Mark MacLeodFounder, Limitless.ceo · The Startup CEO Coach | Helping ambitious CEOs & founders scale world-changing companies without sacrificing their health, happiness, purpose, or humanity

How the CFO role is changing

9 Jun 2025 · 1 min

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The CFO role is shifting from compliance-focused accountant to strategic operator, especially in tech. At high-growth startups, CFOs spend only 15% of their time on finance tasks. Salesforce's new COFO title signals the industry now puts business strategy first.

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The punchline is the CFO is becoming a mini CEO. The days of the Dilbert accounting CFO meme is over, especially in tech. I mean, maybe in, in like, I would say slower moving businesses that don't require as much agility or margin of error, then yeah, then you can have the more what I would call budget operating model compliance accounting CFO. At early stage moving very quickly, I always found the CFO title to be misleading. One way I can tell you is, you know, 15% of my calendar was finance. By the way, Salesforce just created COFO, and I smiled, and finally, finally it has been accepted. Strategic finance, right? That's a very, very common term now. Strategic CFO. All it means to me is business first, finance second.