Helping founders build companies, and building a few of my own.

Who it’s for

Founders of early-stage companies who need strategy, positioning and go-to-market help from someone who has operated. Investors who need a hands-on partner for a company in their portfolio. Teams entering a market they don’t yet know.

What an engagement looks like

• Ongoing guidance on operations, strategy and products.
• Customer and market research, including interviews, surveys and competitor teardowns.
• A positioning and go-to-market plan, with cheap tests before anything expensive gets built.
• Marketing leadership inside the company, or support with the writing and materials it needs.

How I work

I have done this as an adviser over several years to companies all over the world, as an executive inside startups, and as a founder. I start by finding where the revenue is and testing it with simple arithmetic, then recommend what to do and, as important, what to walk away from. I began at Flycast Communications, an internet advertising company, as employee number 14, before it had any venture funding, and helped build its sales operation from nothing to millions of dollars a month. That story is below.