For Private Equity
An operating partner thesis built from inside hyper-growth businesses.
For sponsors backing £10–100m B2B SaaS or commerce-tech in founder-transition or value-creation phase. A four-move playbook to lift sales productivity 20–30% inside 18 months. Installed, not advised.
The thesis
The fastest unlock in most growth-stage businesses is sales productivity, not pipeline.
Inside AWS I saw the same pattern repeatedly: capable sellers, well-funded plans, and operating systems that quietly destroyed twenty to thirty per cent of their potential. Forecast meetings consumed the senior team. Pipeline reports lagged by a quarter. Compensation and motion pulled in different directions.
The fix is rarely more headcount. It is a tighter motion, an honest forecast, and a small set of controllable inputs every leader can act on. Done well the same team delivers materially more, and the value compounds because the operating model holds after you leave.
The playbook
Four moves, in this order.
01
Reweight the motion
Recalibrate the sales motion to the value pool that actually compounds — usually expansion and consumption, not new logos. Make compensation, forecast and cadence reinforce the same priority.
02
Industrialise expansion
Build the customer-success and account-planning machine so the installed base becomes a predictable growth engine, not a renewal exercise.
03
Telemetry over reporting
Replace lagging output reports with a small set of controllable input metrics every leader and seller can move on Monday morning. Forecast time down 30–50%.
04
Cadence that holds
Install the operating cadence — weekly business review, monthly forecast, quarterly plan — so the gains stay locked in after the engagement ends.
Where this fits
| Stage | £10–100m revenue B2B SaaS, data, cloud or commerce-tech. |
|---|---|
| Situation | First institutional investor in, growth outrunning the operating model, or covenants that need an owner. |
| Engagement | 18–24 months as operating partner alongside the management team. Drop in, install, hand over. |
Enquire
Discuss a portfolio company.
Thirty minutes is enough to know whether the thesis applies to a given company. NDAs welcome, and I will tell you if it doesn't.