Time, judgment, and execution on whatever the CEO needs most this quarter.
I ran the full CEO remit at Connect Earth, an ESG-risk platform used by 40+ financial institutions. Now I plug into a handful of founders as a second pair of hands on the commercial engine: GTM and pipeline, AI-driven operational leverage, board and investor prep, market entry into Europe and the Gulf, and the messy calls that don't fit anyone's job description.
Connect Earth
The founder
I am Alex, a German guy living in Dubai with my wife. I founded Connect Earth, one of the leading ESG-risk platforms for finance, working with 40+ financial institutions including Emirates NBD, HSBC, KBC, Tide, Fineco and Swissquote.
Along the journey I raised $8m+ and scaled the company to millions in ARR, with shareholders including Accel, Plug and Play, Oraseya Capital, Global Brains, FIS Ventures, Market One Capital, Entrepreneur First and Nauta Capital. I left to hand the baton to a new leadership team bringing fresh perspective and capital, and I remain on board as an advisor.
Along the way I ran the full CEO remit: commercial and GTM, hiring and people ops across the UK, EU and GCC, finance and board relations, and the strategic side of fundraising, M&A and product. I closed enterprise deals with tier-1 banks in Europe and the Middle East, owned the product roadmap, built the sales team from the ground up, and managed multiple entities across the UK, Sweden, UAE and USA.
I sourced and led the acquisition and integration of a Swedish SaaS business into the group, ran a parallel sell-side M&A process with a boutique advisor, and managed a live fundraise across family offices, PE and HNWIs at the same time. I've sat on both sides of a term sheet, written board papers, and chaired board meetings with institutional investors as observers. I know what the process actually looks like from the inside, not the textbook.
Most importantly: I've made the mistakes so you don't have to make them.
The work I'm proudest of isn't the headline numbers. It's the unglamorous operating layer underneath: building a GTM strategy from scratch, rebuilding pricing when the old model stopped working, designing an AI-driven sales and ops stack that took 30 to 40% of cost out of the budget, navigating a CFO transition mid-fundraise, navigating a co-founder departure, running redundancies and EoR transitions across three jurisdictions without losing the team, and recovering from an AWS infrastructure crisis that required force majeure communication with our largest client.
I'm based between Dubai and Europe, work in English and German, and operate across UK, EU and GCC time zones. If any of that sounds useful, let's talk.
I've made the mistakes so you don't have to make them.
The economics
The Standard retainer at £5,000 a month replaces £8,000 to £15,000 a month of headcount that founders are about to hire but don't actually need. Add another £20,000 to £30,000 a month of operational spend I can typically take out, and the question shifts from "is this worth it" to "how fast can we start."
Who this is for
Founders running B2B SaaS companies from £0 to £5M ARR who want a peer in the trenches rather than another consultant with a framework. Typical situations:
- Founder is the bottleneck on commercial and wants to fix it
- Team is about to hire 2 to 3 expensive ops or sales roles and isn't sure they're the right ones
- Founder is struggling with operations
- Founder wants a sounding board for board prep, hiring, and hard people calls
- Company is preparing for a fundraise or process and the narrative, metrics and motion aren't sharp yet
- Founder has to reduce costs and knows AI can take 30 to 40% of operational load out but doesn't know where to start
- Founder wants to embed AI-native workflows across the entire business
- Founder wants proactive support on sales and GTM
How I work
I am your operating partner. Hands-on, always available, an extended arm to you as the founder.
You pay for time, judgment and execution. The promise is that I show up, think clearly alongside you, and do real work. Most weeks that means a 1:1 with you, attendance at one recurring meeting, hands-on work on whatever's most pressing, working with your team, opening up my network, and being reachable on Slack and WhatsApp.
I take a very small number of clients, maximum 3 at a time, so the engagements stay deep.
Scope, four pillars
GTM and commercial
Built Connect Earth's sales motion from zero. Closed Emirates NBD, HSBC, Tide and 40+ other financial institutions as the founding seller. Scaled the company to over $4M in revenue.
- Sales motion design and pipeline review
- Pricing and packaging
- ICP refinement and segmentation
- Outbound stack design (Clay, Apollo, HubSpot, sequencing)
- Sales hire profiles, interview support, onboarding
- Deal coaching on specific opportunities
- Partner and channel thinking
- Sitting in on calls, reviewing the CRM weekly, challenging what's working versus what the founder wishes were working
Operational leverage and AI-driven leanness
The differentiated pillar. Most advisors talk about this. I've done it.
Reduced costs by 40% at Connect Earth to bring it closer to break even. Designed an AI-driven sales and ops stack that took 30 to 40% of operational load out of the budget.
- Audit of current ops and team workflows
- Identify the 3 to 5 highest-leverage workflows to automate or rebuild
- Design and partially implement using the modern stack (Claude, Clay, Apollo, HubSpot, Gmail, Notion)
- Train the team to run and extend the workflows
- Spot the £8 to 15k a month of headcount you're about to hire but don't need
- Spot the £20 to 30k a month you're spending that you don't have to
- Rebuild finance, ops, sales ops and reporting so the team scales without proportional headcount
Strategy and CEO sparring
The part founders value most. Hard to scope, which is why it sits in a retainer rather than a SOW.
Chaired board meetings with Accel, Nauta Capital, Gresham House and Plug and Play as observers. Ran a live M&A process and a £10m fundraise across family offices, PE and HNWIs simultaneously.
- Weekly or fortnightly 1:1 on whatever's top of mind
- Board prep and post-mortems
- Investor narrative and metrics
- Org design and key hire decisions
- Hard people calls
- Market positioning, build versus buy, geographic expansion
Founder bandwidth and gnarly stuff
The unglamorous pillar that founders quietly value the most.
Navigated a CFO transition mid-fundraise, a co-founder departure, redundancies across three jurisdictions, and an AWS regional outage that required force majeure with our largest enterprise client. None of these ended the company.
- Drafting awkward emails (board, investors, key clients, departing employees)
- Prepping for tough customer or partner meetings
- Reviewing contracts before legal sees them
- All-hands scripts, including the difficult ones
- Mediating between co-founders or leadership
- Acting as a part-time chief of staff to the CEO on whatever falls between calendar cracks
What I don't do
Clear lines. For protecting time, and for being honest about what I'm not.
No fundraising on success fees
I'll help with narrative, deck, process design, investor selection and prep, and I'll open my network of investors for you, selectively. But I don't take fees, because I don't want to be a fundraising advisor.
No M&A representation
I'll help you think through whether to sell, prep for a process, and sanity-check terms. I won't represent the transaction.
No recruiting fees
Happy to define roles, screen, and sit on panels. Not running searches for a percentage.
Engagement tiers
- Fortnightly 1:1
- Async only, email and one Slack check-in per week
- Ad-hoc meetings on request
- Full, hands-on work with you on whatever scope we agree, every engagement is different
- 1:1s with you, as many as you like
- Slack and WhatsApp access anytime during the week
- Attendance at one recurring meeting (usually GTM or leadership)
- Ad-hoc project work within the month
- Everything in Standard, with more depth and more hands-on work
- Fits a fundraise prep, post-funding scale-up, new geography launch (MENA or Europe), or post-acquisition integration
The first 30 days
To make the 3-month minimum easier to commit to, here is what "working" looks like by day 30:
If by day 30 we both feel the chemistry or the work isn't right, we part ways. No friction.
Terms and getting started
- Invoiced monthly in advance
- UAE-based invoicing
- 30 days notice to end a rolling engagement
- Travel billed at cost where required, agreed in advance
- Equity participation considered as an addition to cash
Start with a 45-minute intro call.
If there's a fit, a paid two-week trial inside the Standard tier, so we both know whether the chemistry and the work are right before committing to the 3-month minimum.
Book the call