With my business partner Anieke Wierenga we are the “ScaleUp Practitioner”. Together we have developed a bespoke methodology to help Venture teams in the “Protein Transition” and in the “Green Chemistry” space to re-calibrate and re-design their strategy that will propel their venture forward again. To execute these innovative, daring objectives the venture teams use the OKR Framework. We know what it takes to be successful in this extraordinary space!
Build your Business Engine while Transitioning to Circularity & a New Economy
“You and your team have developed a tech solution towards renewable energy, the protein transition or in the green chemistry space. But there is one major problem. It may take +10 years to be ready to scale and profitable.
It is exceedingly challenging for these founder teams to attract patient money, for the type of groundbreaking technologies which don’t fit the mainstream, SaaS-Type growth models.
Becoming investor ready is not about linear ROI calculation, seeing that these ventures are circular, but rather about technology, ecosystem and the team.
When, as a CEO you see your runway “melt away”, it’s hard to focus on anything else, than raising the next round.
The ScaleupPractitioners specialise in designing and delivering bespoke, cohort based, scaleup programs that refocuses leaders and teams on the 4 pillars of their ventures and not just on getting financed.
+50% of ventures that have completed one of our programs have successfully closed an investment round.
For a company like PectCof, it is important to be able to switch from start-up mode to start building our business engine and systematically validating our assumptions.
Each session with Anieke and Francesca gives the opportunity to take a step back from running our business and to reflect properly on the strategical steps that we need to take to structure our operations more efficiently.
After every interaction with the Practitioners, our management goes back home with new insights and real actionable items, such as getting our product from pilot to demo-phase, getting validating our product at customers, and continuously challenging our strategy.
We highly recommend the Practitioners to support your venture in this growth phase.
When you are in the process of growing up as a company and want to evolve your start-up to scale-up I would definitely work with Fran and Anieke! Scaling is hard and as founders we were struggling with our strategy after struggling with covid, which impacted our company and the essence of what we are doing. We were a bit lost actually.
After several meetings and discussions Fran and Anieke proposed to us a scaling plan/program in which we firstly went back to our personal purpose and mission of our company. nWithin this process we had interesting sessions with our core team and just with us as founders. This hands-on approach really helped us to revise our strategy as a company but also on a personal level we learned a lot as founders!
The Fastlane Program could not have come at a better time for Willicroft.
Every stage of running your business is key but the start up / scale up phase can be particularly treacherous.
Three lessons in particular stood out:
1. The need to focus,
2. To have clear actionable goals across our team and
3. To be comfortable taking a step back from time-to-time in order to take a giant leap forward.
We can’t speak highly enough of the team (the Practitioners) who are running the program, both as people and mentors.
We are now in a completely different position to when we entered the program 6 months ago and much better placed to make Willicroft the success it can and should be.