Runway, recalculated honestly
Against collected cash rather than invoiced revenue, and against the hiring already committed rather than the plan on the board slide.
Service 06
Portfolio management
We do not just invest; we nurture. The riskiest period for an early company is not the one before the money arrives — it is the four quarters after, when the plan meets reality and nobody outside the founders is watching closely enough to notice the drift.
The rhythm
What a portfolio relationship actually consists of
Monitoring exists to maximise the chance that a high-potential project reaches its next milestone. It is a rhythm, not a report.
A reporting cadence the company can sustain
Monthly numbers that take an hour to produce, not a week. If reporting is expensive, it stops during exactly the quarter when it matters most, so we design it to be cheap and consistent.
A quarterly review that decides something
Each quarter closes with a decision, not a presentation: continue, change, stop, or raise. A review that produces no decision is a meeting the company cannot afford.
Follow-on judgement
Whether to support the next round, at what size and on what evidence — assessed against what was actually promised and delivered, not against the enthusiasm in the room.
Operational support where it is asked for
Hiring a first finance lead, replacing a banking relationship, preparing for a counterparty audit. Practical problems that consume a founder's month and can be shortened by somebody who has seen them before.
Honest escalation
When the plan is not working, the conversation happens early and in private. Late honesty is the most expensive thing in a portfolio.
What we watch
The five things that predict trouble first
None of these are lagging indicators. By the time revenue tells you something is wrong, the decision window has usually closed.
Key-person concentration
How much of the product, the relationships or the regulatory knowledge sits with one person, and what the company would do in the month after they left.
Counterparty stability
Banking, custody and processing relationships, and whether the company has a tested alternative if one is withdrawn at short notice.
Regulatory drift
Whether the product has quietly moved into an activity the current licence or exemption does not cover — usually through a feature nobody flagged.
Distance from the plan
Not whether targets were missed, which is normal, but whether the explanation for missing them changes every quarter.
Questions
What founders and investors ask
Is this only for companies you invested in?
No. Portfolio work is contracted separately and is also taken on by companies that raised elsewhere and want the discipline without adding another board seat, and by investors who want an experienced pair of eyes on a position.
Do you take a board seat?
Only where it is genuinely useful and agreed explicitly. A great deal of portfolio value is delivered without one, and a board seat carries duties that should never be accepted casually.
What happens when a company is failing?
The conversation happens earlier than founders expect and in private. Options are set out honestly — including the ones nobody wants to discuss, such as a sale, a wind-down or returning capital — while there is still enough runway to choose between them.
Do you promise returns?
No. Nobody can, and the wording of anyone who does is worth reading twice. We can model outcomes, stress them and reduce avoidable risk. That is the whole of what is honestly on offer.
How much of our time does this take?
A designed reporting pack should cost the company about an hour a month, plus a half day each quarter. If it costs more than that, the design is wrong and we change it.
The quarter after the raise is the one that decides
Whether you closed last month or two years ago, tell us where the plan and reality have separated. The first reply arrives within 24 hours.