Operating partners

The AI mandate landed on you.

Most lower-middle-market funds can’t justify a dedicated AI hire, so the mandate folded into your load, on top of the five or more companies you already cover. Every value-creation plan now names AI as a lever; nobody handed you the hours to pull it.

Book the 30-minute framing call How we work

Line-engraved waterfall: hatched blocks step upward, a final green block completing the rise toward one tall outlined column.

The seat math

The seat is real. The hire mostly isn’t.

The industry’s answer is a dedicated AI operating partner. For most funds in this bracket the numbers never work: the people who can do the job expect carry and a portfolio-wide mandate, and the big advisory shops are built for funds ten times up.

At this size the seat works as advisory: senior, individual, retained for the fraction the portfolio needs.

The longer version of the argument: The AI Operating Partner Your Fund Cannot Hire, and What to Do Instead

What the baseline gives your seat

SequenceWhich companies to move on, in what order, and why, with reasoning your deal partners can check.

VerificationAn outside read on the AI progress your companies report, and language that holds up in an LP’s DDQ.

First movesA two-to-four-week first move for each company that’s ready, sized to land in the board deck and the EBITDA bridge.

The noWhere AI isn’t ready yet, in writing, with the criteria. The part of the roadmap that makes the rest believable.

Your three hours

30 min	the framing call
90 min	the working intake
60 min	the playback

The data request goes to an analyst, not to you. Everything except your three hours happens off your calendar. The finished baseline lands within 48 hours of the playback.

After the readout

One company at a time, starting where it pays.

01The baseline names the companies worth moving on first, and the lever at each.

02For each one, the next step is Your Company AI Roadmap: the same read taken inside one company, built with its CEO, owned by its team. Also free, carried in under your sponsorship. The plan survives because the person who has to run it is the person who built it, and the translation work is ours, not another claim on your calendar.

03Where a roadmap calls for building and the company wants it built, that is the work we charge for. Every recommendation comes tagged: where we’d lead, where we’d bring a partner, and where it isn’t us. You keep the sequence, and the wins land in the bridge with your fingerprints on them.

The baseline is free because it is how we choose the clients we build with long-term. It stands on its own; nothing in it requires hiring us. How we work, from baseline to build

Thirty minutes tells us both whether a baseline fits your fund. If it doesn’t, we’ll say so.

Book the 30-minute framing call