For private equity
Firms and their portfolio companiesI help funds and their portfolio companies test the product against the investment thesis before the deal, then build the platform the value creation plan depends on, through to exit.
At one company I joined, the team that came over in an acquisition years earlier still said the deal didn't feel closed. They kept their own stack, their own login and their own way of working. On paper it was one company. To customers it was two.
I've seen some version of that at four companies across four industries. Every growth plan assumed the products would work as one, and making that true was the real work. Organic growth creates the same gap when products built by different teams never become one platform.
Closing that gap is what I do now, for funds and the companies they own.
Findings
A cross-sell plan with no shared login or shared data underneath it
Pricing and packaging set years ago and never tied to the value customers get
R&D spend that mostly keeps the lights on, with little left for the growth plan
Two products that define "customer" differently, so the numbers never reconcile
An open question about which product becomes the platform
An acquired team or business unit that still works like a separate company
A roadmap set by the loudest customers, with little tie to the plan's growth levers
A domain model that lives in a few people's heads, if it exists at all
Product knowledge concentrated in one or two people the business can't afford to lose
None of these show up in a financial model. All of them show up in the numbers eventually.
How I help
An operator's read of whether the product can carry the thesis, with a baseline and first moves after close.
Senior product leadership in the portfolio company while the plan needs it.
Replacing a product team is slow. I coach the people already in the seats.
Every engagement starts with a conversation, whether you know what you need or want help choosing.
Start a conversationTrack record
ACL's first acquisition still ran as its own company, down to its own logins. I led the product side of bringing it into the core platform, from single sign-on to flagship integration. It became central to Diligent's $1B acquisition of Galvanize.
After PointClickCare acquired an analytics business, my team integrated it into our own. When reimbursement regulations shifted, we built a repackaged, repriced offering on that combined platform, growing market share 20% and customer acquisition 2.5×.
Years after an acquisition, the acquired product and team still ran on their own. I set a $100M AI-native platform strategy to unite them, funded partly by cutting low-return R&D so total spend went down, and presented it to a PE-backed board.
I've owned the P&L for product portfolios, so I read a value creation plan the way an operator does.
The bench
When the work calls for it, I bring in senior specialists I trust, and I'll name them in the scope so you know exactly who's involved.
A sitting CFO who works with me on the numbers behind the plan, from unit economics and pricing to how R&D spend is treated and what an AI investment will actually return.
A senior commercial operator who works with me on how the plan turns into pipeline, from positioning and packaging to the sales motion behind it.
I don't do code-level diligence. Technical diligence reviews the code, the architecture and the security. I review whether the product engine can deliver the plan: the roadmap, the customer evidence, the domain model, how decisions get made and the story a future buyer will test. The two work best side by side.
Both. Diligence usually starts with the deal team. Assessments and embedded work are done with the portfolio CEO and leadership team, with the operating partner kept close throughout.
Yes. Diligence is scoped to your process, including tight exclusivity windows.
Yes. Product diligence, before the deal or in the first 100 days, is a natural first engagement and doesn't commit you to anything further.
Mostly, but the same work applies to growth equity, family offices and corporate development teams buying software companies.
Yes. I'm based in the Greater Toronto Area and work with funds and portfolio companies across North America.
Whether you're evaluating a software company or already own one that isn't growing the way the plan said it would, the first conversation is about where the product risk sits.
We can work under NDA if you need it, and we'll agree on a written scope before any work begins.