One free introduction, to the right person

Infinia · 2026-10-17

You've probably already hired help that didn't work.

A consultant who sent a long deck and a short invoice. An advisor who was great on calls and never touched the spreadsheet. A part-time executive who billed ten hours a month and left you doing the same work at 11pm.

So now you have a problem that won't wait, and you're wary of hiring the wrong person twice.

This post is for you if:

• You're about to raise, and you're not sure your numbers will survive an investor's analyst.
• You have a board meeting coming, and the last one turned into an audit.
• You're facing a problem that feels insurmountable. The enterprise deal stuck in security review. The churn you can't explain. The codebase only one person understands.

The usual ways to find help, and why they're slow

Ask your network. It's the first thing every founder does, and it works eventually. A friend knows someone who knows someone. You get three names, two calls and one "I'm fully booked until March." Weeks go by.

Search on your own. Marketplaces and directories give you a hundred profiles that all look the same. Everyone has "scaled companies" and "driven growth." None of them tell you what they actually owned.

Run a hiring process. Job descriptions, interviews, reference checks. That's the right process for a full-time executive. It's the wrong one when the board meeting is in six weeks.

Each of these can find you the right person. None of them can do it while you have a deadline.

What Infinia does instead

One introduction. To one person. Free.

Not a shortlist to sort through. Not a stack of resumes. Not a round of interviews with people who were never going to fit.

Here's how we get to one:

We vet the part-time executives

Every fractional CFO and CTO we introduce has to answer three questions:

1. What was your last seat?
2. What was the ARR?
3. What number did you own?

If they can't name a number they were responsible for, they don't get introduced. We want people who own a number, not a calendar: the ones who roll up their sleeves and change something you can measure.

We also ask: "When would you tell a founder to replace you with a full-time hire?" A good fractional has an answer. One planning to stay forever doesn't.

We vet the founders too

This is the part most services skip. Before we introduce anyone, we want to know:

• What's the deadline: the raise, the board meeting, the deal?
• What number needs to be different, and by when?
• Is this a CFO problem, a CTO problem, or something else entirely?

That last question matters. Sometimes the answer is that you need a bookkeeper, or a senior engineer, or six more months of growth. When that's the case, we'll tell you, and we won't make an introduction.

What it looks like in practice

These are illustrative scenarios, not specific clients.

The raise. A founder at $2.5M ARR plans to raise in the spring. Her model was built by her and a spreadsheet template. We introduce a fractional CFO who has taken two companies through a Series A and owned the financial model both times. Within weeks, the model holds up when an analyst rebuilds it, and the conversation with investors stays about growth.

The board meeting. A founder's lead investor redid his churn number before the last two board meetings. We introduce a CFO whose last seat was at a $4M ARR SaaS company where she owned net revenue retention. The next board deck arrives with numbers nobody needs to rebuild.

The insurmountable problem. A founder's biggest deal is stuck in a security questionnaire, and his best engineer is filling it in between sprints. We introduce a fractional CTO who has taken a company through its first SOC 2 and owned the security review process. The questionnaire becomes a plan with dates, and the deal moves again.

In each case, the founder had one conversation, not ten.

"Free? What's the catch?"

It's a fair question. Here's how Infinia makes money:

Part-time executives pay us for network access. Founders access it for free.

That model is why we only introduce people we'd stake our name on. A bad introduction costs us more than it costs you.

When we're not the right call

• You're under $1M ARR. You probably need a builder or a bookkeeper, not an executive.
• You need a full-time hire now. We introduce part-time executives. If the job is already full-time, run a proper search.
• You want a shortlist to compare. We make one introduction. If you'd rather interview five people, a marketplace will suit you better.
• There's no deadline and no number to move. Come back when there is.

The short version

You've tried the network. You've tried hiring. You've already paid for help that didn't help.

If you have a raise, a board meeting or a problem that won't wait, you don't need more options. You need the right person.

One free introduction, to someone who has done the job before: infinia.fun/for-businesses/intake

It takes a few minutes. If you're not ready, we'll tell you that too.