Australia, he got rejected for not having local experience. 3 months later, the same person called him back because every “safe” hire had failed. Arjun Adhia is now CFO at Eftsure, a fintech SaaS business fighting B2B payment fraud. He’s been there 4.5 years, joining when the business had around 600 customers. Since then, the business has grown roughly 15x. Arjun didn’t start in Australia. He grew up in Oman and East Africa, trained as a CA in India, then moved to Perth. But when he arrived, no one would hire him. He volunteered for unpaid work, picked up a small audit gig and kept showing up. A callback came from a hiring manager who’d already passed on him. Three local candidates hadn’t worked out, so Arjun got the call. “Are you still looking?” and he started the next day. From there he moved to Sydney, spent 5 years at Source Group working his way from FC to director of finance and helped exit the business to a US-listed buyer. He then joined Eftsure as Group FC with the possibility of stepping into the CFO role. He put in the work and earned his place as CFO. When the PE sponsors tried to exit earlier this year, the SaaS-pocalypse hit and the process didn’t get them where they needed. Rather than wait, Eftsure pivoted and doubled down on acquisitions in the US and Europe, while expanding into Singapore and Hong Kong. The failed exit turned into the next growth chapter. It’s a reminder that the best finance careers aren’t always the ones with the cleanest start. Sometimes the person who got the callback, is the best one after all! Highlights: Moving to Australia from India with zero local experience and the months-long search for a first accounting roleGetting rejected and then called back three months later when every local hire had failedTransitioning from Big 4 audit to industry and building a career pathway from controller to CFOSpending five years at Source Group and helping exit the business to a US-listed strategic buyerJoining Eftsure as group FC and earning the CFO seat through a 15x growth periodRunning a PE exit process during the SaaS-pocalypse and pivoting to an acquisition strategy when the sale didn’t landExpanding Eftsure globally through acquisitions in the US and Europe, with launches into Singapore and Hong KongUsing AI operationally within the finance function for reconciliations, data synthesis, and predictive analysis Tom Hunter, Story Recruitment - first-CFO and first-finance-hire search for Australian tech, fintech and deeptech startups. Host of the CFO Track Podcast. Storyrecruitment.com.au
Sep 22

A decade out of corporate life, then walked into a takeover - Francine Hackett (Buildkite)

It was a baptism by fire back into the corporate world, I’m not gonna lie. Francine Hackett ran cafes and restaurants for over a decade, then walked back into corporate finance and straight into a company takeover. She is now the CFO of Buildkite, the Australian tech company whose platform helps engineering teams build, test and ship software, with customers like Uber and Canva. Her path there is one of the more unusual finance trajectories She started in audit, moved through Caltex and Bain, then left corporate altogether to build a hospitality business with her family. That lasted more than a decade. When she came back, she didn’t hold out for the perfect full-time role. She took a 3 month contract and 4 or 5 months later she was running due diligence on an acquisition. That set a pattern across her career. She has a knack for landing in the middle of a deal. At Fathom she advocated her way into her first CFO seat and within about a year the business had exited to a FTSE 100 business. The advice she passes on now is to be open to returning in a different way to the way you left. A contract, a smaller remit, a side door, none of it closes off where you’re trying to get to. On AI, she believes the tools let her move faster, but speed on a shaky base just gets you the wrong answer sooner. Which is why she worries about the big 4 cutting graduate intakes, and who trains the next round of finance leaders if no one comes in as a junior. If your career hasn’t run in a straight line, or if you’re working out what good finance looks like in an AI world, this one is for you! Highlights: Hear how she ran a hospitality business for over a decade, then walked back into corporate finance on a 3 month contractUnderstand why she was in deep due diligence 4 or 5 months in, still working out where the files were keptLearn her advice for returning to work after a long break, and why coming back differently beats holding outGet her take on advocating for the CFO title, and the chair who sponsored her into itSee why she keeps landing in the middle of acquisitions, including an exit to a FTSE 100 inside a yearHear the Bain lesson she still runs her team by, give me your message in 10 slides, not 50Find out why she thinks the real AI risk in finance is getting the wrong answer fasterExplore her worry about the big four cutting graduate programs, and who trains the next cohort of seniors Tom Hunter, Story Recruitment - first-CFO and first-finance-hire search for Australian tech, fintech and deeptech startups. Host of the CFO Track Podcast. Storyrecruitment.com.au
Sep 15

The best time in history to be a CFO - Damon Hauenstein (Weel)

“I didn’t have a CA or a CPA, and I hadn’t used Xero before.” He spent 12 years in investment banking, then became a startup CFO who had to learn bookkeeping from scratch. Damon Hauenstein is now CFO and COO at Weel, but before that he was at Citi working on deals like the Masters wind-down, the biggest inventory liquidation in Australian history. He then left, took an extended break and spoke to about 100 people to work out what he actually wanted next. It landed him a first-time CFO seat at a startup that had just raised its series A. Because he hadn't studied accounting formally, he learned bookkeeping and bank reconciliations from first principles, then hired a financial controller to take the systems to the next level. If you apply Maslow’s hierarchy to finance. Transactions at the bottom, strategy and M&A at the top, you can only do the top once the bottom is sorted. With AI and automation taking out a lot of that, Damon argues that this is the best time in history to be a CFO. If you’re in finance and wondering whether the path you’re on, is what you thought it would be, this one is for you! Highlights: Hear how a 12-year investment banker became a first-time startup CFO with no CA, no CPA and no experience in accounting systemsLearn his Maslow’s hierarchy of finance, and why he thinks it’s the best time in history to be a CFOUnderstand how he found his next move by taking time off and speaking to around 100 peopleGet the GFC story of watching Citi cut 52,000 jobs from the other side of the world before he had even startedSee inside the Masters wind-down, 100 sites and half a billion in stock, run under live litigationExplore why a career in banking flips 180 degrees, from worker bee analyst to business originatorFind out the real AI numbers inside Weel, from 2 to 5 times the output per engineer to automated receiptsHear how he built a company-wide AI culture with hackathons, lunch and learns and a habit of celebrating failures Tom Hunter, Story Recruitment - first-CFO and first-finance-hire search for Australian tech, fintech and deeptech startups. Host of the CFO Track Podcast. Storyrecruitment.com.au
Sep 8

The CFO who doesn’t like spreadsheets - Rachel Wong (The Finance Hybrid)

Rachel Wong is back on The CFO Track, and she’s the first person we’ve ever had on twice! She’s CFO at EdSmart four days a week, spends one day in the VC world at a family office, and in her spare time she’s building The Finance Hybrid. A mission to break the finance and accounting stereotype. The thing I love about Rachel is how honest she is about it. “People who know me know that I don’t actually like spreadsheets that much,” Years ago that admission would have got her shunned. Instead, she leaned into it, and it became part of her whole motto. Don’t let anybody box you into a finance identity. She’s also become a genuine AI power-user and not in a hype way. Her month-end process took five months to build and now closes the books in a day. She talks about the “landline problem,” the idea that if you’re not hands-on with the tools, you don’t even realise you’ve fallen behind. And she manages AI like a junior, consolidating feedback and watching the token spend, which is how every CFO should think about it. What she said on careers is the one that stood out Passive is leaving the fate of your own career to somebody else.” After two rounds of maternity leave she rebuilt her presence from scratch, and a year and a half later she’s on the cover of a CFO magazine. If you’re in finance and wondering what is next for you. This one is a must-watch/listen! Highlights: Hear why our first ever returning guest built a career around not being a spreadsheet personLearn her “landline problem” analogy for why finance people fall behind on AI without realisingSee how she took month-end from a five-month build to closing the books in a dayUnderstand her case for an active career, and why she says we make our own luckGet her honest take on managing AI like a junior, and why more context does not mean better outputFind out how she runs a portfolio career across an edtech CFO seat and a day in venture capitalExplore why she believes there are no real AI experts yet, and no room for egoHear why she thinks a black-and-white finance mindset is a risk in an AI world Tom Hunter, Story Recruitment - first-CFO and first-finance-hire search for Australian tech, fintech and deeptech startups. Host of the CFO Track Podcast. Storyrecruitment.com.au
Sep 1

The non-accountant who became a startup CFO - Luke Rix (KC Ventures)

“I’m probably the first guest on your show who’s actually not an accountant.” Luke Rix is the co-founder and CEO of KC Ventures, which now runs finance for circa 70 startups. But the story starts well before that. Luke is not an accountant. He failed Accounting 101 at university and went into communications. He only ended up in finance because he co-founded a company, With You With Me, that scaled faster than anyone expected. At one point, they were number 1 on the Deloitte Fast 50. When the first CFO hire did not work out, Luke stepped in for the interim and stayed for nearly 3 years. What made him good was not technical, it was knowing his limits and working to his strengths. So he hired a strong financial controller, leaned on external advisors and spent his time on what he could do that a career CFO couldn’t. He was a co-founder, so he brought leads into the sales meeting instead of asking why the team missed their quota. His biggest lesson is one every founder needs to know. A healthy profit and loss statement hid the fact the business was nearly out of cash. “You grow yourself into failure,”. Overdue debtors, contractors paid up front and milestones paid months later. The company still scaled to 200 staff across 5 countries, before he decided it was his time to move on. It means he brings a very unique perspective to his clients across startup finance. “It’s the CFO’s job to say yes, but how.” That's how finance should be run in a startup. Look for the opportunities, not the hand brake! Highlights: Hear why a non-accountant ended up running finance for nearly three yearsLearn his reframe that a startup CFO’s job is not to say no, but to say yes, but howUnderstand the cash versus profit lesson that nearly sank the business, and how you grow yourself into failureFind out how a side project to help an unemployed veteran friend became a company in five countries with 200 staffGet the 6am hack he used to hold down a bank job, an MBA and a startup at the same timeSee how an Anzac Day PR campaign took the business from ten signups a week to two hundredHear why he brought leads into the sales meeting instead of asking why the team missed quotaExplore his read on the startup market, why it is easier to start a business now but much harder to scale one Tom Hunter, Story Recruitment - first-CFO and first-finance-hire search for Australian tech, fintech and deeptech startups. Host of the CFO Track Podcast. Storyrecruitment.com.au
Aug 25

Making Yourself Irrelevant as CFO - Mike Ammendolia (Prezzee)

“You want to set up in a way where you’re almost irrelevant.” That’s how this CFO got the Chief Revenue Officer job. Mike Ammendolia told me that this week on The CFO Track. Mike is the CFO and Chief Revenue Officer at Prezzee, a global digital gift card company across seven markets. He's originally from Canada and moved to Australia 11 years ago. He loved it so much that he never left. At the start of his career, he got rejected from every Big 4 internship. But instead, he hustled his way into Deloitte by DJing at a university entrepreneurship conference. His professors gave him one piece of advice: just be useful. He took that literally and built a fintech audit portfolio and helped IPO companies like Zip. Then got sent halfway across the world on empty Qantas flights during COVID to check on businesses they’d acquired entirely over Zoom. When he got to Prezzee, month end was 3-4 months behind. He was told to fix it, offshore what he could and get them ready to list someday. He took the company to profitability in his first year and with 54% percent growth. Then he did something most CFOs would never consider. He made himself unnecessary. “If I didn’t think in that mindset, I wouldn’t be given the opportunity to now do revenue work or go to the US and be the acting president.” He rebuilt the sales governance the same way he’d rebuilt finance. Processes, controls and confidence levels. He’s not a salesperson, but a CFO who understands where the growth was already sitting. Reinvention from the inside. Highlights: How he got rejected from every Big Four internship and DJed his way into DeloitteWhy lateral moves through fintech audit built the foundation for his CFO careerWhat it was like flying on empty Qantas 737s during COVID to check on acquisitions done over ZoomHow he took Prezzee to profitability in his first year with fifty-four percent growthThe philosophy of making yourself “almost irrelevant” as a CFO and why it opens doorsWhy he reframed the CFO role from “no” to “what would need to be true for me to say yes”How he transitioned from CFO to Chief Revenue Officer without being a salespersonHis advice on using AI to differentiate as a finance leader rather than just cutting costs Tom Hunter, Story Recruitment - first-CFO and first-finance-hire search for Australian tech, fintech and deeptech startups. Host of the CFO Track Podcast. Storyrecruitment.com.au

Most finance people never get mentors who have lived and learnt through capital raises, IPOs, administrations or ACCC scrutiny. The CFO Track changes that. I am Tom Hunter, and every week I sit down with top Australian CFOs to unpack what happened and what they learned. Clear steps, real lessons and as always, free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube and LinkedIn Live.

Creator

Tom Hunter
Years Active

2025 - 2026
Episodes

42
Rating

Clean
Copyright

© Copyright 2026 Tom Hunter
Show Website

The CFO Track

Business News

Business News

Updated Weekly
Investing

Investing

Updated Weekly
Business

Business

Updated 5d ago
Technology

Technology

Updated Weekly