Digital and AI value creation · Private equity
Digital and AI leadership for the moments a hold turns on.
Fractional and interim executives for private equity-backed businesses. A chief digital, product, data or AI officer, placed where the hold needs one: when the value creation plan is written, when it stalls, and when it's time to show the next owner what they're buying.
Three moments
Where are you in the hold?
01 · After the deal
Write the digital plan.
The investment case has digital and AI lines in it. Nobody in the business owns them yet, and the first board is twelve weeks away.
- Turn the investment case into a digital and AI value creation plan the management team owns: what to build, what to buy and what to stop.
- Decide which AI moves belong in the plan now, which can wait, and which are a vendor's roadmap rather than yours.
- Put a named owner, a cost and a measure against each move, in a form the board pack can carry.
- Stay to run the first phase, or hand it to a permanent hire and help them start well.
- Typical seat
- Fractional chief digital, product or AI officer
- Time
- 2–3 days a week, for 3–6 months
- You're left with
- A plan the CEO would defend without us in the room.
02 · Mid-hold
Get it moving again.
A couple of years in. The plan has stalled, a digital leader has left, or AI has changed what's possible and the plan hasn't caught up.
- A short, candid read for the operating partner and the CEO: what's working, what isn't, and why.
- Reset the plan against what the business can do now, including the AI moves that weren't possible at the deal.
- Take the seat while it's needed, so product, data and AI decisions get made each week instead of waiting for the next board.
- Stop the work that isn't earning its place, and say so in the board pack.
- Typical seat
- Interim chief digital officer or CPTO
- Time
- 3–5 days a week, for 6–9 months
- You're left with
- Momentum back, and a clear view of the seat the business needs next.
03 · Before the sale
Make the story believable.
A process is twelve to eighteen months away. The digital and AI story is thinner than the numbers deserve, or it rests on one person.
- Shape the product, data and AI story the next owner will be buying, with the evidence behind each part of it.
- Get one or two things properly into production, so the story shows up in the numbers.
- Build succession, so the capability stays after we leave and after the sale.
- Set out what the next owner could do with it: the second-hold plan, in plain terms.
We work alongside the due diligence providers, not instead of them.
- Typical seat
- Fractional chief digital or product officer
- Time
- 1–2 days a week, for 6–12 months before a process
- You're left with
- A digital story a buyer's diligence team can check, and a team that can tell it.
How we work
From a first call to a handover.
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01
A conversation
Where the business is in the hold, and whether we're the right people.
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02
The first two weeks
A written view of the digital and AI moves worth making, and whether they need a seat. One company or several.
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03
The seat
Inside the executive team, accountable with the CEO for the moves in the plan.
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04
The handover
The permanent leader hired or grown, and the plan handed over. Any step can be the last one.
Where AI fits
Part of every moment.
Most portfolio companies don't need an AI strategy of their own. They need the AI moves that matter to their plan, made properly: pointed at the work that costs most, owned by a named person, and tested on the business's own cases before anyone relies on them.
After the deal, that means deciding which moves belong in the plan. Mid-hold, it means catching up with what's become possible. Before the sale, it means showing a buyer the AI is real. The thinking behind how we approach it is published at ai.valuecreator.io.
Seats held
Operators who have held the seat.
The practice was set up by David Reynolds, who has held each of these seats. When the work needs more than one of us, we bring in operators we've worked with. There's no bench and no pyramid.
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Chief digital officer
PE-backed information management group
Built a digital revenue line from a standing start, most of it recurring, and moved AI out of experimentation and into client work.
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Head of product and strategy
PE-backed global talent business
Took a proprietary platform from idea to the centre of the proposition, with the investment case and the adoption behind it.
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Interim digital operating partner
VC and PE portfolio
Digital strategy, product scaling and digital M&A across founder-led and backed businesses.
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Head of digital enterprise
Professional services firm
Owned a digital P&L, new products and a corporate venturing capability.
Before that, corporate strategy and M&A at a global information business, and a job board from its early years through to its sale. References on request.
Where we're most useful
- Information and data services
- Professional and business services
- HR, talent and workforce
- Risk, compliance and identity
- B2B software built around a service
What we pass on.
Technology due diligence, CTO and CIO seats, and delivery teams. We refer them to specialists we trust, including TechDD. We take no more than two engagements at a time, and we have no commercial relationship with any vendor.
Start a conversation
Tell us which moment you're in.
A line or two is enough: where the business is in the hold, the seat you think it needs, and when. We reply within two working days.