01

The firm sets the thesis

What the hold is meant to produce, and by when.

02

The team builds the plan

Written by the people who have to deliver it, so they own it.

03

The company runs the cadence

Reviewed monthly, planned quarterly, without an operating partner in the room.

04

The capability stays

Through the hold, and into the exit where it prices.

Where you are

Two mandates. The same gap.

Built for emerging and lower-middle-market funds, long-hold holding companies, and operating-system builders. If you hold for years and invest on fundamentals, this is for you.

Emerging fund, Fund I or II

"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.

Holdco, permanent capital, OS builder

"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: annual and quarterly planning, monthly review, weekly problem solving. Compounding gets a mechanism, and the capability you build stays in the company instead of in your platform team.

If this sounds familiar

The hold rarely fails on the thesis.

"The value-creation plan is a deck nobody owns."
"The 100-day plan started strong, then fragmented."
"Our ops capability is one person across the whole portfolio."
"Management nods at us, then does its own thing."
"When the operating partner leaves the room, the capability leaves with them."
"We can show LPs good deals. We can't show them a repeatable engine."

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.

Your path

The plan, owned by the company. The capability, kept to exit.

The same three steps, mapped to the hold and engaged by the firm.

Step 01

ValueX

Baseline the hold

An assessment of value in your context, prioritized next steps, completed in 45 days or less.

Step 02

Design12

Owned by the team

The plan cascaded into work the portfolio team runs: aligned, incentivized, and reviewed on a cadence.

Step 03

Build90

Rhythm of the hold

Ninety-day cycles with portfolio-company leadership that keep the bridge on track and build capability that prices into the 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.

Build90 is that discipline, applied to the hold. A cadence the company runs itself is what holds a plan together through the cycles nobody underwrote. Collins and Hansen found the same in the companies that outperformed through turbulence:

“The march imposes order amidst disorder, discipline amidst chaos, and consistency amidst uncertainty.”

The 20 Mile MarchJim Collins and Morten Hansen, Great by Choice, ch. 3
The decision gate

Every ninety days, the firm answers the same question.

Build90 advances on completed work, not the calendar. Each gate closes with one decision that belongs to the sponsor: is it time to pursue a capital event in the next 90 days? No, and the build continues and the bridge keeps closing. Yes, and the work turns toward process, with a company that has been run to that standard the whole way. A formal answer every cycle. The exit becomes a date the firm chooses, rather than one it backs into.

Run Build90 as a portfolio cohort. Portfolio companies can convene for the ninety-day work together, rather than each running its own offsite. Shared sessions, shared learning, one operating rhythm across the hold. Capability compounds across the portfolio, and the firm's operating muscle scales without living inside any one company.
Talk through a cohort fit ›

An owner who sells to a capital partner we work with keeps their momentum through the sale, and the company doesn't lose a step in the transition.

In practice

What it's worth when a capital partner backs it.

Membrion

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.

Venture-backed deep-tech company · investor-mandated engagement
About 3×
the next round over the Series B pre-money.
Alignment

On the same side as your LPs.

To put our work on the same side as you and 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. The form follows the mandate. It gets named at the start, and scoped, fixed-fee work stays available where that fits the firm better.

Explore a fit.

Start with one real conversation about the hold, and how the plan lands.

Start a conversation