Not the market. Not your people. The way the company runs: who decides what, how the numbers move, what still needs you. I work with a small number of businesses as their operating partner until the machine matches the ambition, and I prepare companies for the raise or exit that ambition is pointing at.
Anything that crosses two departments finds its way to your desk, because nobody ever wrote down whose call it is.
You hear about the number after it has moved, and by then the quarter is already shaped.
Good people, properly paid, moving slower than they should, because the design routes everything through one person.
Each extra million costs more effort than the last, and you have started to suspect that is structural.
None of this is a people problem, and it is certainly not a founder problem. It is a design problem. The company was built, correctly, so that everything important routed to you. That design got you here. It will not get you to £10M, and every quarter it stays in place is priced in growth. The good news: design problems are the cheap kind to fix, and the shape of the fix depends entirely on your stage.
Select your revenue stage. What follows is what founders at that stage tell me in the first twenty minutes, what is going on underneath, and what has to change for the next stage to arrive on schedule.
Raising or selling in the next eighteen months? That changes everything above, whatever your revenue. Diligence readiness has its own clock and its own price for being late.
Investor & Exit ReadinessI rebuilt the company's numbers from raw actuals and traced every figure across the deck, the memo, and the model. Fifty one places where they disagreed with each other. Nothing dishonest; all dangerous, because diligence does not test whether your numbers are good. It tests whether they agree.
ByteDance's B2B business across EMEA, from nothing to eight figure revenue. Before that, Dynata's commercial division to the same scale. Before that, my own company: founded at 25, sold before 30. The frameworks I bring were not licensed from anyone. They are what survived contact with those years.
Client engagements are confidential by default and anonymised with permission where shared. On a scoping call I will tell you plainly what I have and have not done for companies at your stage; ask anything.
Most advisers at this level sell a licensed framework and a certificate. My qualification is different: I have run the P&L at the scale you are heading towards, hired and rebuilt the leadership teams, answered to the board, and carried the number personally.
Today I sit as a Non Executive Director on the Finance and Audit Committee of IMPRESS, the UK press regulator. That seat matters to this work for one reason: my job there is to scrutinise numbers and governance the way investors will one day scrutinise yours.
I work with eight companies at a time, directly. No associates, no junior team, no delegation. When we speak, you get the person on this page, and that is the operating condition that makes the work honest.
Founded at 25. Scaled and sold before 30.
Built the commercial division to eight figure revenue.
Zero to eight figures across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Finance and Audit Committee.
Operating partner to eight founders at a time. UK, Europe, Middle East.
Two weeks inside your actual numbers and how the company genuinely runs. It ends with a written findings report showing precisely where the design is capping growth, ranked by what it is costing, and a decision. Not a pitch.
Around half the founders who take it need nothing further from me. The findings are theirs to execute.
Concentrated senior attention on a fixed monthly rhythm. Not consultancy, not days on site: the right ninety minutes at the right moments, your numbers read before your board reads them, and a direct line when a decision is live.
I test the model, the materials, and the governance the way an investor's analyst will: rebuilt from actuals, traced across every document, checked against what a term sheet demands. You get the findings before they do, with time to fix quietly.
On price: I publish ranges because I sit on an audit committee and it would be odd to hide numbers. Measured against one failed senior hire or a repriced funding round, the comparison does its own arguing.
Deliberately not included: days on site, a body in your building, or a report nobody reads. You are buying twenty years of operating pattern recognition applied at the exact moments it changes the outcome. The board level tier adds board pack review before it ships and one board or exec meeting each quarter.
This work only works if I genuinely know your business: across the numbers before your board is, in the rhythm, and reachable when the decision is live rather than a fortnight later. That has a hard ceiling, and pretending otherwise is how advisory becomes theatre.
So the practice is capped at eight. When it is full, it is full, and new companies join a waiting list in order. Ask me on a call how many seats are taken and by what kind of company; you will get a straight answer.
Your stage, your constraint, and what the next eighteen months are pointing at: growth, a raise, or an exit.
Whether the diagnostic fits, what it would examine in your specific case, and the fixed fee for it.
Seat availability, timings, and a straight answer in both directions. If I am not the right person, I will usually know who is.
Current capacity: 2 of 8 seats open
These are the two working tools from inside the practice. Not summaries of them. The actual documents, including the scoring bands I use with clients and the parts that are uncomfortable to read.
Twenty checks to run on your numbers before an investor's analyst does, built from the audit that found the 51 inconsistencies above. Scored, with honest bands.
The one hour exercise with your exec team that shows exactly where decisions route today, who should hold them instead, and the protocol for making the change stick.
Prefer instant results? Fifteen scored questions, four minutes, and your operating profile with a written interpretation by email. Runs in the browser, no download.
Tell me where you are and I will send both documents. You will also receive my weekly letter for founders at your stage; one click removes you from it, and the tools are yours either way.
If you would rather not share an email, message me on LinkedIn and I will send them anyway.
Both tools will land in your inbox shortly. Run the Self Test first; it takes an afternoon and tends to pay for itself the same week.
The long form version: one operating problem from the £1M to £10M stretch, taken apart properly.
LinkedInThe newsletter on LinkedIn, plus working notes from inside eight companies.
XThe same thinking, shorter and sharper.
InstagramThe frameworks as visuals, one screen at a time.
Home ground. In person where it matters, and the operating base for the practice.
Across the whole of Europe, from the Nordics and Benelux to DACH, Southern Europe and CEE, where I built B2B revenue as an operator. English throughout.
The full practice: operating partner, advisory, and investor readiness for companies scaling from the Gulf, built on years of operating relationships across the region.