Make the value-creation plan something the company actually runs.
For funds, holding companies, and operating-system builders that hold for the long term, and need the plan to land in the company, beyond the data room.
Two mandates. The same gap.
"Fund II gets raised on what Fund I can prove."
The thesis is sound and the bench is thin. You cannot staff every hold with an operating partner, and LPs are not underwriting one good outcome. The work puts a repeatable operating standard inside each company, run by the company, so the track record is a system rather than a story.
"There's no exit clock. There's also no forcing function."
A long hold removes the deadline that makes most plans move. The cadence replaces it. Compounding gets a mechanism, and the capability you build stays in the company instead of in your platform team.
The hold rarely fails on the thesis.
The hold that underdelivers rarely fails on the thesis. It fails because the plan never became work the company owned, and the capability walked out with the operating partner.
The plan, owned by the company. The capability, kept to exit.
A portfolio team that owns the plan and runs it. When a firm has to keep an operating partner in the weeds, the system is what's missing; we build the system. The capability stays in the company and shows up where it counts at exit.
Every ninety days, the firm answers the same question.
The exit becomes a date the firm chooses, rather than one it backs into.
What it's worth when a capital partner backs it.
Written into the term sheet. Built into the company.
Membrion is a venture-backed deep-tech company in Seattle. Its lead investor valued the operating work enough to write it into the Series B term sheet, funding the engagement out of the round's use of funds.
We installed the foundation the company had never built: mission, strategy, an investor-grade financial model, and a quarterly planning cadence the leadership team runs. In the founder's words, it was the first real foundation the company had.
Membrion went on to close its next round at roughly three times the valuation it went into the Series B on.
On the same side as your LPs.
We prefer part of our compensation tied to value created rather than time spent. Most often that is participation in performance or milestone bonuses, or a form of equity in the portfolio company. Where we work across a portfolio as an embedded partner over an extended period, it can extend to the fund structure itself, as carried interest or a share of the promote. It gets named at the start, and scoped, fixed-fee work stays available where that fits the firm better.
ValueX first, then the build.
Every engagement starts with ValueX, so the work goes to the right things in the right order. Forty-five days or less, fixed fee. See ValueX ›
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