Working with a small entrepreneurial team to unlock a clear path to growth & investment
Where Things Stood
Over the five previous years, the team had built a strong product. It showed real promise to deliver value in a tough market—professional education. Expert feedback on the offering suggested real value, and there was a sense that the platform could really help solve a meaningful training problem for B2B target clients.
The company had pitched to a number of early investors and heard a lot of encouraging feedback. But outside of friends and family, they hadn’t yet been able to raise significant capital. Part of the reason had to do with the way they’d framed the opportunity. They had been encouraged—like many founders—to paint a picture of a very large total addressable market, and to position the company as a two-sided marketplace to meet that expectation.
The model wasn’t tactically fleshed out, it was complicated, and they had no real meaningful proof it could scale. Five years after founding, it had a proven product but had not generated significant revenue.
What We Did Together
Our work started by listening to what the founders had heard from their clients. They’d done a lot of legwork already. We helped unpack that feedback, focus on the highest-value channels, work through some of the constraints they were facing, and begin to rebuild the narrative in a way that felt both accurate and energizing.
We helped shape a version of the business model that made more sense for the stage they were at and the market they were in. Rather than aiming to be everything at once, the focus shifted to a core segment of buyers with a real, measurable pain point and a willingness to pay. From there, we built out a growth path that connected the dots simply and logically from the budding sales they were getting to much larger, scaled client revenues, based on a clear “land and expand” motion—a way to start small, show impact, and show the path to scale within each client.
We joined investor conversations early and often, helping evolve the pitch in real time. We worked closely with the founders to anticipate objections and present the model in a way that reflected the reality of what the company could do—based on initial successes articulated as clear proof points.
What Happened Next
Within about 18 months, the company raised several million in early funding—enough to build momentum around the revised model. That round ultimately led to a multi-million raise.
Over the next phase, the company:
- Focused its go-to-market approach on a single, high-need buyer
- Converted early conversations into anchor clients
- Built repeatable, recurring revenue
- Grew to 150x to millions in ARR
It took about three years in total. The product stayed strong. The model got sharper. The story got clearer. And the company earned the right to grow, one client and one milestone at a time.
How We Think About It
There’s no single turning point in stories like this. But sometimes having an outside partner to help make sense of what’s already working—and to fill in the gaps that are slowing you down—can be the difference between a good idea and a real business.
That’s the role we played. Not as architects of the vision, but as collaborators helping connect the dots between what was already true… and what could come next.