The Advisor You Send When a Portfolio CEO Needs to Level Up

Executive coaching and advising for PE/VC firms, built around your value-creation plan and your timeline.

You've backed the company. You believe in the thesis. At this point, the biggest variable in the return isn't the market or the model. It's the leader.

When a portfolio CEO is hitting a scaling wall, carrying a leadership team that got them here but can't get them there, or simply not converting the plan into execution fast enough, you have two choices. You can wait and hope the leader figures it out on their own timeline, which rarely matches yours. Or you can intervene early with someone who can strengthen the leader without destabilizing your relationship with them.

That is the work I do.

I speak both languages

Most executive coaches understand people but not your economics. Most operating partners understand your economics but don't do the intimate, one-on-one work of developing a leader. I do both, because I've sat in both seats.

As a former general partner at a VC firm, I understand holding periods, value-creation plans, board composition, and how much patience a syndicate really has. As a coach and advisor with 30 years of operating and boardroom experience, I know how to move a CEO from where they are to where the investment needs them to be. I've been the operator accountable to investors, the investor evaluating operators, and the board member watching both. Very few coaches can say that honestly.

Where I help most:

  • The founder who hasn't yet become the CEO. They built the company. The company now needs a different leader than the one who started it, and they can feel it but can't always see the path. I help them make that transition before it becomes a succession conversation.

  • The scaling transition. The systems, the team, and the operating rhythm that worked at one stage break at the next. I help the leader build the accountability and execution discipline that scale requires.

  • The pre-exit stretch. In the final stretch before a liquidity event, execution discipline is what protects the multiple. I help leadership teams close the gap between what they intend and what they actually deliver.

How I work with your firm:

I'm built to be dropped into a portfolio company and be useful fast. Engagements are confidential and one-on-one, so the CEO can be honest in a way they can't be with you or their board. I embed quickly, I don't need a long ramp, and I report progress in the terms you care about: movement against the plan, not fluffy check-ins.

I work with a small number of leaders at a time by design. That means the CEOs I take on get my full attention, and the funds I work with get an advisor whose judgment they can trust with their most important assets.

I understand the pressure the leader is under; I understand the return you're accountable for, and I'm straight with both of you. No theater, no jargon, no wasted time.

If you have a portfolio leader who needs to level up, or you want to know who to call before you do, let's talk.