For CFOs and CEOs of founder-led companies, and the investors behind them
New voices at the table. The business still runs the old way.
When an investor comes into a founder-led business, whether as owner or as a minority partner, the plan changes before the operating model does. I fix the processes that depend on the founder, then install the cadence a new board expects (scorecards, accountability, reporting). I do it from inside the business, in six months.
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Who I work with
I work with founder-led companies, usually $10M to $30M in revenue, that have taken on investors or are preparing for a sale. Most are backed by small, owner-led groups: partners building a business, not breaking one up, and most don't have an operating partner of their own. I'm that seat, for one company at a time.
What the first year actually looks like
The founder who built the business is usually still in the seat. That is often the point. They know the customers, the plant, and the work in a way no hired CEO can replicate quickly.
What they have never had to do is run the business against a plan someone else wrote, reported monthly, to a board that expects the numbers to move.
The gap is rarely strategic. It is operational: processes that live in the founder's head, no shared scorecard, no weekly cadence, no clear accountability for the numbers, and a management layer that was never built because the founder was the management layer.
Why this doesn't fix itself
Your sponsor's plan assumes the operations get better. That improvement is already in the model. It's the growth the exit depends on.
It's also the part with the most execution risk and the part with no owner. The deal team wrote the targets, handed them to you, and went back to their other companies. Nobody in the plan is responsible for installing the cadence that produces those numbers.
That's the seat I fill.
If you run finance
You are probably the first to see the gap. The numbers the board asks for take too long to produce, they depend on one or two people, and the plan keeps assuming an operation that does not exist yet. That is a capacity problem, not a performance problem. The business grew faster than the way it was built.
I build the scorecard, the monthly review and the board pack with you, from your own numbers, and I hand them to you and your team to own. When I leave, the reporting runs without me.
The first step is small and clear. The Alignment Assessment is a month and $5,000, and it ends in a written report on your own numbers that you and your CEO can take to the board.
What I install
Find it.
Where the business still runs through one person, and which of those dependencies cost the most.
Align it.
The basic processes fixed with the people who run them, and a management cadence the team helped design, so accountability is agreed rather than imposed.
Hand it off.
Owned processes, scorecards, reporting, and a team that runs it without me.
An engagement is six months of hands-on installation, then two to three months of transition as your team takes the cadence over. Then I step out.
I'm the only line in the plan that ends.
What six months produces
- A monthly operating review the board can rely on
- A one-page scorecard tied to the value creation plan
- An accountability chart with named owners for each number
- Written processes, with the right tools and owners in place, for the two or three functions that depend on the founder most
- A hiring spec, and first-round interviews, for the operations hire, if one is needed
- Reporting that survives my departure
That's the difference between a good year and a durable one. A good year is a result. A durable one is a capability that runs after the invoice stops, and it's the version a board can rely on, and the version the next buyer pays for.
Sponsors pay for the second. They know the difference.
Why me
I've been on the operating side of a PE acquisition: integrating 600+ employees across two facilities and building the reporting the board used. I've also run plant P&Ls, and I led the operational turnaround that produced a facility's first profitable year in its history, the work that set up the company's eventual sale. I'm a trained mediator, which is why the changes hold after I leave: the resistance gets worked through, not over.
For the board
On a return basis this competes with growth capex, not with your controller's salary. At exit, durable improvement in the numbers is worth a multiple of what the engagement costs.
It's discretionary in that you can stop it. It isn't discretionary in what it protects.
How it starts
The first step is a month-long Alignment Assessment: interviews with the people running the operation, direct observation, and a written report naming the four to six things limiting growth, with a phased path forward. It is a real document your board can read. The Assessment is $5,000.
Start with a conversation.
A short call about where the business is stuck and what to do about it, whether or not we work together.
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