For founders
You Raised the Money. Now You Have to Grow Into It.
Private, one-on-one advice for founders after the round or the grant. I help you run the company your investors now expect, and hold on to the product and the people that got you here.
This Is for You If
- You need a cash flow forecast for the investment round, and it has to stand up to questions
- Your investors have asked for your go-to-market strategy, and you want one you can defend
- Your investors say grow, but you're running out of money
- You want to know your numbers well enough to hold your own in your board meetings
- You know the product. The job has turned into hiring, selling and reporting, and nobody taught you those
- You've made a hire or two that didn't land, and you're not sure what the standard should have been
- You're the only one who can sell it, and you can't keep being the only one
- It's lonely. You can't say most of this to your team or your investors
“I'm actually learning how to run a business. I know my financials. I'm starting to get ownership across every area of my business.”
What You've Probably Tried
Each of these has a job. None of them stays with you through the year after the money lands.
- An accelerator
- The best thing an accelerator gives you is focus, and a demo day. Then it ends, and you still have a company to run.
- Your investors' advice
- They've seen more companies than you have, and you need them. They also have their own interest in what you decide. You also want one adviser with nothing riding on your decision.
- A founder community
- Honest company, and a place to say the hard things. Peers can tell you what they did. They can't look at your numbers every month.
- Hiring a senior person to fix it
- Sometimes right. Hiring before you know what the job is gets expensive.
- Working harder
- Long hours built the product. With the money in, you'll see they can't also build the company.
“Mandy looks at the bigger picture … I had done a lot of business courses that may be focused on one part of the business. Whereas Mandy … looks at the whole business.”
The Company Is the Product Now
Before the money, the product was the whole job. After the money, the job is the company: who you hire and to what standard, how a sale happens when you're not in the room, what a month costs and earns, and what the board hears and when.
That is a lot of small things, and the problem is rarely where it shows up. A sales problem can be a pricing problem. A cash problem can be a hiring problem. I look at the numbers, the people and the way work moves through the company, and we work on the few things that matter most this quarter.
Sometimes the answer is the business model itself. I have changed a client's business model more than once, and the strategy that follows works because it starts from how their business actually runs.
I say what I see. The decisions stay yours.
What Working Together Looks Like
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Start a conversation
Tell me about the company, the round, and what the next 12 months have to produce. If I think I can help, I'll say so.
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I look closely
Your numbers first: cash, runway, what a customer costs and what one is worth. Then the people and the plan the board has been told.
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We work on the few things that matter
One-on-one, with me, through the year. We start with the small things that cost you most.
What you can count on
- It's one-on-one, with me. No program, no handover to someone junior.
- I say what I see.
- The decisions stay yours.
- What you tell me stays between us.
I'm an engineer with an MBA. For 5 years I was Expert in Residence at the University of New England's SMART Region Incubator, where I advised more than 200 founders. I sit on the board of an agtech company. Four founders I've worked with have taken their companies through to a sale.
Together, We'll
Know Your Numbers in the Board Meeting
Cash, runway, what a customer costs and what one is worth. You say them without looking down.
Hire to a Standard
You know what the job is before you fill it, and what good looks like in the first 90 days.
Sell Without Being the Only One Who Can
Customers come in without you in every room.
A Cash Flow Forecast for the Investment Round
Built from how the company actually runs, so you go into the round with numbers you can explain.
A Go-to-Market Strategy You Can Defend
Who buys, why, through what channel and at what price. You write it before the board asks, and then you run it.
Plan the Next Round, or the Exit
You know what each would take, what the company has to look like first, and how long the money lasts until then.
Keep Your Head
Someone to say the hard things to, who has sat beside a lot of founders after a raise.
“The support of Mandy has helped me to put the foundations down now to scale and to grow. The team is growing, the reach is growing. We're now not just in Australia …”
Founders in Their Own Words
Two founders talk about working together. Both later sold their companies.
Meet Mandy
I look for the small things that make a good company great
The Shop Floor and the Boardroom
I worked in operations at manufacturing plants and mines before I advised anyone. Now I also sit on a board. I know how a decision looks from both ends.
The Numbers and the People
I read a balance sheet and a team with the same attention. Problems often show up in the numbers but start somewhere else, like the team.
Patterns and Detail
After more than 1000 businesses and 200 founders, I've seen most patterns before. I still look at the small things in yours as if I haven't.
Growth and a Life
Growth that needs 80-hour weeks costs you more than it gives. I want your company to grow and you to still be standing at the end of it.
It Starts With a Conversation
I work with a small number of founders and owners at a time, so every company gets my full attention. Tell me about yours.
Start a Conversation