The team that proved the science is not the team that scales it.
Funding has landed and headcount is rising. The informal habits of a small group are now the reason handoffs fail.
What breaks first when a Boston company scales
The failure points are consistent across the region:
Founders still make the small calls
The company has doubled, and the chief scientist still approves the purchase orders.
The board pack describes last year
Reporting built for five people cannot show a team of fifty how the money is being spent.
Hiring runs ahead of the roles
People arrive faster than the structure for them, and the organisation chart is drawn afterwards to explain it.
The next investor expects a leadership team
A crossover fund or a strategic partner wants a management layer that can run the company without the founders in every room.
A fractional executive has taken a company through this stretch. They build the structure while the work carries on, then pass it to your permanent hire once the seat genuinely needs full-time cover. Because the agreement is between two companies, it closes on one month's notice as our standard.
Who this is for, and who it is not
Best for
- Companies that have outgrown founder-led informality but cannot yet fund a full C-suite
- Finance functions that need to become board and investor grade
- Revenue still riding on founder relationships rather than a repeatable engine
- Teams and culture straining as headcount climbs past what informal management holds
- Leadership gaps that would stall growth if left open for a full hiring cycle
Not for
- Early startups still searching for product-market fit
- A single function a ready full-time executive should already own
- Businesses wanting advice on a deck rather than an operator in the work
- A one-off project better suited to a specialist contractor
Structure for a company past its first round
Growth exposes gaps in more than one seat at once. We match operators who have scaled technical companies and keep governance around their work.
We stay close to the engagement
As the team grows past the founders, our standing reviews with you and the executive keep the brief matched to the company it has become.
Depth behind each hire
Each hire brings our collective of 800+ with them. A finance question that is really about the lab's operations goes to someone who has faced it.
A handover, not a restart
Leaders move on as companies grow. When yours does, we see the transition through and reopen the search with what we already know.
Fit for a team of scientists
A leader who is right on paper and wrong for a team of scientists costs more than the one you did not hire.
From diagnostic to infrastructure that scales with you
Our process runs at the pace of a scaling company, not a hiring cycle.
Scale diagnostic (weeks 1–2)
Map the current state: operational stress points, financial infrastructure gaps, commercial engine gaps, people risks.
Engagement design (weeks 3–4)
Design the right fractional leadership configuration, which roles, what scope, what priority sequencing.
Infrastructure build (month 1–3)
Fractionals embed: operational systems, financial infrastructure, commercial engine design, people frameworks.
Adapt to the growth (ongoing)
As you grow, we adjust the configuration. The goal is always the right leadership for the current phase.
What changes in the first 90 days
A scale-up engagement is judged on what moves early. These are the shifts a fractional operator is there to make.
The scale-up leadership stack
Each role below owns a different part of the scale-up: finance, operations, commercial, people or technology.
Leaders who have scaled
