‘I’m the calm head with risky businesses’: Meet FD of the Year finalist Ciaran O’Donnell

Ciaran O’Donnell used to be “your typical risk-averse accountant”. 

He enjoyed a successful corporate career that involved stints with Hutchison Whampoa, Three Mobile, Carphone Warehouse and TalkTalk. 

But then he decided to change direction and set up the Virtual FD, offering his advice to early-stage businesses that were not yet ready to appoint a full-time finance director. 

Ciaran O’Donnell

iplicit has profiled Ciaran as part of a series of interviews with the finalists for the FD of the Year title, which the accounting software vendor is sponsoring at this year’s Accounting Excellence Awards.  

The 49-year-old remembers leaving the corporate world 15 years ago. “I thought, do I want to stay here forever and try to get a long-term incentive programme or share option scheme? Or do I jump ship and work with people who are setting out from scratch to win the Superbowl?” he says. 

 “Up to that point, I was a typical risk-averse accountant and it was only by surrounding myself with founders who were chasing something big that I realised I could help them. 

“I packed in the corporate space and for 15 years I’ve been surrounding myself with founders, CEOs, early-stage companies – all talented in different ways but, through no fault of their own, just missing that finance structure.” 

‘I look back with a tinge of embarrassment’ 

“I call myself a virtual finance director. Effectively I’m a freelance FD for early-stage companies and startups,” says Ciaran.  

“The window I’m looking to have fun with is typically the seed to series A funding space. Typically, when a company makes it that far or gets that big, it will then raise a significant round and will need a full-time FD. I’m trying to bring the finance discipline, structure and governance sooner than you would traditionally bring in a full-time FD.” 

In his interview with iplicit, Ciaran tells how building a freelance business involved becoming more comfortable with speaking in public and on social media.  

“Four years ago – and this was the classic Covid opportunity – I put a video on LinkedIn around the time of the first lockdown. I look back at it with a tinge of embarrassment but I realised this was something I enjoyed and wanted to become much better at,” he says. 

“I think I’ve just raised my game by practising, testing, trialling in front of a trusted audience, taking on criticism and trying to make little improvements,” he says. 

“People won’t remember technical detail because we’re not really programmed to remember detail ahead of a good story. If you want to start a movement or spread an idea, it’s so much easier if you can stick it around a story,” Ciaran adds. 

Keeping calm 

Ciaran says he can be calmer in his freelance career than in the corporate world. 

“I love the fractional space and because I’m diversified, I’m actually calmer working with risky businesses with short cash runways, because if one goes down, as some do, it doesn’t take me down,” he says. 

“It also means that when we’re up against it, I’m not a full-time member of the team who’s really nervous about my position. I’m the calm head, objectively saying we can steer our way through this, so it diffuses that tension.” 

To learn more about Ciaran O’Donnell – including why he is forever grateful to the recruitment consultant who steered him away from a City career – read the full interview on iplicit’s blog.