Fractional Teams
Senior capability, in the seat, for exactly as long as it is needed. Diligence tells you what is missing and readiness work tells you what has to change, but neither happens on its own. This is how a finding becomes a fix: a named operator with a defined mandate and an end date.
The hire you cannot justify is usually the one you cannot do without.
Every growing business hits the same wall. There is work that plainly needs someone senior, and not enough of it to justify a permanent salary, benefits and the risk of getting the hire wrong. So it gets absorbed by whoever has capacity, which is usually the founder, or it does not get done.
Hiring too early burns cash you needed for something else. Hiring too late costs a year. Fractional is the honest answer to the period in between, and the period in between is longer than most owners expect.
There is a bigger idea underneath it. The companies that compound fastest are the ones whose capability can move as quickly as their opportunities do. That is difficult when every increase in capability means a permanent appointment, a payroll commitment and a twelve month recovery if the person is wrong.
Capability that moves at the speed of the opportunity.
A permanent hire is a fixed cost attached to a variable need. It arrives slowly, it is expensive to reverse, and it commits the business to a shape it may not hold in eighteen months. That is a reasonable trade for a settled business. It is a poor one for a business trying to grow quickly.
Fractional inverts it. You take capability up when a market opens, a transaction lands or a function breaks, and you take it down again when the need passes, without carrying the overhead, the notice periods or the difficult conversation. Two days a week for six months, then nothing. Or one day a week indefinitely, which is often all a function needs.
The point is not saving money on a salary. It is that the business stops being limited by what it can afford to commit to permanently.
Useful at every stage, for different reasons.
This is not only an early-stage instrument. The reason changes as the business grows, but the shape of the need does not.
A business with revenue but no leadership layer. One experienced operator two days a week is worth more than three junior hires, and costs less. The goal is to buy judgement, not hours.
The stage the Investable Standard calls Running. Someone holds the seat while the systems get built and the permanent hire is found, so growth is not gated on one recruitment process going well.
An acquisition closes and the finance function turns out to be one person and a spreadsheet. The first ninety days are the wrong time to run a search. We put someone in on day one and start the search from a stable base.
A resignation at the wrong moment, a sudden gap, or a departure the business had been quietly dreading. An experienced operator steadies it, documents what only that person knew, and hands over properly.
For funds and groups: shared senior capability across several portfolio companies, none of which could carry the cost alone. One capable finance or commercial lead across four businesses is a common and unusually efficient arrangement.
A named senior person on an investment committee or a venture board, with a defined mandate and an end date. Someone with no career riding on the answer, which is the only way an organisation reliably gets an honest one.
What we place.
Numbers a board or a lender can rely on, cash discipline, funding readiness, and the reporting that a transaction will eventually demand.
First revenue in a new segment, channel design, pricing, and the sales motion that has to work before a permanent hire makes sense.
Delivery, systems and the unglamorous process work that decides whether growth improves margin or quietly destroys it.
Turning a validated proposition into something shippable, with a roadmap tied to commercial evidence rather than to enthusiasm.
Running the venture, the integration or the programme day to day while a permanent leader is found and brought up to speed.
Independent presence on a board or committee, with the mandate written down and a date on which it ends.
Named people. Written mandate.
An end date.
Every engagement starts with what the operator owns, what success looks like, and when it stops. If we are still there after the mandate ends without a good reason, something has gone wrong.
No pooled resource, no account manager standing between you and the person doing the work. You meet the operator before you commit.
The mandate includes documenting what they built and training whoever inherits it. An operator who leaves a dependency behind has not finished.
The point at which a permanent hire becomes better value than us is a point we will name out loud, and it is usually earlier than a staffing firm would tell you.