Miles Nurse
For investors and operating partners

The outside read, before the next cheque.

You have a thesis, and a company that is not behaving the way the thesis said it would. I read the plan, the product, the people and the incentives together, and tell you what the problem is actually called.

Chief Product Officer four times · inside companies like the ones you buy

Swipe sideways to see the whole drawing.

THE PLAN SAID ONE THING. THE COMPANY DID ANOTHER.The shape every investor recognises. The numbers are yours.the thesis is writtenyear oneyear twoyear threethe thesis, as writtenthe company, as builtthe part nobodyhas named yetwhere the call usually comes: the plan still makes sense on paperPlan, product, people and incentives, read together. The gap has a name, and it is rarely the one on the agenda.
The shape I am usually shown. The read is of the gap, not the lines.

The brief usually arrives as a technical audit: the stack was never integrated, so find out what it will cost to fix.

Sometimes that is the answer. More often, a year after a deal, something is wrong with the thesis, and the stack is just where it shows.

Is one of these yours?

The sentences investors and operating partners say to me most.

  1. 01The thesis isn’t playing out the way the model said.
  2. 02Integration is taking longer than anyone planned.
  3. 03I’m not sure the company has what the next stage needs.
  4. 04Is it the market, or is it the company?
  5. 05I need an honest read before the next board meeting.
  6. 06The tech audit says one thing, and my gut says another.
  7. 07The roadmap doesn’t match what we’re seeing in the market.
  8. 08Is engineering moving fast enough to get us there?
  9. 09Where does AI actually add value here, and will it show in the multiple?
six weeks 
you, the CEO, the team and customers 
a read you can act on, and a plan the company can carry 
a fixed fee, agreed before we start 
you end up witha decision you can defend
No day rates, no scoping phase, and nothing that appears on an invoice later.

Swipe sideways to see the whole drawing.

WHAT A THESIS STANDS ONFour things under every plan. The read checks all four, not the one in the brief.the thesis, as underwrittenthe plan againstwhat the team can dothe productand the portfoliothe incentivesinside the dealthe leadershipteamthe one the brief did not ask about

What do you look at?

The four places a thesis usually breaks.

The plan against what the company can do

Whether the people you have can deliver the plan you underwrote, and whether the gap is capability, structure or a person. It is a person less often than the brief assumes.

At Mediafly the plan the investors underwrote needed a reduction the team would feel. Autonomy kept the people who stayed, and the strategy was built around what they could carry.

The product and the portfolio

What the company actually sells, what everything else depends on, and what to stop paying for.

At Theory and Practice clients asked for data when they needed a decision. The product we built was the path between the two.

The incentives inside the deal

How the structure of the deal lands on the people doing the work. A deal can take the urgency out of a team without anyone deciding to.

At Atlas ID, the idea had a trajectory and the company was underfunded. The second half never got its run.

The leadership team

Who is right for the next stage, who is right for a different seat, and what support nobody has been given yet.

My own company failed on two questions I never asked: whether we wanted the same thing, and who would carry the business side if one of us left.

Swipe sideways to see the whole drawing.

WHAT HAPPENS WITH THE CEOOne to one, inside the six weeks. Nothing anyone says is attributed.the CEOthe leadership team, then the companyhow far their own effect reaches

What happens with the CEO?

The read includes the CEO, and I say so on the first day. That part is never a line in a report. It happens one to one, in a few coaching sessions inside the six weeks, because how a chief executive sees their own effect on the company often shapes the culture more than anything else. Nothing anyone tells me is attributed. I ask for their plan before I share mine.

The team will be nervous anyway. How the first week runs decides whether people tell me the truth, so I run it myself.

What do people who worked with me say?

Public LinkedIn recommendations, so you can check them.

Three of forty-five. The rest are on LinkedIn.

Would you stay on?

It is the question I am asked most in this kind of work. In most cases I can help solve the problem in a fractional role. After the read we decide the shape together: coaching the top of the team, a part-time seat, or full time, interim or permanent. If the people are good and the company is set up to succeed, I will consider a longer role, and I will look at it as objectively as I looked at everything else. After the read, not during it.

I cannot give you an honest read while I am auditioning for the job.

What keeps you up at night?

Chances are I have sat on the inside of something like it. Start there. We can spend the whole first conversation on it.

Forty-five minutes, no invoice · [email protected]