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Written by people who have done it
Growth, innovation, governance and exit, argued by five founders who have built, scaled and sold their own companies. You do not know what you do not know until something teaches you. These are the things that taught us.
Also recently published03
No. 16EvolveThought leadership
Culture Is What People Do When the Founder Isn't in the Room
Why founder culture is behaviour rather than values statements or perks, the headcount where a growing company's culture breaks, and how to codify it without turning it into bureaucracy.
Vikas Shah MBE6 October 20268 min
No. 15ExitPractical guide
Fifteen Things That Quietly Knock Value Off Your Business in Due Diligence
The fifteen issues that most often reduce the price or change the structure of a deal in due diligence, the mechanism behind each, and how long each one takes to fix.
Giles Harridge2 October 20268 min
No. 14ExploreThought leadership
Innovation Theatre: Telling Real Opportunity From Expensive Distraction
What innovation theatre is, the five tells that identify it, and three questions that will kill a bad initiative in ten minutes without killing the appetite for the good ones.
James Akrigg1 October 20266 min
More articles13
- No. 13
ExploreThought leadership
Is Corporate Purpose Worth It? Telling Decorative From Embedded
Almost every company now has a purpose statement, and almost none of them cost anything. The version that does commercial work shows up as a line in the P&L, a rule in the hiring process, and a constraint written into the capital structure.
- Author
- Vikas Shah MBE
- Published
- 29 September 2026
- Read
- 8 min
- No. 12
FoundationsThought leadership
Start at the End: Why the Best Operators Design Their Business Backwards
Most companies are built forwards and sold backwards. The founders who avoid that mismatch are not better at exits. They are better at deciding, years earlier, what the business is actually for.
- Author
- Giles Harridge
- Published
- 25 September 2026
- Read
- 6 min
- No. 11
FoundationsThought leadership
Explore, Evolve, Exit: The Three Decisions That Decide Where You Land
Most founders who feel stuck are not bad at the thing they are doing. They are doing the wrong one of three things, with real conviction, for about two years.
- Author
- Nick Richardson
- Published
- 22 September 2026
- Read
- 6 min
- No. 10
FoundationsPractical guide
Learning From Failure: The Gap Between the Cliché and the Practice
Every organisation says it learns from failure. Very few produce a written lesson, a changed process or a named owner afterwards. The difference is not attitude, it is method, and method is mostly a matter of language and timing.
- Author
- Vikas Shah MBE
- Published
- 21 September 2026
- Read
- 7 min
- No. 09
FoundationsPractical guide
What Is Your End Game? Ten Questions That Force an Honest Answer
Founders can describe next quarter in detail and go quiet when asked about the end. These ten questions are designed to be uncomfortable, because the comfortable versions have not worked.
- Author
- Naomi Timperley
- Published
- 17 September 2026
- Read
- 7 min
- No. 08
FoundationsThought leadership
The Layer Nobody Drew: Founder Intent Is the Missing Blueprint
Every business documents its market, its operation and its people. Almost none document what the whole thing is for. That undrawn layer is the one governing the other three.
- Author
- James Akrigg
- Published
- 15 September 2026
- Read
- 6 min
- No. 07
EvolveThought leadership
The Moment the Company Outgrows the Founder
The personal drive that gets a business off the ground is the same drive that caps it at around a hundred and fifty people. The transition from founder to leader is not a change of temperament. It is a change of job, and almost nobody is told when it happens.
- Author
- Vikas Shah MBE
- Published
- 15 September 2026
- Read
- 8 min
- No. 06
ExitThought leadership
What Is Exit Readiness? A Plain-English Definition and a Forty-Point Checklist
Exit readiness is not a document and it is not a state of mind. It is the condition of being able to withstand a stranger examining your business in forensic detail without the price moving. Here is what that takes.
- Author
- Giles Harridge
- Published
- 11 September 2026
- Read
- 6 min
- No. 05
ExplorePractical guide
Ten Signs Your Growth Stalled Long Before the Numbers Showed It
Revenue is the last thing to tell you that a business has stopped growing. By the time the line flattens, the cause is usually eighteen months old. These are the signals that arrive first.
- Author
- Nick Richardson
- Published
- 9 September 2026
- Read
- 7 min
- No. 04
EvolveThought leadership
The Founder Bottleneck: Getting Out of the Critical Path Without Losing Control
Delegation fails in most growing businesses for one reason. Founders hand over the task and keep the judgement, then wonder why nothing comes back the way they wanted.
- Author
- Naomi Timperley
- Published
- 7 September 2026
- Read
- 6 min
- No. 03
ExitThought leadership
Valuation Is a Story With Numbers Attached
Somebody at a conference told you businesses like yours go for six times. They were describing an output as though it were an input, and the difference is worth several million pounds.
- Author
- Giles Harridge
- Published
- 4 September 2026
- Read
- 5 min
- No. 02
EvolveThought leadership
What Scaling Breaks First
Growth does not stress a business evenly. It loads the parts that were never designed to carry load, and they fail in a predictable order. Knowing the order is most of the advantage.
- Author
- Nick Richardson
- Published
- 3 September 2026
- Read
- 6 min
- No. 01
ExplorePractical guide
How to Audit Your Own Business the Way a Buyer Would
A buyer's eye is the most useful diagnostic available to a founder, and it costs nothing. You just have to be willing to ask their questions of yourself, in their order, and answer honestly.
- Author
- Giles Harridge
- Published
- 1 September 2026
- Read
- 6 min
What is your end game?
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