How we engage
Every engagement runs the same motion. We identify the workflows where AI has the most ROI and value-creation impact, prove the highest-conviction one with a targeted 90-day pilot, and scaleon the pilot’s measured numbers, through a named pod, a five-stage spine, and quality gates signed in writing.
The first weeks are spent ranking, not building: a workflow inventory with cost and time on the top candidates, scored by EBITDA impact, data readiness, and underwritability. The output is a scored opportunity register: the single highest-conviction workflow becomes the pilot.
| Posture | When it applies | What BOD builds |
|---|---|---|
| Wrap the incumbent | A packaged system already owns the governed data, compliance, and workflows; the gap is a locked capability. | Only the missing layers (orchestration harness, evals, guardrails). Weeks, reversible. |
| Build the ladder | Greenfield, or a weak / ungoverned foundation. | Foundation-up L1–L5 at the published investment bands. |
The highest-ROI workflow ships as a production-grade agent: grounded in your data, human-reviewed at the edge, instrumented for cost-per-task from day one. Every engagement moves through five stages, and if the exit criterion isn’t met, the stage repeats.
| Stage | Key exit criterion |
|---|---|
| 1 · Discover | Workflow inventory with cost/time on top 10; current-state diagram; company placed on L1–L5. |
| 2 · Define | Top opportunities scored by ROI; architecture review signed; sponsor and operating partner sign the 90-day plan. |
| 3 · Validate | Pilot demonstrated end-to-end on real data; eval harness standing; measured results within modeled range. |
| 4 · Build | Quality gates signed; 30 days in production with no P1 incident; KPI movement measured; knowledge transfer complete. |
| 5 · Run | Your team has handled 3+ incidents; KPI tracker is self-service; next expansion identified and scoped. |
No engagement is staffed without all three named, even when the implementor count is one.
Single point of contact for the operating partner and leadership: stakeholder alignment, change management, board reporting, and the EBITDA tracker.
Technical vision, architecture, and quality-gate ownership: workflow audit, data model, system design, governance, and success-metric definition.
Production code, automations, integrations, and model deployment: testing, observability, runbooks, and pair-programming with your team.
With the pilot’s numbers on the table, the playbook repeats: the next workflow, the next function, the next company in the portfolio. Every build that scales passes the same seven gates, each signed in writing by a named approver, each with an AI-specific criterion on top of the standard check.
| Org | Key responsibilities |
|---|---|
| Fund leadership | Executive decision-making, capital allocation, gate sign-off, sequencing. |
| PortCo management | Funding, vision, day-to-day decision-making, corporate support. |
| PortCo staff | Operations SMEs, user acceptance testing, tech support, edge-review staffing. |
| BOD pod | Delivery, product, collaboration structure, eval harness, control plane, EBITDA tracker. |
