For Operating Partners & Portfolio Operations · Post-Close
The deal is done. The value-creation plan is set.
The commercial engine has the final say.
We tell you what it can actually carry, before you commit to it.
The Post-Close Gap
The value-creation plan is built on the same commercial numbers that got the deal done. Post-close, those numbers become the baseline for hiring, investment and board expectations. Very few of them have been tested by anyone without a reason to believe them.
Before you commit management attention and follow-on capital to a growth thesis, it is worth knowing which parts of the commercial engine can actually carry it. We establish an independent baseline: where the plan is credible, where it will stall, and the sequence that gets you there.
The risk: committing a 100-day plan and follow-on capital to a growth thesis the engine cannot support.
Our mandate: an independent commercial baseline before the plan is locked, not after it slips.The plan assumes a pipeline that converts. A material share of it has been recycling for 12 to 18 months and will not close. Build the hiring and spend plan on it and the ramp stalls inside the first two quarters.
The thesis leans on partnerships and letters of intent that were never operationally real. The plan treats them as pipeline. They are not, and the growth line that depends on them never materialises.
The plan models expansion on a base assumed to be stable. Older cohorts are churning faster than the topline shows. You pour value-creation effort into a bucket that is leaking from the bottom.
A large share of ARR renews inside the first year of the hold. The plan assumes that revenue is banked. It is not, and an unmanaged renewal wall can undo a year of value creation in a single quarter.
The thesis assumes a scalable go-to-market motion. The reality is that the founder still is the go-to-market. Until that dependency is engineered out, every growth initiative in the plan runs through one person's calendar.
The plan assumes direct control of the customer base. Revenue actually flows through a single channel partner the company does not control. The pricing, upsell and retention levers in the plan are not the company's to pull.
The plan sizes the opportunity off the deal-stage market model. The serviceable, winnable slice is far smaller. The growth targets are anchored to a number that does not survive a bottoms-up rebuild.
The plan assumes defensibility that buys time to execute. The claimed moat is a replicable feature. Competitors close the gap faster than the plan allows, and the margin assumptions go with it.
Our Approach
We are not consultants producing a value-creation deck to sit alongside yours. We are veteran operators who have built and fixed commercial engines ourselves, which is why we can tell a credible plan from an aspirational one. We deploy a dual-track methodology across the two places every plan stalls: the mathematics and the behaviour. Scope is calibrated to the hold thesis and the decisions in front of you.
How We Engage
Here is what three days on a portfolio company produces, so you know what you are buying before we scope anything.
Every engagement starts at three days. Everything beyond that is built around the plan in front of you, not a fixed package.
The plan is carried by the engine. Commit management time and capital here.
Deliverable, but not on the current engine. Fix the constraint first.
The initiative will not land in this hold period. Reprice or replace it.
Where the asset is larger, the hold thesis more complex, or the first findings open a question that needs answering properly, we extend the same methodology rather than switching to a different one. More days buy more depth, more coverage, and more evidence. They do not buy a different product.
Every engagement is built to scope. We agree the questions, the depth, and the timeline against your value-creation plan on an introductory call, then we work to that. No fixed packages, no filler work-streams you did not ask for.
What You Walk Away With
The most useful thing we can give an operating partner is not another deck to reconcile. It is a clear, independent read on which parts of the value-creation plan the commercial engine can actually carry.
You receive a concise findings document and a risk-rated baseline of the commercial reality, mapped to your hold thesis. Where the plan is credible, we confirm it. Where it will stall, we show you exactly where, why, and the order in which to address it.
Traditional advisors look in the rear-view mirror. S.L.A.M. is the navigation system.
The parts of the plan the commercial engine can genuinely support today. Commit management attention and capital here with confidence.
The initiatives that will not deliver on the current engine, and why. You see the constraint before it costs you a quarter of the hold.
The order that compounds. Which foundations have to be fixed before the growth initiatives stacked on top of them can work at all.
Who We Help
Validate whether the target's revenue story is real before you commit capital, and price the risk you cannot see from the data room.
See moreAn independent read on your own commercial engine, the blind spots you cannot see from inside, and what to fix first.
See moreA clean commercial baseline before you commit management attention and capital to a value-creation plan across the portfolio.
Whether the target's commercial relationships and synergy assumptions survive a change of owner and integration into your business.
See moreGet in Touch
Book a 15-minute call. No obligation. A direct conversation about the portfolio company, the value-creation thesis, and whether we are the right fit.