I’m looking for missionary entrepreneurs with a humble drive and passion to deliver value to customers.
I’m industry agnostic and work with B2B and B2C companies. Your business can range from an idea stage to a well-funded growth company.
My level of involvement can vary based on your business needs and situation.
See also Services for my way of working and delivering value.
Qualities and values
Passion and dedication
Integrity and honesty
Can-do attitude
Openness and directness
Long-term thinking
| Advisory | Chairman as a Service/ co-founder | Ad hoc | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Meetings total (á <2h) | Monthly (11) | Weekly (40) | On-demand |
| Support days | Yes | Yes | No |
| Partner benefits | Yes | Yes | No |
| Subscription | 12 months | 12 months | No |
| Prices starting from | +€50k | +€100k | +€1500/h |
At what stage should we get you involved?
I have co-founded companies and therefore been part of the whole process from the very beginning. The opportunities and challenges change during the life cycle of a business. I’m happy to come in sooner than later. When do you want to start making better decisions?
What’s the compensation model?
My model reflects the situation of the company. In the early stages, I’m heavily equity-based and when the company cash flow sustains it the cash component becomes larger. The equity ratio is usually over 80% of the total.
We are a start-up and short in cash. When should we talk to you?
I’m always happy to talk with entrepreneurs and help them with their missions. If you meet my criteria then we can find a model that works for both of us. I’m flexible but expect to be compensated fairly. There is no better time than now to start making better decisions.
What are the partner benefits?
My company is an Amazon AWS Activation partner and can provide $25k/$100k AWS credits for its portfolio companies. For example, Hubspot, Stripe, and Zendesk provide start-up discounts for the portfolio companies.
Why should we work with you?
You should only do that if you can build a better and more valuable company with me. Here’s one of the entrepreneurs about working with me:
“Results speak for themselves. We’ve gotten funding through his help, avoided fatal mistakes at critical moments, stayed focused, found new partners, new ideas and refined our business strategy into the right direction. Petri is a pleasure to work with. It’s fast, efficient and fun.”
Every CEO deserves a great chairman…but they seldom do.
Leading an organisation is a lonely role. There are always challenges and the decision making never stops. Yet, running the day to day often takes most of the energy. It leaves very little time for the big picture, the future of any organisation.
CEO and chairman are an ideal partnership. The CEO handles the everyday, and the chairman supporting him and concerning more about the future. The trouble in paradise comes when the chairman cannot commit enough time for his role.
This leaves the CEO juggling between the urgent and necessary. Constant switching between low and high beams is hard. The harder the every day fog the more energy it takes to use the high beams and pierce through the short them reflections.
The strategic mindset does not like to be around operational worries. If you’re concerned with pressing issues the future feels rather irrelevant in the moment. And even if you have the nagging feeling of omittance it’s easy to ignore.
And this is where the chairman kicks in. He feels the pain, he shares it. He understands the mental pressure to get the daily business done and the drain the future focus requires. His role is to help the CEO and to be more concerned of the future.
Chairman role has less mental constrains to roam free in thoughts and ideas. He doesn’t need to think too much how and what it takes to actually implement the ideas. The pain of actually executing the plan can filter out good or even necessary actions, often subconsciously.
Kicking butt and offering the oversight when needed is a crucial role. Every great CEO needs that. Or at least the awareness that it will happen if he’s not at the top of his game.
At best, CEO and chairman are like a jazz band improvising at stage. Both understand their roles and play accordingly. The end result can be something astonishing and the feeling of joint creation and accomplishment can be thrilling.
It’s like a true partnership where you have just became aware of an issue and your partner has already thought out a solution for it. You start a sentence and the other one finishes it.
But this requires effort, trust and experience. Doing the work and being good at it. Learning from mistakes, being brutally honest and most of all humble. Not all decisions are good nor are all the ideas, from anyone. Safe environment to show your vulnerabilities and hesitation, ask for help and admit your shortcomings.
Every CEO has a chairman but is it just a formality? The legal structure and oversight are there for a reason. But fulfilling just the formal necessities is only a starting point. What happens on top of it makes all the difference.
(This was the explanation but not the backstory. Still curious? Contact me, and I tell the origin story.)