We've sat on
your side of the table.
What we help with
Mostly technology and the finance side of running a company, because those are two areas we are very experienced in. That is where most of the work lands, not a limit on what we will look at.
What that involves depends entirely on the company. Sometimes it is a decision someone needs a second opinion on before they commit to it. Sometimes it is work nobody in the business has the time or the background to do. We would rather scope it with you than publish a menu and hope your problem is on it.
Technology
Deciding what is worth building, making sense of what you already run on, and writing software.
We have built and shipped products in our own ventures, so this is not advice handed down from a whiteboard.
Finance
The numbers side of running the business: knowing where the money actually goes, what to put in front of a board or an investor, and what the figures are saying before somebody else spots it.
We have done this inside companies we own, under real pressure and with our own money at stake, which is a different exercise from reviewing someone else's spreadsheet.
Who we do this for
Most of it started inside our own portfolio. When we back a company we do not stop at the cheque. We work in the business, on whatever is holding it back at the time.
The same people now do this for companies we have not invested in. You get the team without the equity conversation, on whatever terms make sense for the piece of work.
The fullest public account of that portfolio work is the Leading DTC Brand case study. We came in as investor and operator and rebuilt the foundations across marketing, supply chain, finance and software. Not every engagement goes that deep. How involved we get depends on what the business needs, which is easier to agree in a conversation than to guess from a page.
The rest of what we have worked on is in the portfolio.
Our software consultancy venture
The technology work has grown into a venture of its own. We come to your business, find what slows you down, and build software that fixes it. You try it on real jobs for free, and you only pay if you decide to keep it.
Something you would rather not get wrong?
Tell us what it is. If we are the wrong people for it we will say so, and we usually know someone who is not.