For Funded Founders
A Strategic Operating Partner for founders who need more than a fractional CFO, a strategy deck, and a growth consultant they barely see.
Experience inside
The week after you closed, the to-do list tripled. Board updates. A model that doesn't reconcile. Two hires you don't have time to vet. A growth plan that lives in three different Notion pages. And the realization that the round you raised was supposed to scale the business — not just keep it alive while you figure out how.
The instinct is to plug the gaps with fractional help. But six fractionals don't make an operator. They don't scale with you. They make six standing calls and a Slack channel nobody reads.
What funded founders actually need to build for scale:
of recently shuttered VC-backed startups cite running out of capital as the cause of failure — but the root causes are almost always operational: weak product-market fit, broken unit economics, mistimed scaling.
Source: CB Insights, 2026
of seed-funded startups successfully raise a Series A within two years — down from ~30% historically. The bar for "built to scale" has risen sharply.
Source: Carta / Pitchbook, recent cohorts
The reasons usually aren't product. They're operational. Pricing that never got revisited. A burn model nobody trusts. A growth motion that worked at $500K ARR and doesn't at $2M. The work of scaling gets deferred — until the runway forces the conversation.
That work is what a Strategic Operating Partner exists for.
Sound familiar?
Your fractional CFO has never run a growth experiment.
Your growth consultant has never built a board deck.
Your strategy advisor has never deployed an AI workflow.
That's not a team. That's a coordination problem.
SmallPond VentureCo. is one Strategic Operating Partner who covers the whole field — customer intelligence, financial foresight, growth strategy, and ops & automation. Embedded in your cadence. Accountable for outcomes. Built to scale with the business, not lag behind it.
What we cover
01
Unit economics, burn, runway, and the board-ready story behind them.
A live model you can trust — not a snapshot your accountant updates quarterly. Scenario planning that survives a board question. Cash flow forecasts tied to your actual GTM motion. The financial narrative that turns "we need more time" into "here's how the next 18 months get us to the next round."
02
Where to grow, in what order, with what resources.
Most growth advice is generic. I build your roadmap from what your business is actually capable of, what the data is telling you, and where the real leverage is. Then we run the experiments — pricing tests, channel tests, ICP tests, positioning tests — to validate before you commit budget at scale. Sequenced moves, not 14 simultaneous bets.
03
Who's buying, who's staying, and what they're really telling you.
Early-stage data is messy — but the signal is in there. I dig into your customer base to find the patterns that matter for retention, expansion, and the next product bet. Voice of customer programs that go beyond NPS. Segmentation that informs pricing and packaging as you scale.
04
Practical AI and process automation — built for the team you have, not the one you wish you had.
You don't have time to figure out how AI fits your business. I do. I identify the two or three places automation can quietly take real work off your team's plate, build it, deploy it, and train your people. Then I stay long enough to make sure it scales with you.
How we work together
Weekly working sessions across product, finance, and growth. Embedded in your team's cadence. Decisions made together — and executed alongside you, not handed off in a deck.
What you get
Engagement tiers
10 hrs / month · 3-month minimum
For founders who need a thinking partner without a full embed.
Start the Snapshot →20 hrs / month · 6-month minimum
Embedded across the pillars that matter most. Weekly cadence.
Start the Snapshot →40 hrs / month · 12-month minimum
Every function, every week. Accountable for outcomes.
Start the Snapshot →All tiers include Ops & Automation as an execution layer.
20 years of M&A experience doesn't belong in a side menu. If you're thinking about tuck-in acquisitions, a founder-led exit, or capital strategy beyond the next round — that's part of the work.
Sourcing, diligence, integration.
Bridge planning, alternative structures, exit prep.
The story behind the numbers.
Same operator. Same business. Different lens.
Who I am
I've spent 20 years in growth strategy and M&A roles — almost all of it inside venture-backed startups and private equity-backed operating companies. I've helped businesses find growth from a few million in revenue to the double digits of billions.
I've helped two early-stage companies raise $5M each. I've advised multiple Series A companies on strategy and business development. And I've run hundreds of growth experiments — pricing, positioning, channel, ICP — that informed the decisions worth making at scale.
I've built financial models from scratch. Written board narratives that survived hard questions. Run customer research that changed product roadmaps. Built AI automations that replaced headcount. Sometimes all for the same company.
That's not a resume flex. That's the toolkit a Strategic Operating Partner needs.
Start here
Before we work together, we diagnose. The Financial Diagnostic is a focused assessment of your business — unit economics, runway, the two or three growth levers most worth pulling — that tells you exactly what to tackle first and why.
From $1,000. You walk away with three specific priorities and an honest recommendation about whether we should keep working together.
The Snapshot takes 2 minutes. I review your answers personally and send a custom proposal — including investment ranges — directly to your inbox within 48 hours.
Not sure where to start? The SmallPond Snapshot is free and takes 2 minutes.
Start the snapshot →