The stall.
The deal closed on the founder’s projections. A year in, the firm has stalled – the talent’s gone quiet, a few key accounts are wobbling, the acquired teams still operate in silos, the founder’s mojo might be losing its luster. The value the thesis underwrote is leaking out the side while everyone waits for the integration to settle.
Here’s the part the model misses: the talent that made the firm worth buying doesn’t wait to see how the integration goes. It degrades fast – half the key people gone inside a year, three-quarters within three1 – while the earnout asks the founder to exceed last year’s output with this year’s depleted bench. The clock started ticking at close – and as an internal operating partner stretched across five or more portfolio companies, you can’t get deep enough, fast enough, to stop it.
I’m an operator at heart, not an observer. I helped architect a complex integration of multiple firms – fusing them into one entity – while the parent company was integrating us at the same time. Two roll-ups, nested, on one calendar, in a market where inflation pulled client investment back exactly when we needed a tailwind. We led with the talent thesis because it’s the one most likely to decide whether future value survives contact with a blended org chart.
The integration held – but inevitably, under real-world constraints, it stretched, the way bootstrapped integrations do. Which is the whole point: a large operating company can absorb a slow integration. A fund on a five-year clock cannot. The same level of investment that costs a strategic acquirer time can cost a sponsor the thesis. So when I look at a stalled portfolio company, I’m not guessing where it breaks. I’ve felt the same seams – and I’ve learned a few things about keeping the engine running while the rest gets rebuilt.
The Hard Restart is a 30-day, on-site mobilization – not another analysis. You’re not short on analysis; you’re short on momentum. Week one stabilizes the people the value actually depends on, because the clock is running. Then we diagnose the firm across three fronts, with AI as the through-line:
- Talent. Who actually carries the firm – not the org chart – what it takes to keep them, and where the gaps sit.
- Revenue. Stem the bleeding from self-inflicted integration losses, stop the wasted motions, and name a growth model built for what the firm is now, not what it was.
- Integration and operations. Are the acquired teams one company, or fiefdoms sharing a logo? Where are the seams – and where is the deal structure itself, the firm-by-firm earnouts, quietly fighting the integration you’re paying for?
The deliverable is one document that doubles as the decision: a clear-eyed 2.0 update of the original investment thesis, key findings laddered to EBITDA drivers, a sequenced Now / Next / Later plan, a proposed integration org and authority map – and, on the last page, the engagement and a signature line. No separate go/no-go meeting; the work makes its own case.
Fixed, for a thirty-day sprint. Exact pricing depends on the firm’s complexity and, for a multi-firm integration, the number of entities in scope. Travel billed as a pass-through.
Built for a sponsor whose acquisition has stalled after close – one firm, or a combination of several – and whose hold period is too short to wait it out. The number is deliberately sized to be authorizable by a single operating partner, without convening the entire investment committee. Against the EBITDA at risk in a stalling acquisition – let alone the thesis – it’s a rounding error. The expensive option is the quarter you spend hoping it magically rights itself.
If the reset thesis holds, Integrate-to-Ignite is the embed that runs it. Six months, milestone-based, with me stepping in as Integration Partner with real reporting lines and a mandate to execute: fortify the talent core, sequence the integration (fuse the plumbing, protect the soul), intelligently automate the margin-and-integration layer so profitability targets land without gutting the engine, and restart the growth model. Phases tie to value-driver targets, so it stays outcome-anchored rather than open-ended.
Shape, duration, and terms – including equity-linked structures – scoped to the situation. We size and shape it once the Hard Restart has told us both what we’re actually solving.
Built to grow it, not harvest it.
One condition, stated up front. This works for a sponsor trying to grow the asset, not strip it. The whole method turns on protecting the talent that creates the value – which an extractor won’t fund. If the plan is to run the engine hot and sell the husk, I’m the wrong operator, and I’ll say so in the first conversation rather than the fifth.
Fair question. Three reasons:
- Independence. An internal partner might be too close to the original thesis and integration plan; it’s hard to say “this isn’t working” without implicating the original thinking. An outsider brings distance, and a fresh, objective perspective.
- Specialist depth. Many operating partners are generalists from SaaS or industrial backgrounds; relatively few have actually operated a services firm – utilization, the billable model, talent-as-the-product, founder-as-rainmaker dynamics. I have. More than once.
- Surge capacity. One partner covering five-plus portfolio companies is chronically stretched. An outside intervention focused on the problem child provides leverage and speed.
A single stalled firm is the wedge. The same instrument scales to the harder case – several acquired firms midway through becoming one – where the integration lens widens from one firm’s fundamentals to cross-firm coherence, and AI becomes the shared substrate knitting the platform together. Bigger mandate, same method, and the place this work is most worth doing.
Bring the portfolio company that isn’t behaving.
1. EY study, cited by Gallup: roughly 47% of key employees leave within the first year of a deal, climbing to ~75% within three years. Source ↩