For investors
Operator support for your portfolio, from a founder who has raised from twenty investors.
Pre-board prep, hiring, pivots, and crisis calls — the conversations that don’t fit a board agenda. For VCs, accelerators, and angel networks.
- 25+
- years founding
- 6
- companies built
- 11
- co-founders worked with
- 100M+
- users of products built
What I do.
I work closely with portfolio companies — not in daily operations, but closer to execution than the investor partner who sits on the board. The partner sees the company once a month at the board meeting. I am available between those meetings: pre-board preparation, hiring decisions, pivot calls, crisis support, and the resilience conversations that don’t fit on a board agenda.
Why this role exists.
Most investment teams have two profiles. Bright associates who are Excel-smart but haven’t yet run a company. Senior partners who are both — but their time is consumed by deal flow, board meetings, and raising the next fund. I sit in the gap: an experienced operator, time-flexible, scoped engagements, significantly more affordable than a full-time hire with full compensation and equity. Easier to scale up when the portfolio needs it, and step back when it doesn’t.
Bridge, not translation.
Investors and founders speak different languages — finance vocabulary versus product/team vocabulary, quarterly cadence versus daily cadence. Most operating partners don’t bridge well because they have usually been one or the other. I have raised from twenty organisations — five VCs, one angel network, fourteen angel investors — and I have run six startups across four countries. That double-card lets me sit at the same table with both sides without sounding foreign to either.
I name this an Independent Operating Partner.
Operating because the work is execution-adjacent, not advisory in the abstract. Independent because I do not take board seats inside the portfolios I support, and I do not invest into companies on which I am providing operating-partner advice during the engagement. Partner because the fund or program — not any single founder — is who I report to.
Engagement policy
Standing rules for every engagement.
No competing engagements. I do not — and will not — advise two companies that compete with one another, whether they sit within a single investor's portfolio or across the investor organisations I work with. A conflict check precedes every new engagement; any material change in scope is re-examined against the same standard.
Confidentiality, in both directions. Information shared with me by a founder is held in strict confidence and is not relayed to their investors without explicit consent. The reverse holds equally: investor-side context disclosed to me is not relayed to founders.
Neutrality. I act in the interest of the engagement, not as a partisan of either side. Where founder and investor incentives diverge, I will state so plainly — to both parties — rather than carry one side's case.
Written terms. Every engagement is documented in writing, with scope, deliverables, fees, conflict carve-outs, confidentiality provisions, and termination terms. Engagements may be paused or ended at any time by either party.
Independence. I do not take board seats inside the portfolios I support, and I do not invest into companies on which I am providing operating-partner advice during the engagement.