Advisory

You don’t know what you don’t know.

Sometimes, we help clients execute things they know they need to do but don’t know how. Where we add most value, however, is in areas that you don’t even know exist. This is common for clients with limited business, start-up or SaaS experience. We’ve “been there and done that” with dozens of companies and can quickly help you see and understand the entire landscape and make more impactful decisions.

Value creation is a vector.

As humans, we tend to focus on doing more and focusing on things we think we can control rather than focusing our energy on the most important things. We all do it, and it achieves little more than leading us into a false sense of productivity. Getting shit done really does matter, but only if we focus on the things that will move the needle. Value creation is a vector. The direction of travel is at least as important as the speed at which you are travelling. People often think that just doing something adds value, even if it’s only a tiny amount. This means that the worst that could happen is that the work done is worth close to zero. The truth is that you can (and most companies often do) create negative value. This can range from adding zero-return complexity to communicating and operating in a way that damages your culture and productivity or positions your business negatively in the mind of your ideal customer. Almost all start-ups misunderstand and undervalue the importance of product design and product management, so they build a dizzying array of products and features nobody cares about. This is negative value creation as it makes your product more complicated to use, decreases revenue, and costs you a small fortune to build and maintain. Better avoided.

Core Knowledge Boost!

We find that many start-up founders have never worked in business before, never worked in SaaS, and have never sold anything to anyone. Firstly, it’s worth stating that we think this is freakin awesome- you go, founder! However, it does mean that we also see many teams solving problems as though they’ve never been encountered before, even when they have been VERY solved and have well-worn and widely accepted solutions already. Doing things this way will slow you down and cost a small fortune- with no upside! But worse, it means that your basic strategy is that you can solve all problems better than the collective knowledge of the SaaS and start-up ecosystems globally. It's not a fabulous bet, honestly. Sometimes, you should go a different way to the crowd, but you should do so knowing that you are and having a good reason to do so. Ignorance may be bliss, but it’s rarely profitable.

We help you avoid these pitfalls and many others by working with you to solve the most critical challenges and help you recognise challenges you’ve never seen before and may not even know exist. We help back-fill any knowledge gaps you and your team might have and help focus your powers on the most important and productive things.

Fees & Delivery

We provide advisory in monthly half-day or full-day intensive workshops where we rip into everything, help you identify the most critical areas to focus on in the coming month, review what has been achieved in the prior month and make great decisions.

Fees typically $3k - $5k +GST monthly on 6-month engagements.