Brian HoppeBoard-Level Advisor to MSP CEOs, Brian Hoppe Coaching · Board-Level Advisor to MSP CEOs at Brian Hoppe Coaching

When Should an MSP Hire a CFO?

23 Jul 2026 · 1 min

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In this excerpt from the YouTube video "When Should an MSP Hire a CFO?", Speaker B recounts the experience of hiring a full‑time, private‑equity‑savvy CFO three months after a PE transaction that valued the MSP at roughly $12 million with $2.0–2.2 million EBITDA. The discussion highlights how a true CFO differs from an outsourced service: they handle taxes, bank reconciliations, pricing, financial modeling, compensation design, and translate data into digestible insights for leadership. The newly hired CFO also built out the company’s accounting, finance, and business‑intelligence functions, enabling better decision‑making and sustainable growth.

Chapters

Well, you were around $12 million, the first private equity, and that's when you brought on the CFO?
Yeah, it was about over $2 million of EBITDA, maybe $2.2 million of EBITDA. We brought on a CFO and that was new to me. I mean, I had an outsourced CFO, not a true private equity experienced CFO. These guys aren't figuring out taxes and bank rec. They're integral to every decision-making process in the organization, right? Pricing out deals, building out models. For comp. They just know how to take data and put it in a format that's digestible to all the leaders in the organization so you can make good decisions and grow the right way. Yeah. So that was my first— it was like 3 months after we did the deal, we had onboarded our first CFO who built out the accounting, finance, business intelligence function inside our organization.