For founder and family-owned companies with no CIO on staff
Every technology decision in your company is being made by someone. Usually not by anyone accountable for what it costs you.
Most companies your size run on technology decisions made years ago, by people solving a problem you no longer have. It works — until it quietly stops. And it rarely announces itself as a technology problem. It arrives as a customer question you cannot answer, a number nobody can produce, or a cost nobody can explain.
The sentences I hear most
“We keep hearing we should be doing something with AI. Nobody can tell us what.”
“Our biggest customer is asking about security and we don’t have a good answer.”
“We want to sell in a few years and I have no idea what a buyer will think of our systems.”
“IT costs more every year and I can’t tell you what it’s buying.”
“Every report we need takes three people and a week.”
None of these are technology problems. They are business problems that technology happens to be causing.
I have been on your side of this
I was the CIO of a family-founded business before it took private equity money. I was there for ten years — through the investment, through the hold period, and out the other side at exit. I know what that transition asks of the people who built the company, and I know which technology questions get expensive if you leave them until the diligence.
A family-founded healthcare services business, rebuilt
What you get.
An honest picture, in business terms. What is actually holding you back, what is fine as it is, and what is a genuine risk. Most owners have never had this laid out without a vendor attached to it.
A plan that pays for itself in stages. Checkpointed and sequenced so the early work funds the later work. You can stop at any stage and still be ahead of where you started.
Someone who has carried the P&L, not just the budget. Fifteen-plus years as a CIO and CTO in companies from $50M to $1B, sitting with owners, boards and sponsors. I have taken an internal IT capability to a priced, margin-carrying product line with its own P&L — and I will tell you quickly if yours cannot be one.
Turned an internal IT group into an $11M product line at 60% gross margin
Someone who has sat on the buyer’s side of the table. Ten years at a company that went through a full private equity cycle — from the initial investment to exit — and, today, fractional CIO to two clients: the technology product division of a PE-backed $8B+ healthcare distribution business, and an $80M healthcare services company. If there is a transaction in your future — investment, sale or succession — I know what they open first, and I would rather you fix those things than negotiate them.
Two business units built from nothing and taken through the exit — 51% of EBITDA within three years
A finite engagement. I am not building an empire inside your company. The goal is a working plan, a capable team, and no ongoing need for me.
If there’s a transaction in your future.
Buyers and investors now examine technology with the same rigour they apply to financials. Technical debt, cyber posture, key-person dependency, compliance gaps and unscalable systems all show up as price adjustments, and they always show up later than you would like. I find those things first, on your timeline, so they get fixed rather than negotiated.
What a buyer will look at — can you tick each one?
4 more
0 of 9 ticked
About AI.
You are being sold AI by everyone. My position: AI earns its place or it does not get deployed. That means a named business outcome, a measurable dollar figure, a data-governance answer you would be comfortable showing a customer, and a realistic read on whether your organization can absorb it. Sometimes the honest answer is “not yet, and here is what has to be true first.” I would rather tell you that than sell you a pilot.
Bring the thing that has been bothering you.
Thirty minutes, no deck, no obligation.
If I can help, you’ll know by the end of the call.