For founders, executives & boards

Think
sideways.

Big-firm consulting. Inverted.

Senior judgment. Faster answers. A path your team can carry forward without us.

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Our work

Decisions we
help resolve.

A new market. A business that’s stopped growing. A leadership team pulling in different directions. An AI investment nobody has made the case for.

New markets
& offers

Is the opportunity worth pursuing?

Before a launch, partnership, or expansion, we examine the customer need, competitive alternatives, economics, and ability to deliver. We challenge the case for proceeding and identify what needs to be true for it to work.

We start by asking
  • Who exactly is the customer, and what do they do today instead?
  • What has to be true for the economics to work, and what is the cheapest way to find out?
  • Does delivering this put the existing business at risk?

Typical work Market and customer research, partner assessment, business-model review, and a recommendation to proceed, test, or stop—with the assumptions made explicit.

Discuss your situation

Positioning
& growth

What’s keeping the business from growing?

When an offer is hard to explain or sales depend on the founder, we examine the audience, proposition, pricing, and route to market. We help leadership choose which customers to pursue and give the business a clearer commercial story.

We start by asking
  • Why do the customers who buy, buy, and why do the rest walk away?
  • Can the founder explain the offer in one sentence, and can a salesperson repeat it?
  • What would you charge if you were certain of the value?

Typical work Customer and offer priorities, pricing options, positioning, and a pitch that holds up with customers, partners, or the board.

Discuss your situation

Leadership
& operating model

What has to change inside the organization?

Growth, a new leader, or a change in direction can expose unclear ownership and competing priorities. We work through where decisions sit, what leaders are accountable for, and whether the people and resources match the plan.

We start by asking
  • Who makes this decision today, and who thinks they do?
  • Which current priority would you drop first?
  • What does each leader own that no one else could take over?

Typical work Leadership working sessions, clearer decision rights, an operating-model review, and a transition plan with priorities, owners, and milestones.

Discuss your situation

AI investment
& adoption

Where does AI earn its place?

We assess specific uses of AI against the cost, quality, and time involved in doing the work today. That can mean testing research or proposal workflows, evaluating a vendor, or considering how AI changes an existing offer.

We start by asking
  • What does this work cost today, in time and in quality?
  • What would a good result look like, and who checks it?
  • If the vendor disappeared in a year, what would you still have?

Typical work A shortlist of worthwhile uses, a build-or-buy assessment, and a pilot with a baseline, review responsibilities, and a decision on whether to expand it.

Discuss your situation

How we work

AI does the legwork.
Partners make the calls.

We use AI to compress weeks of research, document review, and analysis into days. Partners check the sources, test the assumptions, and spend their time on judgment: what the evidence means and what you should do.

There’s no analyst pyramid. Every client hour is partner time. A small senior team moves faster. With no analyst pyramid to fund, the cost is a fraction of a traditional large-firm engagement.

You receive the evidence, working tools, and decision logic—not just the presentation. Your team can use and update the work without keeping us on retainer.

The model

Same question.
Built the other way up.

A conventional engagement is a pyramid: a few partners on top, layers of analysts underneath doing the work. We turn it over. AI does the legwork, partners do the thinking, and your team ends up holding the result.

Schematic of the structure, not a measurement.

QuestionThe usual engagementSideways
Who does the workLayers of analysts and managers, with partners at the milestones.Partners, start to finish, with AI doing the legwork.
Where the time goesWeeks of gathering and formatting before anyone judges anything.Days of AI-assisted research, then the time goes to what it means.
What you receiveA presentation.The evidence, the working tools, and the decision logic, along with the recommendation.
How it endsA proposal for the next phase.A handover and an agreed exit.

The deck is not the deliverable. A decision your team can run is.

Working together

We build your
capability.
Then we leave.

The engagement ends with your independence.

We work alongside the people who will own the decision and run the plan. They leave with the reasoning, reusable tools, and a clear next move. A long engagement is not the business model.

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Engagement sketches

What the work
can look like.

[PLACEHOLDERS — NOT CLIENT CASE STUDIES]

Illustrative briefs only. Replace with verified, permission-cleared engagements before presenting these as proof.

[SKETCH PLACEHOLDER — ADD REAL ENGAGEMENT]

A board split on expansion

A Series B board is deadlocked on entering a second market. The brief: test demand, economics, and delivery capacity; give the board a decision memo and the management team a model it can keep updating.

[SKETCH PLACEHOLDER — ADD REAL ENGAGEMENT]

AI spend without a business case

A leadership team has competing vendor proposals and no agreed priority. The brief: select one workflow, establish cost and quality baselines, and run a pilot that the internal team can own.

[SKETCH PLACEHOLDER — ADD REAL ENGAGEMENT]

A founder at every bottleneck

A growing business routes pricing, hiring, and customer decisions through its founder. The brief: clarify decision rights, test new responsibilities, and leave a team equipped to run the business.

Where our perspective comes from

Experience founding and operating businesses, serving on corporate and advisory boards, and investing across technology, communications, entertainment, publishing, real estate, and hospitality.

That connects the market opportunity to the operating realities, the investment case, and the story leadership needs to tell. Hands-on understanding of AI adds a current view of what organizations can put to work.

Straight answers

Before you
ask.

How is this different from a large consulting firm?

Structure. A large firm staffs a pyramid: analysts do most of the work and partners review it. We run it the other way up. A small senior team does the work, AI handles the research legwork, and every client hour is partner time. The cost is a fraction of a large-firm engagement, and the work is built so you can run it without us.

What does AI actually do in your work?

It reads, searches, drafts, and runs first-pass analysis far faster than a team could: market scans, document review, customer and financial data. Partners check the sources, test the assumptions, and decide what the evidence means. The judgment is ours; the legwork is the machine’s.

Do you advise on our own AI plans?

Yes. It is one of our four areas. We assess specific uses against what the work costs today in time, cost, and quality, evaluate vendors, and design pilots with a baseline, an owner, and a decision on whether to expand.

What do you need from us?

A named decision-maker, access to the people and data that matter, and time with the team who will carry the work forward. A clear question helps. If you don’t have one yet, finding it is the first thing we do.

Do you stay on to implement?

Not by default. We build the tools, methods, and ownership so your team can run the work. If you want more of our time after the handover, we’ll talk, but a long engagement is not the business model.

When are we the wrong call?

When you need a large team on the ground for a long implementation, a household-name logo to satisfy a committee, or an open-ended retainer. We’re built for a consequential decision made well and handed over cleanly.

Contact

Start a
conversation.

What decision are you facing? What’s at stake, and when does it need to be made?

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