Turn financial chaos into intelligent clarity.
Embedded CFO leadership inside growing companies — rebuilding the finance function from the inside out so decisions get faster, reporting gets sharper, and your team scales without adding headcount.
Most finance functions
are built for the past.
You've outgrown your controller. Month-end takes two weeks. The reporting that finally lands answers last quarter's questions, not this one's. Your team is talented and the tools aren't the problem — the architecture is.
You're scaling fast, which means you're spending fast, and the last thing you can afford is to be unsure about the integrity of your own numbers. You need finance that tells you where you're going, not just where you've been — whether that's the next raise, the next hire, or a liquidity event.
Most fractional CFOs give you advice. F28 builds.
Advice leaves when the engagement ends. I'd rather leave something behind: the system, the workflow, the trained team — a finance function that's measurably smarter than the one I found.
AI gets you about 70% of the way there — data extraction, first-draft models, initial reporting — in the time it used to take to build the first draft. The last 30% is where the CFO earns the seat: validation, sharper scenarios, judgment calls, the board-ready story. I build the first 70% into the tools your team already uses, and I stay in for the 30% that actually decides things.
Zoom out & map
Before touching a single workflow, we map everything that lives in your finance function — team structure, data flows, decisions, reporting gaps, manual pain. Most teams skip this. It's the most important step.
Build to 70% — fast
We implement inside your existing tools with no new software to buy. The goal isn't perfection. It's getting leadership decision-ready information, fast.
Validate & elevate
The last 30% is the judgment work. Stress-tested assumptions, sharper scenarios, real calls. I don't hand off a system and disappear — I stay in as the backstop so what AI starts, your team finishes with confidence.
Fractional CFO
Embedded senior finance leadership, 2–3 days per week. Strategy, reporting, team management, and board presence — without the full-time cost. Built for SMBs that have outgrown a controller but aren't ready for a $350K+ hire.
Start Up Advisory
Pre-seed to Series B. Financial infrastructure, investor-ready reporting, and unit economics clarity. The goal is getting you board-ready and due-diligence-ready — AI doing the heavy lifting on the first 70%, seasoned CFO judgment taking it the rest of the way.
AI for Finance
A focused engagement to redesign and automate your core finance workflows using AI — inside the tools your team already uses. No new software overhead. Built for operations with high transaction volume and finance teams still doing too much manually.
Booth
CFO of a 2,000-person global outsourcing firm with the mandate: stop running finance like a cost centre and start running it like an intelligence layer.
Numinus
Led the full finance function from private company through TSX IPO — four acquisitions, $80M raised, and a team built to run it.
Invoke Digital
Built a unified financial operating model from scratch after a two-company merger — including the reporting infrastructure for high-value digital product delivery at scale.
I'm John Fong.
I've spent 25+ years inside finance functions at every stage of a company's life — bootstrap to IPO, private to public, startup to scale. I've been the person building the model at 2am before a board meeting and the person presenting to institutional investors on a roadshow.
I founded F28 because the fractional CFO market has a gap: most fractional CFOs give you advice. Very few build you anything. I build the system, train your team, and hand off a finance function that's materially smarter than I found it.
You can find me on LinkedIn where I write regularly.