The funding did not come. The plan has to change anyway.
A company that raised on one story and now faces another needs an operator who has made hard calls before. Runway, headcount and investor trust all need a decision in the next few weeks.
What a reset usually looks like
One problem rarely arrives alone:
Runway is a debate
Nobody agrees how many months are left, and the answer changes with the assumptions.
Investors and lenders want a plan
Venture debt, existing backers and a possible new round each need a credible story, and the last one did not hold.
The team can feel it
Silence is more corrosive than bad news, and the best engineers leave first because they can.
Too close to the original bet
No criticism. That is exactly why an outside operator can do what the founders cannot.
We match operators who have taken a company through a reset before. They step in, get cash under control, rebuild the plan and lead the talks with the board, the lenders and the team that founders struggle to have alone. The engagement is between two companies and ends cleanly once the company is stable.
Who this is for, and who it is not
Best for
- A cash crisis that needs visibility and control now
- A business in operational or financial distress
- Lender or investor pressure that needs a credible plan
- A leadership vacuum that has stalled key decisions
- Stabilising the business before planning recovery
Not for
- A business that only needs advice or a written report
- A situation whose primary need is a formal insolvency practitioner
- A stable business planning improvements at its own pace
- A one-off review with no mandate to act
How a reset runs with us
We find the operator, scope the work around runway and investor patience, and stay close throughout.
Closer check-ins
During a reset we check in more often and raise it immediately if the plan and the cash diverge.
People who have done a reset
The collective includes operators who have cut burn, renegotiated venture debt and kept teams together.
Process, not a standby
The reset plan and brief live with us. A change of executive means a fresh search from that base and a handover we run.
Composure first
Teams and investors read the person in charge. We match for steadiness under pressure.
The turnaround engagement
Each engagement moves from crisis to recovery with structured urgency.
Rapid assessment (week 1)
Financial position, operational status, commercial pipeline and team capability, mapped with a structured diagnostic framework.
Priority triage (week 2)
The 3–5 interventions that will have the most impact on stabilisation are identified and begun. Ruthless prioritisation.
Stabilisation (weeks 3–8)
Cash flow is visible and managed. Acute operational failures resolved. Lenders or investors briefed with a credible recovery narrative.
Recovery (month 2 onwards)
Processes rebuilt. Commercial momentum recovered. Financial infrastructure strengthened. Business guided from crisis to sustainable operation.
Turnaround triage
The leadership a situation calls for depends on where the business is breaking.
The roles a turnaround usually calls for.
For a complex turnaround, we can deploy more than one operator at once and layer in further specialists as recovery progresses.
Restructuring experience from
The questions buyers ask first
Fractional San Francisco provides operational and executive leadership support. Where a situation requires insolvency, legal, restructuring or regulated financial advice, we work alongside the appropriate specialist advisers.
