Two functions. One person. Built to hand off.
I'm Erica McAfee, a fractional Finance and Operations Lead for early-stage startups. I come in when a founder has been running both functions themselves and the work has piled up. I build finance and ops from scratch, then hand them back running.
Three service lines. Take one, or all three.
Most fractional CFOs stop at the books. Most fractional COOs stop at process. I cover both, plus the client success layer that turns a good month into a great one.
Build the finance function, from scratch
In-house finance and accounting, reporting, budgets, projections, variance and investor reporting. The whole stack, wired together and running on AI agents.
- Accounting system and monthly close
- Burn, runway and KPI dashboards
- Board and investor reporting
- Revenue projections and variance
- A/R and collections, hands on
Run the bizops while you focus on product
Fractional Chief of Staff and COO work. Org design, SOPs, vendor management, HR and compliance systems. Set up once, then it runs without you.
- Operating rhythms and scorecards
- SOPs, vendor and tooling stack
- People ops, payroll, compliance
- Contract and legal ops, with counsel
- Removing bottlenecks, one at a time
Create the CS division before you need one
SOPs, CRM, team structure, retention motions and upsell systems. The revenue work that turns your existing clients into your best pipeline.
- Client success org and playbooks
- CRM and handoff systems
- Renewal and upsell motions
- Negative churn architecture
- NPS and feedback loops
Five steps. Each one has a deliverable you can hold.
Most founders I work with are doing finance and ops themselves, in spreadsheets, at midnight. This is how I take it off their plate, so they always know their burn, their runway and what's coming.
Baseline
Find out where the numbers actually live. Burn, runway, revenue, spend. Usually it's some mix of a bank account, a few spreadsheets and the founder's head. I audit what exists, what's missing and what's wrong.
Foundation
Set up or fix the accounting system. Books current, transactions categorized correctly, a chart of accounts that matches how the company actually spends money. Miscategorized data means a wrong burn rate. A wrong burn rate means a wrong runway.
Visibility
Build the dashboards. Burn, projected burn for the next 12 to 24 months, runway, revenue and the handful of numbers that matter for this specific company. The test is simple. The founder can pull up current numbers at any time without asking anyone.
Rhythm
Stand up the monthly budget vs. actuals review. This is where problems get caught early. A 30% jump in software spend might be a billing error, or it might be a signal the product team needs to fix something. You only see it if you're looking every month.
Ops layer
Build the processes that keep the whole thing running without the founder. AR/AP automation, revenue tracking, hiring plans and trackers, annual review cycles. This is the step where the handoff becomes permanent instead of a one-time cleanup.
AI runs through every step. That's how one person covers two jobs.
Faster categorization review at Foundation. Automated dashboard refreshes at Visibility. Variance drafting at Rhythm. Process automation at the Ops layer. You get senior operator judgment at AI speed, which is the only reason the math works on one person doing both functions.
I use AI in my own workflows and I build it into what I hand off, so the work keeps running after I'm gone. The founders I work with are usually building AI products themselves, while their own finance and ops still run on manual spreadsheet work. That gap is the thing I close.
What founders usually ask.
What does a fractional finance and operations lead actually do?
Everything a full-time head of finance and a full-time head of ops would do, on a part-time basis. Books and monthly close, budget vs. actuals, cash and runway dashboards, AR and AP on the finance side. Hiring plans, review cycles, vendor and tooling decisions and internal process on the ops side. The difference from an advisor is that I do the work rather than tell you how to do it.
How is this different from hiring a bookkeeper or an outsourced accounting firm?
A bookkeeper records what already happened. An outsourced firm closes your books and sends you a P&L. Neither one builds you a forecast, tells you your runway is shorter than you think, or fixes the operating process that caused the problem. I sit closer to the founder than that. I'm looking at where the business is going, not just where it's been.
When is a startup ready for this?
Usually somewhere between Seed and Series B, when the founder is still doing finance and ops themselves and it's eating hours that should go to product and customers. If you're raising, growing headcount, or you can't answer the runway question with confidence, you're ready. If you're pre-revenue with three people and a clean bank account, you probably aren't yet.
Do you replace a CFO?
At this stage there usually isn't one to replace. I come in when a company is too early for a full-time CFO and a full-time ops lead but still needs both functions working. When the company gets big enough to hire full-time, the system I built is what that person inherits. That's the point of building it to hand off.
How long does it take to see something useful?
The baseline lands in the first couple of weeks. That's the one-page view of current burn, current runway and the biggest risks in what you have now. Clean books and a live dashboard follow. The monthly rhythm is the part that compounds, and it needs a few cycles before the variance commentary gets sharp.
How do you price it?
Flat monthly retainer scoped to what you need, not hourly. Some engagements start with a fixed-scope baseline and build, then move to monthly once the system is running. We'll size it on the intro call once I know what already exists.
Do you work with companies outside SaaS?
Mostly US-based tech and SaaS, venture-backed. Equity-funded and bootstrapped companies apply too. The work travels well to any business with recurring revenue and a real cost structure. If you're a fit I'll say so on the first call, and if you're not I'll tell you that too.