I install the operating layer in businesses that have outgrown the way they are run.
Founder-led and investor-backed businesses, usually in the 12 to 24 months before a raise or an exit. Decision rights, governance, the revenue engine and the data underneath it. I design the system, run it until it holds, and hand it over.
The business works. The way it is run has not kept up.
Founders and investors
Founder-led businesses with traction, where every important call still routes through one person, and the investors backing them who need the business to run the way the plan says it will.
Boards and chairs
Boards that need an interim operating lead, a credible read on whether the business can deliver its plan, or governance and reporting that hold up in diligence.
Built, scaled and sold, from the inside.
From quant developer to global product lead on an institutional analytics platform: 80 people across London, New York and Tokyo, 100+ institutional clients. Held 100% ARR retention through a $16m acquisition and owned a $12m product budget with board-level accountability.
Built and ran every function outside sales: product, engineering, DevOps, client success and operations. Scaled to 300+ UK schools and negotiated the reseller partnership with the dominant UK MIS provider that delivered the exit.
Redesigned the commercial model to unlock a second revenue stream from the existing client base. Doubled revenue and held client retention above 80%.
People, process, system. In that order.
Most scaling problems are not systems problems. Tools bought before the authority structure has shifted become cost, not capability. So the work runs in four layers, and each one is gated by the one before it.
Engagements are retained, fractional or interim, scoped up front, with a defined handover. I don't work by the day.
Founder readiness
Whether the founder is ready for the system to lead, not just tolerate it. Everything else is gated on this.
Governance and decision architecture
Decision rights, financial authority and a management cadence the team can run without the founder in the room.
System and data foundations
One version of the numbers, a CRM that is a system of record, and delivery that runs on documented process instead of heroics.
Revenue engine
Pipeline, pricing, sales process, partnerships and retention, made repeatable and visible.
Two practices. One method, routed by stage.
I co-founded two practices that run on the same operating method and share one front door, a free Growth Diagnostic. A business is routed by stage and never served by both.
Sparring Ventures
For founders before the first repeatable sale: pre-product, prototype or MVP. Test the idea, the customer and the plan before committing money and months to them.
Common Thread Partners
For businesses with traction that need growth to become repeatable: marketing, sales and operations working as one system, ahead of a raise or real scale.
From team to institution
Weber, Huntington and Fukuyama on the moment a founder-led business stops being a growth problem and becomes an authority problem.
The best thing an operator can do for a founder is give them their job back
The founder isn't holding on because they're controlling. They're holding on because the system that would make it safe to let go doesn't exist yet.
Five questions before any engagement
Most engagements that fail were always going to fail. The signals were there before contracts were signed.
If the business has outgrown the way it is run, I'd like to hear about it.
Email is quickest. Tell me where the business is, what it is preparing for, and what keeps landing back on the founder's desk.