Advisor to founders setting up, scaling up, and staying out of trouble. Thirty years of building, scaling, and exiting companies — across healthcare, energy, and technology — distilled into the room before the structural mistake.
Most founders don't fail
because of their product.
They fail because they made a structural decision early on — a clause, a hire, a partnership, a piece of paper — that nobody warned them about. Three years later it's a lawsuit, a tax bill, or a co-founder dispute, and by then it's expensive to unwind.
I'm the person founders bring in before that happens. Not a consultant. Not a coach. A second set of clear eyes from someone who has done this for thirty years and has no other agenda in the room.
Most of my work falls into one of three modes. The right one depends on where you are, what you're about to decide, and how much company you've already built. We'll talk through it on a first call — there's no obligation to pick a lane before we do.
Entity structure, cap table, founder agreements, first hires, governance hygiene. The structural decisions that quietly determine whether the next five years are spent building — or unwinding what you built in the first eighteen months.
You've found product-market fit. Now you're hiring, building org charts, watching margins drift, and making decisions that compound. This is the operating partner's view of what's coming next — and what most founders don't see until it's already a problem.
For founders preparing to raise institutional capital, pursue a strategic exit, or build toward an IPO. Board-grade advisory drawing on a NASDAQ co-founding, $2B+ in cumulative capital creation, and four continents of cross-border experience.
What thirty years across stages buys is not a Rolodex or a deck. It's pattern recognition — the ability to see what breaks at every stage of a company's life, and more importantly, what prevents it from breaking in the first place.
The credibility numbers below are real. They're worth listing because they let you know who's in the room with you. They are not the offer.
Founders and CEOs of privately held companies — any stage, from pre-revenue through scale. The common thread isn't size. It's posture. You're building something you actually want to own, and you want a seasoned voice in the room who has done this before.
I work with a small number of founders at any given time, on a six-month minimum engagement. The cadence and structure vary by stage. The pricing is discussed on a first call, once I know what kind of room you need me in.
A thirty-minute call. No deck, no pitch — just a working conversation about what you're navigating and whether I'm the right person to be in the room.
A short note about what you're working on goes a long way. The clearer the context, the more useful the first call.