Retainer to start. Performance layered on top.
That checkpoint from the last page has to mean something commercially, too. AI has made ideas cheap; everyone has a strategy deck now. Execution is still rare. Our fee is built around what actually gets built, sold, or raised, not what gets recommended.
The structure runs in two tiers. Performance-linked upside only applies where there's a real, transaction-linked outcome to tie it to, not every piece of work has one. Where that number doesn't exist, the fee stays fixed and capped, which is more honest than pretending every engagement has an obvious upside metric.
Fixed monthly retainer
Same structure for every Founder, CEO, or Management Team, regardless of what you're focused on, covers diagnosis, scoping, and execution on that one priority from the entry period.
Retainer plus upside on the outcome
Illustrative: a small percentage of the measurable result achieved above an agreed baseline.
Retainer plus upside on the transaction
Illustrative: a small percentage of the value actually secured, only once it's secured.
Fixed fee, capped
Where there's no clean transaction-linked number to tie upside to, no invented metric, just a capped scope.
We are not paid for ideas. We are paid for execution, whether pricing improved, whether capital got raised, whether the brick actually got built. And because the upside only activates on a brick you chose, against an outcome you agreed to, we don't set the target; you do.
No other firm is structured to be paid this way, retainer and performance, together, wherever the work actually supports it. Most firms specialise in one or the other.