Working with Founders on Operational Problems

While my primary mandate was building the Corporate Development practice, I wanted to get closer to the metal. I actively hustled for opportunities to work directly with portfolio founders and the deal POC on the investing team on operational problem statements spanning retail expansion, profitability, and M&A.

My Role

• An extra pair of hands and eyes. Available to founders as and when needed as a dependable resource to pick up execution work and think through problems together.

• Analytical heavy lifting. Took on the grunt work of analyzing messy operational data and building financial frameworks to support founders on store expansion and unit economics decisions.

• Transaction support. Helped a founder navigate the end-to-end process of selling their company from buyer identification to dataroom to runway scenario analysis.

Execution

I focused on three problem statements where I could drive value.

Omnichannel expansion strategy. An online-first apparel brand needed to move into physical retail. I benchmarked successful offline rollouts across the ecosystem — analyzing footfall, capex payback, inventory turns, and location decisions — and built a comprehensive expansion strategy with financial guardrails for unit economics.

Fixing unit economics during hypergrowth. As another portfolio company rapidly expanded, maintaining sound economics across diverse markets and store formats became the core challenge. I ran a bottom-up review of store-level performance, segmented stores into operating archetypes, and built frameworks to guide future expansion decisions.

Driving a strategic acquisition. I supported a portfolio founder through the end-to-end sale of their company to an Indian conglomerate — identifying strategic buyers, building the dataroom, and crafting the pitch deck. Alongside the narrative, I built business models mapping multiple runway scenarios so the founder had full visibility and maximum leverage at the table.