A fresh pair of eyes to enrich your own.

I say I cheat. It isn't that I see more than you do: it's that I arrive without the habit. That is the whole advantage, and it costs very little next to what it costs not to have it.

Clarity comes first. What is going on, where the brake is, what I would do and in what order. It isn't a method with steps or a standard deliverable: it's someone from outside, with thirty years of seeing companies from within, asking the obvious and telling you what he sees.

Then comes what almost nobody solves. Once the path is clear, what is usually missing is someone to walk it with you: the talent, the specialist, the partner or the ally that stage calls for. That is what the network I've been building is for, and connecting people is what I enjoy most.

I also know what it is to be a founder with nobody to bounce an idea off, nobody to argue a vision with. Inside, almost no one can do it without their job getting in the way; outside, almost no one knows the context. That conversation is the one I love most.