CFOing in the Chaos – Finance Leadership in VC-backed Start-ups with CFO Mel Ross

Episode notes

In this episode of The Finance Seat podcast , Headstar Managing Director James Roach is joined by Mel Ross , an experienced CFO with a career spanning corporates, private equity-backed businesses and early-stage startups. Most recently Mel works as a CFO at pubX - an innovative business that helps organisations deploy generative AI with clarity and governance. Mel shares how she moved into startup and fractional CFO work, and what she has learned about the financial blind spots founders often have. They discuss the differences between corporate, scale-up and early-stage CFO roles, and how priorities shift from profit to cash, structure to flexibility. The conversation also covers forecasting in uncertain environments, managing investor relationships, building finance teams at the right time, and the resilience required to operate in high-pressure early-stage businesses.