# The founder needed you six weeks before the raise. They found you two weeks after it. > Hellofew for fractional CFOs. Founders need a CFO the month before a raise and remember you the month after. Agents find the ones who need you now and write to each one. You approve. You clean up the books, build the model the investors actually believe, and make the board pack stop being a panic. For a startup that is not ready for a full-time CFO, you are the difference between a raise that closes and one that stalls in diligence. The timing never works in your favour. Founders do not think about finance until something forces it: a term sheet, a diligence request, a cash-flow scare. By then they grab whoever an investor mentioned, and you only hear about it afterwards. The fix is obvious. Be in touch with the right founders before the crisis, steadily, in a way that is useful rather than salesy. And it never happens, because month-end for your existing clients is every month, and prospecting is the thing that can always wait until next week. Hellofew does it every week for you. You paste your services page; agents find founders, CEOs and heads of finance at the stage you work with, read what they post, and write one careful note per person. You approve each one, and it sends from your own account in your working hours. ![A working week for fractional CFOs: Client A: month-end, Board pack — B, Cash model — C, Audit prep — and outbound, moved or skipped 3 times.](https://hellofew.com/solutions/fractional-cfo/images/week.png) ## What actually goes wrong ### Your work is invisible until someone needs it urgently A good fractional CFO is the reason nothing dramatic happened. That is hard to market. Founders do not search for you; they panic, and then ask an investor for a name. **What happens instead:** The agents reach the founders who fit your practice before the panic. If someone posted about hiring, about a raise, or about a finance problem, the note speaks to that — and any quote is checked against what they actually wrote. ### Month-end eats every week that prospecting was scheduled for Close for client A, board pack for client B, a cash-flow model for client C. The two hours you blocked for business development become two hours of reconciliations, again. **What happens instead:** Your part is a minute of approving in the morning. The research and writing happen before you open the queue, every weekday, whether or not it is month-end. ### Finance is a trust business, and a template kills trust A CFO who sends a sloppy, generic message is advertising sloppiness. Your prospects are about to hand you their bank access; the first thing they see from you has to be precise. **What happens instead:** Every note is written for one person from their profile. Near-duplicates are thrown out and rewritten, and nothing goes out that you have not read. One follow-up, ever — a CFO who chases five times is not one anybody hires. ### Your LinkedIn is where investors send founders to check you When an investor refers a founder, the founder looks you up. A restricted account, or one visibly blasting invitations, costs you the referrals that matter most. **What happens instead:** At most 20 invitations a day, 80 a week, reached over three weeks. Acceptance is watched from day four and caps halve on their own if it falls. Nothing sends from an account under 150 connections. Materially safer than the category, with limits published — not a promise that LinkedIn will never object. ## What your morning looks like instead One card per person: who they are, what the message was written from, and the message itself. Approve, skip, or edit. Nothing goes out that you have not read. ![An approval card: Hannah Brooks, Co-founder & CEO at a 30-person B2B marketplace preparing a Series A. Written from: Her post: “we’re hiring our first finance person — founders doing the books is not scaling”. Draft: "Hannah — before you hire a first finance person, it can be worth having someone set up the model and the close so they walk into a system rather than a mess. That’s what I do as a fractional CFO for Series A companies. Happy to compare notes." With Approve, Skip and Edit buttons. An invented person.](https://hellofew.com/solutions/fractional-cfo/images/queue.png) *An illustration. The person is invented.* Typical titles the agents would look for: Founder & CEO, CEO, Chief Operating Officer, Head of Finance, Finance Manager, Managing Director. Yours are written from your own page, and you edit them. ## Your first month 1. Paste your services page — free, no card. Make sure the ICP names the stage you work with; a pre-seed founder and a Series B CEO need very different notes. 2. Subscribe at $49/month and connect LinkedIn. About a minute later there are up to 25 people in your queue, each with the reason they fit. 3. Approve three and sending starts at 5 a day, climbing over three weeks towards 20, never outside your working hours. 4. Accepted connections get one message and one follow-up at most. The Monday digest counts replies, and says plainly when a week produced none. ![Invitations per day over the first four weeks: a slow ramp that never crosses the daily ceiling, held under a rolling weekly ceiling, with nothing on weekends.](https://hellofew.com/solutions/fractional-cfo/images/ramp.png) ## Who this is wrong for If your work comes reliably through accountants, lawyers and VCs who refer you, that channel is better than cold outreach. If you run a finance firm with a team of bookkeepers to keep busy, you need more volume and seats than one account can give. And if your clients are small local businesses that do not live on LinkedIn, this will not find them. ## Questions **Can it tell which startups are about to raise?** Not from a funding feed. It reads each person’s profile and recent posts, so a founder who has written about fundraising or hiring a finance lead will score higher and get a note that reflects it. **Is it appropriate for a regulated profession?** Every message waits for your approval, so you decide what goes out under your name. Anyone who asks not to be contacted is added to a permanent do-not-contact list. Whether cold outreach suits your professional body’s rules is for you to check. **How much of my week does it take?** About a minute a day to approve or skip. Replies land in one inbox, and the Monday digest summarises the week. ## Start Paste your page at https://hellofew.com/signup and read what it writes about your market — free, no card. $49/month when you connect LinkedIn. ## Related - [Fractional executives](https://hellofew.com/solutions/fractional-executives.md) - [B2B fintech](https://hellofew.com/solutions/b2b-fintech.md) - [Fractional CMOs](https://hellofew.com/solutions/fractional-cmo.md) - [Professional services](https://hellofew.com/solutions/professional-services.md)