Venture Bench Growth
Why outsourcing expansion support makes better business sense?
Cyclical - expansion cycles come/go. When it’s on you need to hire quality people with deep cross functional experience, fast. Having fulltime expansion expertise on a company’s books only makes sense when there a strong need mor portfolio to support. It makes more commercial sense to outsource quality support when you need it rather than housing expensive highly skilled talent year round. This model lends itself well to fractional support and effective outsourcing.
Time is money - when it’s on its on. You’ve sold the dream to leadership and investors and now you need to deliver - fast. Finding the right people at short notice is exceedingly difficult and requires lead time to hire, onboard and ramp up. Finding deep expertise on tap, makes more sense than dedicating full time resources.
Specialised expertise - typically available candidates will be great at operating existing businesses and has deep specialised skills in strategy, product, tech, ops, tax, legal, finance, accounting. But applying those skills to expansion issues is a whole difference kettle of fish. Building the business case, analysing opportunity sizing, identifying blockers and challenges that will affect the time/cost/sequencing of the GTM plan is a completely different skill set. Being good at these activities is a “learn by doing” exercise.
Crossfunctional skills multiplier - typically you need to hire 5+ different experts to issue spot and manage critical workstreams. If you hire a crossfunctional expansion expert you don’t need a small army. With a creative approach to resource management and strategic support, you can save time, cost and precious resources.
Commercial nous - traditional advisory/consulting services advise but don’t do. My goal is to always provide strong actionable guidance and muck in to get it done.
Strategic business decision-making - having the instincts to identify one way door high impact decisions and present the options and implications to founders/leadership teams for informed decision making is a skill and provide visibility to investors. If managing up isn’t managed well, it has a huge impact on a project’s success. If you can get that level of strategic guidance from an outsourced resource and paying only for the support you need, you’re getting the best of both worlds.
Leveling up - when a business needs deeper expertise than they have inhouse, outsourcing unlocks the ability to access deeper specialised expertise without committing to FTE cost and helping the team with change management and implementing best practice that opens the door to smoother fundraising rounds, exit discussions and greater retention metrics for happy teams and investors.
Core Services
Full day strategy session - one day intensive to unpack the launch / project goals, demysitfy the core planning inputs (legal, tax, accounting, product/tech etc) and develop a go-to-market framework, identify resources/costs/time considerations involved and set the project up for success.
Fractional-executive on call services - Our fractional executives combine their expertise and experience and then executes that role with you, and becomes part of the team. You get all their expertise, experience and engagement from a fractional executive as you do from a fulltime executive at a fraction of the cost. It's more than a coach, it's more than consulting - it is an engaged, experienced, cost-effective, value add fractional executive. Typically delivered under a monthly retainer model or time-based assignment. Our flexible delivery model can be scaled up/down as your need it, short-term, to cover a gap or get a new initiative moving, or longer-term to provide ongoing backup to your team.
Strategic decision-making support – when your business is preparing to make a big decision, bringing in expertise to help you evaluate the options and identify potential redflags that can lead to costly mistakes is critical. We help businesses take smart risks
Business-Health Check - typically used in preparation for fundraising, pre-M&A or to identify risk/compliance challenges.
1:1 Executive and Founder Advisory and Coaching
Specialist Training Packages custom-fit
If you’re ready to step-up your game and can’t justify hiring a top-dollar executive full-time, Venture Bench can help you bridge the gap.
Who do we serve?
Founders, growth businesses, venture capital funds and private equity funds with needs across their portfolios, SMEs and advisory firms (legal, tax, accounting). Our HQ is in Sydney, Australia, but we serve a global client base of teams working on the most complex projects.
Flexible Delivery Models - let's get creative
With our monthly retainer model, our fractional executives can work part time, full time, hourly or on flexible contracting models that involve scale up/down support over time.
Retainer fees can vary significantly based on the complexity of the work, company stage, industry sector, location, time commitment and experience.
If the retainer model doesn't work for your needs, we can get flexible.
I'm interested. When does it make sense to hire Venture Bench?
Your current leadership team is strong operationally or has specific domain expertise, but they lack depth of experience with specific upcoming milestones your company is preparing for and may not have a broad enough range of experiences to draw upon.
Your current leadership has all the necessary skills and strategic vision but can't be everywhere at once. They need to focus on their business-as-usual job. They need a qualified leader they can trust to delegate responsibility to, and trust that these needs are in safe hands.
Your business operating model has reached capacity and leadership needs to take a step back and strategize to level up.
There is an immediate vacancy that needs to be filled while the longer term “perfect” person for a role is secured.
Current leadership would benefit from a qualified and skilled coach and mentor, or a specific role is being exited and needs a gap fill leader while a replacement can be found.
Get to know our founder
Carly Martin founded Venture Bench to offer industry what they want most - a quality outsourced team of experts who can jump in when clients need them most and hit the ground running. No protracted headcount approval, recruitment and onboarding timelines - immediate access to quality top tier talent when you need it most.
To be successful at expansion, you need extensive lived experience, deep cross-functional skills (Strategy, Legal, Tax, Finance, Accounting, Product, UX, Tech, etc) and you need to understand the nuances of what can go wrong and what needs to go-right in highly unpredictable situations. This is an expensive resource to have on staff full time, but through a fractional delivery model, we provide high growth businesses with access to critical experience and skills at cost-effective rates when they need it most. Avoiding costly one-way door decisions, top-tier experience on-tap, custom-fit to their needs.
“It all begins with an idea. With access to Venture Bench experts, you can avoid costly one-way door decisions, and unlock the keys to successful expansion, scaling and leveling up your team and fundraising prospects.”
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8 years at Amazon (based in Amazon Seattle HQ, New Jersey and Sydney) advising Amazon expansion teams on how to set-up, scale and operate new businesses in new territories (AU equivalent of a COO/GM of Growth & GC role)
10 years top tier Corporate / M&A and equity capital markets lawyer at magic circle global and top-tier Australian law firms with a particular focus on venture capital and private equity, corporate governance and public & private M&A
Deep experience in international strategic product & service launches, M&A acquisition Integration, developing scalable cross-functional structures, technologies, reporting systems, country launch plans, teams/culture and embedding robust compliance and risk policies into business operational support structures.
Setting invest & simplify standard for Amazon's new country playbook and due diligence guide for launching countries
Strong executive presence and rapport-building skills
Expert speaker for industry events and training
Non-executive board experience
Industry focus: broad industry experience with a particular focus on retail/e-commerce, digital subscriptions, content-based businesses, payment method expansion and logistics.
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Strategic Vision Setting and Planning for businesses with a top line multi-billion USD revenue.
Corporate, Board & Advisory: corporate structuring, governance and risk identification (legal, tax, finance, and accounting), company commercial due diligence in preparation for expansion, M&A and investment, non-executive director appointments and board advisory
Expansion, M&A and Fundraising: merger, acquisition, divestiture, acquisition integration, investment phase support (private or public)
Corporate Governance, Financing, Risk and Legal – Strong background as a Corporate Lawyer on major transactions encompassing M&A, financing (seed > PE; and IPO), risk, contracting, board and corporate governance advisory. Strong cross-functional awareness of how Finance, Legal, Tax, and Accounting issues impact expansion decision-making and business growth and scaling efforts.
People Leadership and Culture Development:
Have experience with organisational design, and undertaking detailed talent mapping of international operational teams by country and function. Comfortable leading, developing and implementing policies and support structures for teams across different geographies working in matrixed reporting structures. Experience with headcount planning, role scoping, talent scouting, development of employment journey and retention tactics, HR compliance processes (employment, immigration, cross-border risks) and insourcing/outsourcing techniques
Market Growth and Value Creation – development of international market segments for new products & services encompassing the full life cycle – from strategy development, tech/product and operational set-up to successful execution. Positively delivering top and bottom line returns on the P&L.
Operational Excellence:
Deep expertise in identifying and implementing best practice, troubleshooting and anticipating bottle necks, issues and roadblocks both regulatory and operationally together with scalable technical and outsourcing solutions to absorb repeatable manual work and cost-effective, risk conscious revenue growth.
International Marketing, Distribution and Content Acquisition/Licensing- Worked across content acquisition, production, and operating teams globally to develop a shared understanding of brand to inform content investment and distribution/licensing decisions for market leading audio entertainment services.
Technology and Systems Development – Experienced in leading business engagement with tech/product leaders to develop technology build to support the business and operational requirements of operational systems, tools and processes for robust reporting, analytics, forecasting, sales incentives, invoicing, reporting, royalties and business rules.
People Leadership and Culture Development- Have undertaken detailed talent mapping of international operational teams by country and function. Comfortable leading, developing and implementing policies and support structures for teams across different geographies working in matrixed reporting structures.
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Media, Telecommunications, Content and IP Commercialisation
Technology
FinTech and Financial Services
Retail, 3P marketplaces and global stores
Ad-tech and advertising
Venture Capital & Private Equity