Built Omnea's Finance Function Alone and Kept Lifetime ARR Ahead of Cash Burn
Omnea is a UK-based AI-native procurement orchestration platform that closed a $50M Series B from Insight Partners and Khosla Ventures, bringing total funding above $75M, with enterprise customers including Spotify, PayPal, and The Adecco Group. Castiglione joined during the zero-to-one phase and built the entire finance function herself: bookkeeping, quote-to-cash, revenue recognition, controls, tax, and financial modelling.
Across Omnea's lifetime, including pre-revenue R&D years, the company has booked more ARR than it has burned in cash, while sustaining multi-year recurring contracts. Rather than scaling headcount, she built a custom agent architecture across GitHub and Claude Code with shared-skills plugins that handle most administrative and reconciliation work, freeing her to focus on deal structure and commercial strategy.
Two prior CFO exits, Tessian (acquired by Proofpoint) and Pento (acquired by Hibob), anchor a track record that extends to advising Gitpod, whose team joined OpenAI, alongside Maze and Tracebit.
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.
