Startup Advisory
Startups are all about execution. I help founders execute better through relevant, concrete, actionable advice, delivered with alignment and empathy.
Why Me?
Because unlike most advisors, I’ve walked the walk, not just talked the talk.
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I’m the co-founder of a successful venture-backed tech startup, and can advise on every aspect of the startup journey: from inception, through multiple phases of growth and financing, all the way to exit and beyond.
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I draw on years of experience in the trenches actually building and selling products, hiring and empowering teams, raising capital and negotiating deals, designing and executing growth strategies, and more – as a founder, not just an operator.
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I remain engaged with the ecosystem and with current best practices through my subsequent work with dozens of founders as a very active and involved angel investor, startup advisor, and venture partner.
How I Help
I’m deeply familiar with both the low-level tactical problems and daily grind of running a startup with all its attendant uncertainty and scarcity; and the high-level challenges and imperatives of building a business that matters over the long term.
Here are a few categories where I have particular expertise:
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Financing: I’m exceptional at helping startups tell their stories to investors, and orchestrating successful financing rounds.
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Growth: I’m adept across a wide variety of B2B growth channels and go-to-market motions, and I help companies devise and then execute the growth approaches that work best for them.
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Team-building: I help founders understand what excellence looks like for each function and at each stage, so that they can build a truly world-class team.
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Planning: I help founders with their resoure allocation decisions, so that they can balance risk and reward, uncertainty and upside, time and money, and thus maximize their odds of success.
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Operations: I help problem-solve at an extremely granular, day-to-day level, whether those are problems of people, technology, process, or something else.
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Culture: Culture is every successful startup’s secret weapon. I help founders create outstanding organizational cultures with thoughtfulness and intentionality.
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Personal Development: The best founders level up constantly and consistently. I can show you how.
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Data: This hopefully goes without saying, but I am one of the world’s leading experts on data business models, data assets, and data defensibility. If your startup intersects wth those areas, I can help you.
My Advisory Philosophy
Most advisors are terrible. They take advantage of inexperienced (and experienced) founders; they give advice that is not just bad, but actively counterproductive; they waste founder time with irrelevancies; they add friction, confusion, and negative energy.
I’m not most advisors. I pride myself on being off-the-charts valuable to the companies I serve; and if I’m not, I encourage founders to fire me.
I’m selective about my advisory clients. I want to spend my bandwidth on companies where I can make a meaningful impact; if I don’t think I can help you, I won’t waste your time or mine.
I expect to be paid fairly; this filters out situations where I don’t add enough value. My advisory rate is low relative to market standards in SF and NYC, and high relative to pretty much everywhere else in the world. I am happy to be paid in either cash or equity.
I typically work with startups between 100k and 10M in revenue: roughly, Seed to Series C (though some of my advisees don’t want or need to raise venture capital). I mostly work with saas, data and marketplace startups; mostly B2B, some consumer; and mostly North America, some Europe.
The best proof of my value is what founders have to say about me. You can find a small selection of complimentary quotes on my testimonials page; further references are available on request.
Contact Me
If this all sounds interesting, I encourage you to reach out: my email is at@abrahamthomas.info