For the people who own the outcome. Seven services covering the strategy, the documents that get it funded, the technical leadership that delivers it and the cash discipline that keeps you solvent while it happens.
A Technical Assessment, or a review of what you are about to submit.
Two days, or three to eight. Both produce a document you can act on and both name what should happen next.
Technical Assessment
Two days. What role technology really plays in this business.
“We are about to commit serious money to technology and I am not certain the plan behind it is credible. An investor asked me a question last month that I could not answer.”
A two-day assessment that establishes your IT strategy, the role technology plays in the success of the business, how it is being used to create value, and how it could be leveraged for competitive advantage. It is a business assessment that happens to be about technology — we arrive knowing your revenue shape, your cost base and where the margin actually sits.
The Technical Assessment Document within five working days.
A forecast of relevant revenues and costs, realistic about your ability to achieve them.
Target areas with a phased implementation and a viability appraisal.
One recommendation, costed, with the alternatives named.
Duration Two daysDocument Five working daysPrice Fixed
Why Averian. A document that agrees with everything you already believe is worthless, and you would know it. We are engaged to tell you whether the plan works — including when the answer is no.
“The assessment told us what we should do. Now somebody has to approve the money, and a recommendation is not a plan.”
After the Technical Assessment you know what you should do. The PID is what lets you fund it — objectives, scope, exclusions, architecture and approach, timelines, organisation, communication and the quality plan, in a form an internal board or an external investor can act on.
A funding-grade blueprint: what gets built, by whom, when, at what cost.
Exclusions stated explicitly — the section that prevents the dispute in month four.
A communications plan that names the stakeholders likely to resist.
The quality and acceptance criteria the build will be measured against.
Duration Five daysFollows Technical AssessmentPrice Fixed
Why Averian. Most blueprints are written to get a budget approved. This one is written to be held to afterwards, which is a different document.
The smallest thing you can build, sell and learn from.
“We are building towards a large release with no revenue in between, and an investor has just asked what the first revenue looks like and when.”
Where the PID asks how to deliver something properly, the MVP Initiation asks what is the smallest thing you can build that someone will pay for. Personas, vision and journeys before features — because founders start at features, and the canvas exists to stop that.
An MVP canvas: who it is for, the vision, and the journeys it improves.
A feature set cut repeatedly against one question — if we removed this, would anyone still pay?
The non-negotiables named explicitly, so security, data protection and regulatory duties are not cut by accident.
A route to first revenue you can put in front of an investor.
Shape Facilitated sessionsBest for Pre-revenue productPrice Fixed
Why Averian. The hard question gets asked in the first session: who has said they would pay for this, and how much? If the answer is nobody, we reframe the work around finding that out cheaply rather than building efficiently.
Will this survive contact with someone who is about to say no?
“We are submitting this to an investment committee in three weeks. It has been through four drafts internally and everybody is now too close to it to see the holes.”
An independent, structured review of a document you are about to bet money on — a business plan, an investment memorandum, a board paper or a funding submission. Built on Averian’s Requirements Quality Index: thirty to sixty defined challenges, scored with the evidence cited.
A scored review with evidence cited against every score.
Weaknesses ranked by what would actually cause a rejection, not by academic severity.
An assumption log — the unstated assumptions that make a reader stop trusting the rest.
An unambiguous view: submit, revise, or do not submit.
Duration Three to eight daysTeam An Averian principalPrice Fixed
Why Averian. If it is not ready, we will say so — and that is the service. Being told to revise is considerably cheaper than being rejected, and a rejected submission is very hard to resubmit into the same room.
A cashflow process that is still true in three months.
“We have had a cashflow model before. Updating it took so long that it quietly stopped being updated, and now nobody trusts it. I could not tell you our position in six weeks.”
An always-right, easy-to-maintain cashflow process, built with you in three days and supported through its first quarter. The design constraint is maintenance time, not sophistication: we build backwards from a weekly update that takes under thirty minutes, and anything that cannot be maintained in that window comes out.
A rolling 13-week cash view and a 12-month forecast, from one assumption set.
An assumption register — every number traceable to a stated, dated assumption with an owner.
Committed and expected separated on the face of the model, which is what makes a forecast credible to a lender.
A one-page weekly routine, with a named owner, that keeps it true.
Duration Three daysThen A half-day a month for a quarterPrice Fixed
Why Averian. The test of success is that three months later it is still current and you have not needed to call us. A model that only works while we are in the room has failed, however good it looks.
Board depth and profile, for as long as you need it and no longer.
“Our board lacks depth of experience and profile. It is holding back our credibility with investors and our standing in the market — and it is not something anyone says out loud.”
An experienced, networked, C-level presence on your board, taken properly with the discipline that comes with it. Normally a board advisory role rather than a statutory directorship — the experience in the room without a filing at the Companies Registration Office, without the fiduciary and statutory duties a directorship carries, and with a clean exit on notice if the fit is not right. Where you want a formal non-executive appointment instead, we will take one under a letter of appointment.
A functioning governance body rather than a long meeting.
Board credibility that forms part of your investment case, which is what investors actually assess.
An experienced counterpart for the founder who is not an employee.
A low-friction commitment — no statutory appointment, no filing, clean exit on notice.
An honest twelve-month review, and a defined exit.
Form Board advisory, non-statutoryWho Alan Carey or Bernard CarrollCommitment A day a month plus board meetingsTerm Twelve months, reviewed
Why Averian. Averian principals hold non-executive chair and board roles in control systems and renewable energy, and one is registered with the EBRD as an International Adviser. The seat is filled by whichever of them the gap calls for — Alan Carey where it is strategic or commercial, Bernard Carroll where it is technical or delivery. We take these roles seriously, including the part where we make ourselves unnecessary.
An experienced CTO, structured so you can actually afford one.
“We need real technical leadership. We cannot carry a full-time CTO, and by the time most companies decide they can, it is too late to fix what has been built.”
A trusted technical expert representing the technical interests of your company — accountable for the products and services you sell, while you concentrate on business development, fundraising and the market. Three steps, each of which stands on its own: a two-day Technical Assessment, a five-day blueprint, then one to two days a month.
Rigour in technical delivery while business development progresses.
The technology-dependent risks de-risked, with someone accountable for them.
A senior technical name that strengthens your team in the eyes of investors.
A defined exit — the role converts into a permanent hire you make, or ends at an agreed milestone.
Entry The two-day assessmentWho Bernard CarrollRetainer One to two days a monthTerm Three to six months, reviewed
Why Averian. The cost is reduced in three specific ways: fixed up-front costs tied to value, a retainer that keeps consulting days low, and a step-by-step approach. You are never asked to commit to the whole thing to find out whether it works.
Chief Strategy Officer capability at board level, without the permanent appointment.
“We have a strategy deck and an operating plan, and they are not the same document. Nobody owns the question of where we are going and why anyone would fund it — the executive team is running the company, and the board meets for half a day a quarter.”
An experienced Chief Strategy Officer, engaged as a retained officer of the business rather than a consultant producing a report. The role owns the intent, the business model and the funding narrative, and is accountable for keeping them coherent with what the organisation actually does. Bought in two situations: large multinationals buy independence and seniority, reporting to the chief executive or the board with no internal career at stake in the answer; early-stage companies, usually just funded or approaching a raise, buy board-level weight the founder cannot yet hire and investors expect to see.
A stated intent the executive team can repeat without the deck in front of them.
A business model written as a model — where the money comes from, what it costs to serve, and what must be true for it to scale.
An initiative portfolio that is owned, costed and sequenced, with what you have decided not to do named as explicitly as what you will.
A funding narrative that survives diligence.
A defined exit — the role converts into a permanent appointment you make, or ends at an agreed milestone.
Entry A two-day strategy diagnosticWho Alan CareyRetainer Two to four days a monthTerm Six to twelve months, reviewed
Why Averian. The strategy is written by someone who has run businesses, not only advised them — a company taken from a kitchen table to international revenue and an exit, capital raised and deployed, and chair and non-executive seats held. And the independence is the point: an outsider with no internal career at stake will say the thing the executive team can see but cannot afford to say.
Every Strategy & Transformation engagement that results in something being built reaches a point where the quality plan has to be written. That is where the SWAT practice enters, usually with a Heat Map, and it is the reason the two sit inside one firm.
You are not handed to a different team with a different method and a separate contract. The same principals stay on the engagement.
