Your Finance Team Will Kill Your Next Deal (5 Lessons)

Your finance team will kill your next deal — and you won't see it coming. I've watched founders lose crores in exits not because the business was bad, but because the finance team couldn't hold it together when diligence got real. I'm Kishore Dasaka, a fractional CFO. For 20+ years I've worked with 250+ founders — building finance functions, leading diligence for M&A, and prepping companies for exits where the numbers have to hold up under real scrutiny. I've seen it happen in QoE rooms. The founder thinks the books are clean. The buyer's team starts pulling threads. And suddenly three years of small accountant errors, unflagged related party transactions, and reconciliations that were "almost done" come crashing into the data room. The deal doesn't die over the business model. It dies over a trust issue. Spreadsheets don't fail. People do. And the wrong person on your finance team doesn't just mess up your books — they quietly bleed your company until you're sitting across from an acquirer wondering why your valuation just got cut. In this video, I break down 5 hard-won lessons from real deals that fell apart because someone in finance dropped the ball — and exactly what to look for when hiring. You'll learn: The mindset test that reveals a good finance hire in one question Why the quiet finance person is more dangerous than the one who makes mistakes The expensive confusion between CA, controller, and CFO (they're not the same) What you can outsource — and what you can never outsource Why the cost of keeping the wrong finance person is always higher than replacing them If you're scaling toward an exit, this might be the most important 10 minutes you spend this week. Subscribe for weekly videos on startup finance, fundraising, and exit planning. ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ Chapters 00:00 Spreadsheets don't fail. People do. 00:44 Why I'm telling you this 01:20 Lesson 1: Mindset over resume 03:18 Lesson 2: Silence is more dangerous than mistakes 04:54 Lesson 3: CA, Controller, CFO — not the same role 06:30 Lesson 4: Outsource the work, not the outcome 07:55 Lesson 5: The cost of keeping the wrong person 09:50 What separates the right person from the wrong one ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ Connect with me on LinkedIn →   / kishoredasaka   #FractionalCFO #StartupFinance #FinanceTeam