Dermot Campbell — Fractional COO and CFO for founder-led businesses

Helping founders see their business clearly, then act on what we find.

Fractional COO and CFO support for founder-led businesses, bootstrapped or investor-backed: senior capacity that actually delivers, not advice from the sidelines.

One discipline, accessed two ways: a finance-capable Fractional COO who takes real delivery off your desk, and a CFO who takes ownership of the finance function. Available on a retainer, as a defined project, or in a full-time role.

One discipline, two ways in.

Underneath both roles is the same thing: a rigorous, evidence-led way of thinking applied to whichever part of the business is under most pressure, and the capacity to act on it rather than just diagnose it. Governance is built into both, not sold as an extra.

Fractional CFO

The finance function

Most often, the finance function is not broken. It simply has not caught up: the business has grown and changed shape, and the numbers do not yet tell the true story of what it has become. Fractionally where a full-time CFO is more than the stage needs, or permanently where it is not.

Interpreting the numbers so they tell the right story: getting the accounting treatment right, so margins and unit economics reflect how the business actually works and stand up to scrutiny
Getting a company investment ready: a clean, defensible model, the equity story and the metrics an investor will interrogate
Raising capital: running the process, pricing the round and closing, from EIS and SEIS through seed and beyond. Having worked alongside EIS and SEIS fund managers for years, I can also open doors to the right investors: warm introductions to people who already know me, rather than a cold approach
Underpinned by the fundamentals: budgets, forecasting, rolling cashflow, management accounts, board and investor reporting, and the financial controls beneath them

Fractional COO

Operations and execution

Senior operating capacity that picks up real project and delivery work: turning strategy into priorities, coordinating work that has no clear owner, and building the rhythm that keeps delivery moving. Not facilitation from the sidelines.

Cross-functional priorities across product, sales and operations
Hiring strategy across the business: who to bring in and when, running the process well, and the employer infrastructure beneath it. The right hire, well chosen, is worth more than almost any other decision
Leadership rhythm, decision rights and accountability
Board operations: preparing meetings and packs, and the reporting cadence that turns board time into decisions rather than theatre
Customer discovery, product focus and go-to-market clarity
Where it helps, AI and workflow automation to remove manual drag

Governance is not a separate line of work. It is the decision rights, delegation and reporting rhythm that let a business run itself properly, built into the finance and operating work rather than added on top. Done well it is not compliance for its own sake but the fabric that underpins good leadership. Where a company wants that judgement from outside the executive, I also take independent chair, non-executive and board-adviser roles.

The finance function itself, run properly.

Beneath the judgement is the machinery: the work that makes a company legible and keeps it compliant. Most of it I handle directly, within the retainer. For the genuinely specialist work I know exactly who gets the right result, and I manage them so you do not have to.

Reporting and control

Management accounts and month-end, the reporting cadence the board and investors rely on, financial controls and cashflow discipline.

Funding and tax

SEIS and EIS advance assurance, EMI option schemes, R&D tax relief and grant funding: handled directly where straightforward, routed to trusted specialists where complex.

Cap table and equity

Maintaining and modelling the cap table, keeping it clean, current and scenario-ready for a raise.

Company secretarial

Statutory filings, registers, board and shareholder resolutions, board minutes, and the corporate record kept properly.

Signs it is time to bring someone in.

The companies I work with are typically past their first friends-and-family or SEIS money and generating revenue, with clear signs of growth. They may be starting to think about a bridge, a seed or A round, or something later. Size is not the test; internal resources are. Very small companies raising for the first time often start with a light engagement, perhaps a day a month to keep the financial model current and produce the management accounts. Some of the signals that it is time:

We need finance run properly, but a full-time CFO is more than the stage justifies.

We are raising, and the numbers and the model will not survive an investor's scrutiny.

The board and investors need cashflow, forecasting and reporting they can actually rely on.

We have outgrown informal founder-led ways of working and need clearer ownership and rhythm.

We know what needs to happen, but nobody has the bandwidth or objectivity to run delivery.

Sales conversations are not landing, and we need sharper customer pain and route to market.

The business is becoming more complex, which is what success looks like. It is simply the point at which finance, execution and decision-making need experienced support to keep moving.

Grounded in the realities of building and running organisations.

I have founded and led three ventures, owning the finance function in each with no separate CFO, and raised over £3m across them from angels and VCs. Kuber Ventures, an investment platform that gave advisers access to EIS and SEIS venture funds, which I took from an Excel model to a full online platform and built the team around it. The heart of it was the relationships with the venture fund managers, the same EIS and SEIS world I work in today. Board Originator, a governance SaaS business built around board workflows, investor reporting and management systems. Augentic, working on how AI agents could carry routine governance work while leaving judgement with people.

Before that, seven years in senior roles at UBS Wealth Management, latterly as a director leading a team serving professional intermediaries, with responsibility for around £500m of client assets, substantial collateralised lending exposure, and a restructuring that halved headcount while improving returns.

Alongside, I have been treasurer and a trustee of a public-interest organisation, taking it through charitable conversion and a finance-function rebuild that started with reconstructing the accounts from raw records. And I advise a smaller listed company on governance reform, board effectiveness and reporting cadence.

Earlier still, I flew commercially. It taught me more about structured decision-making under pressure than anything since.

Most of this work has been in founder-led and growth-stage businesses, because that is where the need is greatest. The discipline does not change with size: the same structure, decision rights and financial rigour that keep a small team running well are what keep a larger one running well too, which is what the UBS desk and the listed-company advisory work drew on at a materially bigger scale.

Start with a conversation.

The first step is a short, no-obligation conversation about where the business is under pressure.

We work out whether there is a clear value case and, if there is, define a focused first piece of work. If there is not, I will tell you. Email is the surest way to reach me, and I answer personally.