Your portfolio company has a three-hire problem.
It needs an operator who can rebuild how the business runs. It needs engineering it can't recruit at that size or in that location. It needs someone who understands where demand actually comes from. The value creation plan assumes all three, and the company can carry none of them.
That gap is usually why the plan is behind.
- Twelve companies operated, six of them mine
- Chief Operating Officer of a private vault, family owned since 1983
- Diligence support, post-close cleanup, demand systems
- Reduced fee against performance, case by case
What I am, in the language you already use
Korn Ferry has been publishing pieces asking whether the AI operating partner should exist as a role in portfolio value creation.
It should. I've been doing the job for three years across twelve companies, six of which I own.
The mechanism is the same one on the owner-operator side of this site. One operator, a staffed bench, and systems that carry the throughput. Because delivery isn't bound by headcount, I hold more surface area than a conventional operating partner without the plan degrading into a slide.
Where I'm useful
Demand and revenue systems
Paid, organic, CRM and attribution built as one thing. In one of my own companies the ad platform's reported revenue and the actual books were a long way apart. Budget, hiring and the growth case were all built on the wrong number. Rebuilding measurement was worth more than any campaign.
Operating systems the portco can't buy
Order and production pipelines with real cost tracking. Leasing and billing. Automated call-quality grading. Client intelligence for a sales floor. Executive dashboards with live performance data across departments. Every one of those exists and runs today.
Diligence support
I read a target's actual data rather than its reporting. On a large collateral-lending dataset I analysed tens of millions of dollars of active inventory, classified it to category level, and built a verification layer so every figure on screen shows the query that produced it. Nothing in the source data was altered at any point.
Quality control you can inspect
I run structured review on everything I ship, and I catch my own mistakes before they reach a portfolio company. That process is documented and you're welcome to look at it. In a fractional arrangement it matters more than it would with a full-time hire.
Why this isn't what you've bought before
You've hired consultants. They map it and hand you a plan somebody still has to execute, usually management, who already had a full job.
You've hired operating partners. The good ones are expensive, hard to find, and stretched across two or three portcos at most.
I execute. And in the right situation I'll take a reduced fee against performance. I already do that inside two of my own ventures, where I built the demand engine and hold a share of what it produces.
It's case by case rather than a standing offer, but the willingness is real, and it means my incentives can sit alongside the fund's rather than across from them.
The honest limitation
I'll say this before you ask, because you'd find it on the first reference call.
I have not held a portfolio-company seat under a sponsor. No prior portco on my record, no exit under a fund. If your screen requires that, I don't clear it.
What I have is twelve companies where I own the outcome rather than advise on it, six of them mine, and a repeatable way of getting a lot out of a very small team. Whether that's worth a scoped test on one portco is exactly the sort of thing a scoped test is for.
How a first engagement is scoped
Small enough for a partner to approve without a committee, and structured so you know inside a month whether I'm useful.
One portfolio company
Not the portfolio. One company, one named problem, so the test is clean and the result is attributable.
Two to four weeks
Fixed price agreed before it starts. You get a written diagnosis and one working artifact, not a deck.
Detail under NDA
Figures, references and case detail are available under NDA. Nothing on this site carries a client's numbers.
Then a real decision
Roughly half of these convert to an ongoing engagement. The other half take the document and execute it themselves, which is a legitimate outcome.
A diagnostic on one portfolio company.
Two to four weeks, fixed price, one named problem. You get a written diagnosis and one working artifact, and you'll know inside a month whether I'm useful.
I take limited engagements.