Allan Ventures
We are a business strategy company with a bias towards technology. We work out what should change, then stay while it changes — putting the systems in, finding the money, and sometimes putting our own people inside your team until the new way of working holds.
That is where the difficulty starts, not where it stops.
A founder usually knows roughly what needs to happen. What is missing is the capacity to do it while still running the business — the systems that have to be chosen and installed, the reporting that has to exist before anyone can steer, the money that has to be raised on terms that do not cost control, and the people to carry it while the existing team keeps the lights on.
Allan Ventures is built for that middle part. We are a private limited company with our own team and partners, which is what lets us stay involved past the recommendation. Where the answer is technology, we specify it and see it in. Where the answer is capital, we prepare the business and make the introductions. Where the answer is simply more hands, we provide them.
Most engagements use three or four of these, in an order that depends on what is actually in the way.
Where the business is going, what it will take, and the order to do it in.
Replacing the manual and the improvised with systems people will actually use.
Getting the numbers out of the systems and in front of the people who decide.
Preparing a business to be funded, and introducing it to debt and equity investors.
Buying, selling or merging — valuation, diligence and the awkward questions early.
Entering a new geography or segment without learning it the expensive way.
Making the day-to-day repeatable so growth does not break it.
Naming what could go wrong while it is still cheap to do something about.
People who join your team and do the work, rather than advise on it.
Worth knowing before you call, because it changes who you get.
Allan Ventures is a private limited company. Engagements are staffed with our own people and, where the work calls for it, partners we have worked with before. That is what makes it possible to be in the business every week rather than once a month.
Where a piece of work needs expertise we do not employ, we bring in a partner we have worked with before rather than stretch the team to cover it. And where the work is not ours at all, we say so instead of taking it.
Not a pitch — a conversation about what you are trying to do and whether we are the right people to help do it.