Rebuilt Lawpath's Financial Data Layer and Implemented Industry-Standard Churn Measurement
Lawpath is Australia's largest platform for small-business legal, accounting, and compliance, serving more than 650,000 businesses across subscriptions, legal products, and compliance services. In less than a year as CFO, James partnered with the Digital Transformation team to establish the revenue and customer cube database, now the single source of truth for reporting, pricing, product decisions, and scenario planning across the senior leadership team and board.
Major decisions on pricing, partnerships, acquisitions, and capital allocation are modelled before commitment. Teams across sales, product, marketing, and customer experience pull data themselves through self-serve access, so decisions start from a shared source of truth rather than routing through finance reporting requests. She also standardised customer retention to MRR-based churn aligned with industry methodology and strengthened financial governance and board reporting.
Her scope spans strategy, M&A, data, business operations, and revenue operations, areas she is extending through AI-assisted model-building and dynamic dashboards that update automatically with source data.
Finance is one of the most under-leveraged growth levers a startup has.
The best finance leaders don't just keep the books. They extend runway,
structure capital that changes what a company can do next, and build the
systems that let it scale across borders.
Startup Finance 30 is the first list built to recognise that work.
Beginning in 2026 and continuing annually, we name 30 finance leaders at
venture-backed, globally ambitious startups. The operators shaping how the
next generation of companies grow.
What Startup Finance 30 is
“
Who's doing the most consequential finance work in the startup world right now?
This list is the answer.
FAQ
More information on how SF30 works.
Who's behind Startup Finance 30?
Startup Finance 30 is published by Airwallex. We built it because we work with globally ambitious companies every day, and the finance leaders driving that growth deserve more recognition than they get. Selection sits with the committee.
Who selects the final 30?
A committee of operating CFOs and finance leaders. They score every candidate against a five-part merit rubric and ratify the final list. See the full
selection methodology.
Is there a fee? Can I pay to be included?
No. It's free to enter, and recognition is earned on merit.
