Marain

The practice

One practice, four ways in.

The work is the same in all four: find what actually drives the business, make it countable, and build the system that counts it. What changes is who is asking, and how much of the building I do.

This page counts. It is painting itself while you read, and it is measuring you while it does. The result is at the bottom.

Executives

To
A leader in a large organization who already suspects the usual answer is wrong
Re
One bounded go-to-market or positioning problem
Shape
Fixed scope, fixed fee

The problem solved, with the measurement that proves it, and the uncomfortable recommendation softened stated.

Precedent The national communications architecture for the Gates Foundation in India, the Malaria No More stakeholder study in India, India 2022, and a 29-country narrative study for Europe Delivers.

Operators

A mid-market business, roughly 50 to 500 people

Cycle time lost in brand, marketing, go-to-market and process

The bottleneck found, the system built, the cycle time measured before and after

shape Fixed engagement, then a retainer if it earns one

My own practice runs on 25+ workflows at a 0.9% failure rate, on one small server. The free tools are the first week of that work, given away. One mark in a hundred and eleven is 0.9%. That is the red one.
cycle time on this leaf00:00.0measured, because everything is

Founders

  1. youPre-seed to Series A
  2. youThe business designed before it is built wrong
  3. meAccess to twenty-eight years of judgment, async first, in the weeks that decide the company
  4. meMonthly retainer; equity selectively
  5. meCoaching startups since 2009. Four companies founded, two sold: Laminar, acquired by APMC in December 2023, and Elephants & Monkeys, acquired into 2020 Social and then MSLGROUP.

Async first. The thread is the room.

Foundry

Nobody. This one is mine

problem Businesses generated, built and spun out

you get The thinking, published. The machine, running

shape Owned

How I think, and where the ideas get stress-tested before anyone pays for them.

Read the Foundry thesis →

What it costs

Price is a conversation, and it happens early.

There is no menu here, because a fixed price on a page is a guess about a problem I have not seen yet. Each line has one instrument, and I will quote against a scope we agree in writing before anything starts.

If the scope turns out to be wrong, that is my problem to raise, not yours to discover in an invoice.

Before you get in touch

Don’t hire
me if

Each switch you flip takes a little of the painting away.

If you already know the answer, you don’t need me. If you suspect the usual answer is wrong, we should talk.

What I counted

You, measured.

Find what drives it, count it, build the system that counts it. This page did the first two to you. None of it left your browser, and none of it is stored.

on this page
00:00.0
pointer travelled
0 px
of the page seen
0%
leaves revisited
0

You have not stopped on any leaf yet. Go back and linger; the painting is waiting.

ExecutivesOperatorsFoundersFoundry
Your visit, painted. One form per line, sized by where you stopped.