Anyone can claim good judgment. I'd rather show you the receipts.
From 2021 to 2024 I worked with TribeFirst, a UK investment agency that ran crowdfunding campaigns for startups and took equity in the ones it backed. That structure meant due diligence wasn't theater. If my analysis was wrong, the firm ate the loss. I led dozens of these engagements, arguing for some deals and killing others, and the agency followed my recommendation every time it mattered. The companies below are named. The outcomes are public. Check them yourself.
The pitch could easily have read as hype: cannabis, Switzerland, a regulatory story. I dug into what actually mattered. Their GMP certification was months away and credible, their valuation held up when I benchmarked real acquisitions in the space adjusted for manufacturing capacity, and the EU regulatory direction gave the thesis room to run.
What happened: Swissmedic granted the GMP license in December 2023, on the timeline I underwrote. The crowdfunding round passed £1M from more than 550 investors. Today Swisscann cultivates high-THC medical cannabis at its GMP facility near Zurich and distributes into Swiss and German pharmacies through an exclusive partnership. The agency's owners were convinced enough by my report that they personally invested in the round.
Everything about Taur looked fundable. A GOOD DESIGN award, a team with Tesla and McLaren alumni, a striking product, a prior raise behind them. I looked at the unit economics and at where investor sentiment on micromobility was heading, and neither supported the story. I advised the agency to walk.
What happened: within roughly two years, customers were publicly reporting dead support lines, unanswered emails, and an app that vanished from stores, while still paying off their scooters.
Subscription businesses live or die on unit economics, and Blike's held up: the retention math, the asset utilization, the path to scale. I underwrote the yes on those numbers.
What happened: Blike has since secured approval for a £10M debt facility to expand, underwritten on the strength of the same unit economics.
A James Dyson Award winner with pilot interest from Spotify and Siemens Energy. Genuinely clever engineering, and one of the most seductive stories I reviewed. But the addressable market was a niche measured in the low hundreds of millions while solar compounded next door, the product was unproven in commercial conditions, and the launch timeline looked optimistic. I recommended waiting for pilot results rather than committing capital.
What happened: three years later the company remains pre-revenue, with the product still in development and launch now targeted for 2027.
It's knowing which one the data supports, and saying it plainly, even when the story is charming and the room wants a yes.
That cuts both ways in client work too. A founder once brought me in weeks before signing an expensive franchise license for a boxing gym chain he wanted to bring to Saudi Arabia. I built the model, showed him the CAC and retention the franchise fees demanded, then sat beside him on the diligence calls and took the franchisor's projections apart, including locations that were quietly going out of business and hadn't come up. He walked away from the deal. It's some of the best money he never spent.
The same discipline runs through my ecommerce work. When a brand's own numbers said doom, I made the case that the business was actually fine and proved it with corrected projections; that company went from –$2.9M EBIT to cash positive. Read the full story → When a $12M brand's forecasts kept missing and their CFO couldn't see why, the raw cohort data could. How the Divergence Audit works →