I work for the company, with the fund's sponsorship. Diagnostic findings belong to the company; the fund sees themes and progress, not raw interviews. That boundary is agreed in writing before I start — it's what makes founders talk to me honestly, which is what makes the whole thing work.
For investors & boards
Earlier warning,
Earlier warning,
portfolio-wide.
By the time trouble shows in the board pack, the correction is expensive. I help portfolio companies build the focus and feedback loops that surface drift mid-quarter — while it's still cheap to fix.
Recently delivered as an expert-in-residence session for the founders and leadership of a UK private equity fund's portfolio.
The problem, in your terms
Board packs are rear-view mirrors
Revenue, retention and burn tell you what already happened. The signals that predict them — pipeline coverage, win rates, delivery lead times, defect trends, priority churn — live inside the company, usually unmeasured.
Companies that run a short-cycle review against a few leading indicators spot drift in weeks. Companies that don't, report it to you in quarters.
The longer you stay off course, the larger the correction needed.
Engagement
Three ways to engage
40 min + Q&A · remote
The portfolio talk
"Organisational Scaling & Feedback Loops" — why growing companies lose focus and responsiveness, and what the best operators have done about it for fifty years. Practical, framework-agnostic, no pitch. Delivered to your founders and their leadership teams.
Book a call to arrange this talk →
2 weeks per company · fixed fee
Portfolio execution review
The Execution Diagnostic, run across selected portfolio companies. Each company gets its findings and fix list in confidence; you get the cross-portfolio themes. Clear boundaries, agreed up front.
About the Diagnostic →
Retainer
Expert in residence
Office hours and on-call advisory across the portfolio: helping leadership teams instrument leading indicators, cut priority lists, and run a review cadence that surfaces problems early — so you hear about trouble from the founder, not the numbers.
Book a call →
Why this works
Most portfolio companies sit exactly in the window where this is cheapest to fix — and most expensive to ignore.
~10 people
Fast by default
Good habits cost almost nothing now — and pay off for years.
Drag: negligible~50–150 people
The gains get eaten
Coordination overhead builds quietly. The sweet spot for intervention.
Drag: building250+ people
You pay to unpick it
What would have been habit-forming is now a transformation programme.
Drag: structural
Boundaries
How I handle the obvious tension
One talk is the cheapest experiment.
Forty minutes for your founders. If it lands, we talk about what's next; if it doesn't, it cost you a lunch slot.