- by Ulrik Lehrskov-Schmidt
Commercial Advisory.
Set commercial goals and I will support, challenge, pace and guide you to hit them.
This is my advisory service for startups. It's unique in that I'm solely aligned to your interests as a founder - unlike your investors, board members or paid-by-the-hour experts.
I've started and sold 3 businesses myself. Faced the hiring issues, cash crunches and the big wins. And I've since helped 100+ growth companies focus on what matters and create transformational results.
The basics
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You select a combination of short and long term goals that - if reached - would be transformational to your business.
- I work as your advisor for a 12 month period and help you reach those goals.
Examples of short term goals (a 3 month timeframe):
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Launch a new product successfully with good pricing and packaging.
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Redesign value proposition and terms and conditions to increase short-term cash flow.
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Close a negotiation with a large enterprise customer.
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Review pricing and implement tweaks to increase growth.
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Upgrade how you work with product roadmap to ensure customers want what you build.
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Hire the right CSO or CRO
Examples of long term goals (a 1 year timeframe):
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Build an internal pricing function in your organisation to handle packaging and pricing.
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Hit ARR target before next funding round - and close it.
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Enter a new market successfully.
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Bring a long sales cycle offering to market, validate it, test it and implement it into operations.
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Migrate large cohort of legacy customers to new pricing.
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Prepare for a sale or public listing.
Note: You decide on your goals and the timeframe. We may add additional goals as we go along. I will tell you what I think is realistic and force you to prioritise or increase ambitions as appropriate. If I think your goals are unrealistic, unethical or in some way insincere I will cancel our work and refund your payment.
My advisory service includes:
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A twelve month engagement
- Creation of organisational, commercial and financial objectives
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Metrics for success
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Deadlines, timelines, and accountabilities
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Mandatory weekly phone calls
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Personal meetings as desired and we deem appropriate
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Unlimited email
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Unlimited review of work
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Unlimited additional phone calls
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While you will be the key stakeholder and owner of the goals I will provide unlimited access, calls, review of materials via emails etc. from you and up to two additional executives or co-founders that may need the coaching or specific advice for us to move forward.
What to expect:
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I might say no. I only work with 2-3 startups at a time on an advisory basis and will often say no. If we agree, however, expect the following.
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A very high pace. If you are not good at executing already, you will be.
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Disagreement. My primary value comes from giving you my clear and unequivocal opinion on what to do, why, when and how. But you are in charge and can decide otherwise. That is fine.
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Accountability. I will hold you - and your two included co-founders or executives - accountable to the actions and timelines we discuss. I will proactively call you, write you - stalk you if I must - to help you reach the stated goals.
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More time - not less. While I insist you execute on your goals I will also work to free up 'dead' and inefficient time you currently spend spinning your wheels. As a result, you should get more bandwith and execution power, not less.
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Results. Whatever your goals you will move towards them at a highly accelerated pace, with more clarity and less risk. There should be no question in your mind after a few weeks that this is transformative.
Your Investment:
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Priority. The greatest investment you’ll make is your commitment to respond to someone who is driving your progress, and to execute on the necessary actions to move your business forward. If you fail to execute because you chase goals outside our scope I will let you know in no uncertain terms.
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Ego. To grow you must change. That includes realising you probably lack skills, hard and soft. If you feel challenged, skeptical and in-over-your-head but remain committed to execute I have done my job. Your ego is expendable.
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The fee is 1% of your current run-rate ARR with a minimum of €60K for a full year. That is half the salary of a developer. And a very low bar to set for the success of our collaboration.
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If you are above $10M ARR I suggest you reach out and discuss a more bespoke format of collaboration (at this stage the organisation often has a size that would better be suited for a project - depending on your particular situation).
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Normal results for startups I work with are transformational and the median revenue increase on legacy customers across the last 23 clients is +102% (average ARR of €4.7M), as of this writing.
Terms & Options
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Payment is due upon commencement.
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Simply write me an email at ulrik@willingnesstopay.com and we will set up a call to discuss how to get started.
Email me to get started at: Ulrik@willingnesstopay.com
Note:
My 'Services for Startups' are just that - for startups only.
(Defined as any company that has yet to turn a profit.)
The vast majority of my consultancy practice comes from serving non-startup clients from SME's to Fortune 500 corporates. These projects usually start at a minimum of €100K and are - by their nature - highly tailormade to the situation at hand.
My startup services are not. I've done this enough to know how to get you to that 'next level' efficiently and expediently.
For that reason I don't change the format (it has plenty of built-in flexibility) and I never offer discounts.