What is the CFO Stack?

The cross-pillar hub for the CFO who has to defend the diligence pack, the metrics tree, the cohort architecture, the forecast, and the intangible-asset capitalisation policy. Pulls finance-relevant clusters from all five Round Ready pillars into one curated surface.

What is the CFO's Institutional Diligence Pack?

The hub's anchor asset — a 23-tab template bundle covering the data-room structure investors expect at Series A and B, with a working example. Built by CFOs who have raised institutional rounds. CFO-forwardable.

Why do partners reject most cohort analyses?

Three reasons: blended denominator (concealing segment variance), inconsistent cohort definition (period creep), and missing the expansion cohort entirely. The cohort-analysis cluster covers each failure mode and the corrective discipline.

Should I capitalise our R&D under IAS 38?

Sometimes. The decision is structural and depends on whether the development meets all six recognition criteria (technical feasibility, intent to complete, ability to use or sell, future economic benefits, available resources, ability to measure cost reliably). For UK companies in 2025, the trend is toward capitalisation where the criteria are met. The valuation/methods cluster references the IAS 38 framework; the methods cluster sets out the valuation implications.

How do I make a forecast partners actually believe?

Start with the five assumptions that drive the model (acquisition rate, average customer value, retention curve, expansion rate, cost-of-acquisition trajectory). Defend each with cohort evidence. The series-a-readiness/cohort-analysis cluster covers the structure; the burn-multiple cluster covers the unit-economic discipline.

How does PPA matter to an operator?

PPA disclosures from comparable acquisitions reveal what acquirers actually paid for — by intangible asset class — rather than just the headline number. For operators preparing their own businesses, this is the single most under-used data source. The valuation/ppa cluster covers the read.

Where does the CFO Stack overlap with the other hubs?

Substantially — that is the point. The Series A Playbook covers the founder's view of diligence; the CFO Stack covers the CFO's. The Valuation Lab covers the founder's view of valuation defence; the CFO Stack pulls the methods, comps, and PPA clusters into the CFO's diligence-pack workflow.

What stack should a Series B CFO standardise on?

For UK SaaS scaleups: Stripe (billing), Chargebee or Maxio (subscription management), NetSuite (ERP), and a defensible single source of cohort truth. The diligence-ready stack varies by sector; the principle is integration discipline so the data room reconciles to the source systems on demand.

Content Hub

The CFO Stack

The CFO's content hub — metrics architecture, data rooms, forecast discipline, cohort and segment analysis, intangible-asset capitalisation, and the diligence-ready stack. Built for the person who has to defend it all in the data room and reconcile every number to source. Cross-cutting across all five Round Ready pillars.

Open the 23-tab diligence pack Run the Round Readiness Diagnostic

The Series A and Series B CFO defends the entire diligence surface. The metrics tree, the cohort architecture, the forecast assumptions, the comp-set discipline, the intangible-asset capitalisation policy, the precedent-transaction read, and the reconciliation between every number that lands in the partner's deck and the source system that produced it. The CFO Stack is the structured surface for that defence — a curated cross-pillar hub that pulls the finance-relevant clusters from all five Round Ready pillars into one operating manual built around the CFO's workflow rather than the founder's narrative arc.

23 tabs the institutional data-room structure CFOs are expected to defend in real time

5 assumptions drive every credible forecast — acquisition rate, customer value, retention curve, expansion rate, CAC trajectory

10 assets curated cross-pillar — the finance-relevant clusters from all five Round Ready pillars

Key Takeaway: The CFO is the partner team's primary interlocutor through diligence. Founders sell the narrative; CFOs defend the evidence base behind it. The defence is reconciled to source on demand, decomposed by segment when asked, and structured to a partner-recognised data-room schema before the conversation begins.

Who this hub is for

CFOs and Heads of Finance at scaleups

Preparing institutional rounds — Series A, bridge, Series B
Owning the data room, the metrics tree, and the cohort architecture
Defending the forecast and the valuation case in real time

Founders without a CFO and PE operating partners

Founders preparing the diligence pack with structured CFO-grade discipline
Fractional CFOs and Heads of Finance operating across multiple scaleups
PE operating partners running CFO recruitment for portfolio companies

Not sure where to start? Take the diagnostic — eight minutes against The Opagio 12, and the gap list tells you which cluster is most worth opening first.

What lives here — the architecture

A CFO defends six interlocking surfaces in institutional diligence. The ten clusters in this hub map across those surfaces, pulled from the four Round Ready pillars where each surface is most developed.

The data room and the metrics tree

Structure, completeness, and decomposition discipline. The institutional schema partners expect to open and the metric definitions they expect to compute.

The cohort architecture

Segment-level discipline. The single largest source of partner pushback in Series A and B diligence — and the decomposition discipline that survives it.

The forecast and the valuation case

Assumptions, defensibility, methods, comps. The two halves of the priced-round defence the CFO co-owns with the founder.

The intangible-asset capitalisation policy

IAS 38 in the UK; ASC 350 in the US. The accounting basis behind the intangible-asset case the founder makes commercially.

Example: A CFO at a £6M ARR Series A preparation has built a 23-tab data room and a five-tab metrics deck. The partner team opens the cohort tab first and finds the cohort denominator is blended (every customer who signed in a given month). Decomposing by acquisition channel reveals the SMB self-serve cohort retains at 65% net while the enterprise cohort retains at 118% net. The CFO who has decomposed the metric in advance defends the round at the original ask. The CFO who reports the blended 91% is asked to come back next quarter.

The 10 assets

Curated cross-pillar — the finance-relevant clusters from all five Round Ready pillars.

#	Asset	Where it lives	Why it matters
1	Series A Data Room — the 23 tabs	/series-a-readiness/data-room	The institutional data-room schema CFOs are expected to defend in real time
2	The cohort analysis partners open first	/series-a-readiness/cohort-analysis	The single largest source of partner pushback in Series A diligence — and the decomposition discipline that survives it
3	Series A unit economics — the denominator problem	/series-a-readiness/unit-economics	The technical discipline behind LTV, CAC, payback, and burn multiple at the institutional bar
4	What metrics you actually need for a Series A	/series-a-readiness/metrics-bar	The institutional bar partners measure against — distinct from the seed-stage bar and from the Series B bar
5	Burn multiple — what investors want to see	/series-b-readiness/burn-multiple	The 2025 bands by ARR scale. The metric every CFO must be able to compute in real time and decompose on demand
6	From 108% NRR to 128% — the playbook	/series-b-readiness/nrr-playbook	The three-component playbook that compounds NRR across rounds — pricing, expansion, retention
7	Series A valuation benchmarks by sector, 2024-25	/series-a-readiness/valuation-benchmarks	The structured view of what your sector cleared at and the multiple cone the comp set should produce
8	Valuation methods — DCF, comps, RFR, MPEEM	/valuation/methods	The four IVS-grade methods and when each applies — the technical reference behind every valuation defence
9	Purchase price allocation for operators	/valuation/ppa	What PPA disclosures of comparable acquisitions reveal — the most under-used data source for operator-side valuation defence
10	Dilution math every founder should own	/valuation/dilution-math	Pre vs post-money, option-pool top-up, SAFE conversion stacks, and the four flavours of anti-dilution — in the CFO's vocabulary

The anchor asset

The CFO's Institutional Diligence Pack — a 23-tab template bundle covering the data-room structure institutional partners expect at Series A and B, with a working example. Built to the partner-recognised schema rather than the internal-storage convention CFOs typically inherit. CFO-forwardable end to end. Email-gated when the bundle ships in product; until then, the data-room cluster is the structural reference.

For the CFO operating without a fractional valuer or boutique advisor, the cluster pairs with the Opagio Valuator and the methods cluster to produce a defensible first-pass valuation case the CFO can defend in front of the partner team.

Not sure where to start?

Eight minutes against The Opagio 12. The diagnostic surfaces the drivers that sit above and below sector median, classifies your funded state, and routes you to the highest-relevance asset first.

Take the diagnostic →

Open the 23-tab diligence pack

Cross-pillar. CFO-grade. The structural reference for institutional diligence at Series A and B.

Open the data-room cluster Run the diagnostic