Strategy that
moves the business.
I work directly with founders, CEOs and leadership teams on their highest-impact challenges — identifying leverage, defining the right move and helping turn strategy into execution.
Most strategic work stops at the recommendation. I operate across the whole range — from understanding the real problem to driving the initiative until someone can own it.
When companies bring me in
Usually when the stakes are high and the problem is not clean.
If two or three of these sound familiar, the conversation is worth having.
- Your team is executing, but nobody agrees on what matters most.
- Your founder or CEO is involved in too many decisions.
- Revenue is growing, but the company is becoming harder to run.
- Growth has slowed, and the obvious fixes are not working.
- A strategy exists on paper. Execution is fragmented.
- You know you need the right humans on board — but not which profile, or whether it is really a hire.
- A strategic project crosses Sales, Product and Operations — and therefore belongs to nobody.
- You see a major partnership opportunity, but nobody owns it.
- You need to launch a new revenue stream, not just discuss one.
- You are considering a new product and aren't sure it deserves the investment.
- You want to enter the US, Europe or another market — and need more than a slide about it.
- The company needs C-level strategic thinking, but not another permanent executive yet.
- Your board wants a clear plan.
- You just raised capital and suddenly have twenty priorities.
How I work
I don't deliver a deck. I help solve the problem.
I look for where the real problem sits — and I love that part. Making a company work better is what drives me. Your success is my success. As Fractional Chief Strategy Officer I work embedded with the founder, CEO and leadership team, with the mandate to make things happen, not just to recommend them.
Companies rarely suffer from a lack of ideas. More often they suffer from too many options, unclear priorities, slow decisions, fragmented ownership or insufficient execution. My job is to reduce that complexity — in this order:
Think of it as an extension of the CEO.
Another senior brain in the room, with an owner's mentality and the freedom to work across departments — a force multiplier for leadership, not a layer on top of it.
Not strategy from the sidelines
I don't believe the highest-value strategic work ends with a recommendation.
Sometimes the right answer is a market entry plan.
Sometimes it is securing the right strategic partner.
Sometimes it is recruiting the human who should own the initiative.
Sometimes it is sitting down with the leadership team and killing five projects so the company can win at two.
And sometimes I step in and drive the initiative myself until it is ready to transition.
My role depends on what creates the outcome.
Core capabilities
Pattern recognition plus entrepreneurial execution.
I look at the company, the humans in it, the customers, the product, the market, sales, partnerships, the numbers, the incentives, the positioning and the operational reality — and at how they influence each other. That is where the leverage usually hides. Then I work in whichever of these areas the situation demands.
Strategic direction
- Corporate strategy and company priorities
- Business model evaluation and scenario planning
- Competitive positioning and market intelligence
- Decision frameworks and resource allocation
- Identifying what not to do
Growth
- Growth levers and new revenue streams
- Market entry and geographic expansion
- Pricing and commercial opportunities
- GTM and business development strategy
- Category expansion
Partnerships
- Identifying and structuring strategic partners
- Opening relevant conversations, bringing decision-makers together
- Negotiating the commercial logic
- Initiating deals
- Transitioning partnerships into operational ownership
Product & business model
- Product portfolio strategy
- Evaluating new products against real customer demand
- Deciding where product investment belongs
- Monetization
- Aligning product and commercial strategy
Executive decision support
- Founder / CEO sparring
- Structuring high-stakes decisions
- Challenging assumptions, evaluating alternatives
- Second-order consequences
- Clarity under uncertainty
Strategic initiatives
- Taking ownership of high-priority initiatives
- Leading projects from idea to launch
- Aligning departments, removing blockers
- Defining milestones, bringing in specialists
- Pushing execution until momentum exists
Organization & humans
- Identifying capability gaps
- Deciding when a hire is actually needed — and which profile
- Helping bring the right human into the company
- Improving decision structures and leadership alignment
- Defining ownership and accountability
Processes, systems & automation
- Finding what slows the company down and simplifying it
- Automating repetitive work so humans can do what matters
- Making processes faster, leaner, measurable
- Choosing tools that fit the company — not the other way round
- Optimizing until the improvement holds without me
Investors & board
- Investor strategy and board preparation
- Strategic narratives and KPI frameworks
- Fundraising thinking and capital allocation
- Investor / shareholder alignment
- Bringing investors on board for the right projects
Special situations
- Post-funding scaling and stalled growth
- Repositioning and business model shifts
- Turnarounds, founder bottlenecks, leadership transitions
- International expansion
- Major product launches
Recognizing the pattern is half the work. The other half is doing what the pattern calls for — like an entrepreneur, not an advisor.
Some problems need an analysis. Some need a decision. Some need a new partner. Some need the right human. Some need restructuring. And some need someone who personally takes ownership — then I do.
Use cases
Typical situations — and what I do in each.
Every situation is different, but the shape repeats. Open a card to see what I look at, what I may identify, what we decide, what I may personally drive and what success looks like. No outcome is guaranteed; the work is.
Selected work
What I helped move.
Real situations, told by the partners and founders themselves — in their own words, and soon also on video. Open a case to see the situation, what I did and what changed.
About Denis
Strategy, learned by doing.
Over the years I have tried, worked on and built many different things — some worked, some didn't. Companies were part of it, but not only. What never changed: I was interested in almost everything, I wanted to understand why things are the way they are, and because I kept asking, I learned fast.
Building things forces you to see how the parts of a company depend on each other, because you are the one who lives with the consequences:
Somewhere along the way I noticed that this habit of questioning had become something useful: I recognize patterns. In humans, and in companies. I see fairly quickly where a situation is heading, where the real bottleneck sits and which move would change the outcome. I didn't get that from a book. It came from doing, deciding, and being wrong often enough to get better at it — and it is the part of my work I enjoy most.
One thing matters to me more than any method: it is always about humans. Not "people", not "resources", not "headcount" — the humans who run the company, build the product, sell it, buy it and carry the decisions. Most strategic problems are, underneath, human problems: who owns what, who trusts whom, who has to decide and doesn't. I have not seen a strategy work that did not take that seriously.
Today I bring that into a few selected companies as a strategic partner — together with a network of entrepreneurs and specialists in tech, sales, marketing and relationships I have built over the years. I remain an entrepreneur myself. That is why I approach your business with an owner's mentality, not an advisor's — and why your success is, quite literally, my success.
Enter a complex situation. Understand it quickly. Recognize the pattern. Find leverage. Build the solution. Make it real.
Ways to work together
Three formats. One way of working.
Every engagement is built around a real problem, not a service catalogue. A sprint answers one important question. A fractional mandate embeds senior strategic leadership for a period. A special project gives an orphaned initiative an owner. I work with a small number of companies at a time — never more than I can give real attention to.
Fractional Chief Strategy Officer
Senior strategic leadership embedded directly with the founder, CEO and leadership team. I take part in the decisions that matter, own the initiatives that need an owner and bring another senior brain — and pair of hands — to the company for as long as it makes sense.
- Strategic priorities and corporate strategy
- CEO sparring and leadership alignment
- Growth, new markets, new revenue streams
- Product and commercial strategy, partnerships
- Investor and board strategy
- High-impact initiatives with execution ownership
Strategy Sprint
For one important question that deserves a real answer, fast. Deliverables depend on the problem — analysis, a decision, a strategy, a roadmap, an owner and the first execution steps. A sprint can convert into a fractional engagement.
- Should we enter this market?
- Where is our next $5M revenue opportunity?
- Why has growth slowed?
- Which customer segment should we prioritize?
- Should we launch this product?
- How should the company be positioned?
- What should the next 12 months look like?
Strategic Special Projects
There are important projects that do not naturally belong to one department. Those are often exactly the projects I should own — from first conversation to a working structure and a handover.
- Market entry and international expansion
- Strategic partnership or joint venture
- Product launch or new business unit
- GTM build-out
- Strategic hiring project
- Restructuring initiative or new revenue opportunity
I don't sell hours per week.
I sell access, ownership, judgment and momentum.
An engagement is structured around scope, complexity and the level of involvement the situation needs — not around a timesheet. What you get is a senior operator who is reachable when it matters, who owns what he takes on and who is measured by what changes in the business.
More than an advisory relationship
Sometimes the right relationship goes beyond a consulting engagement.
I am selectively open to equity, advisory positions, strategic partnerships and investment opportunities where I believe I can contribute meaningful value beyond capital. I do not invest automatically — and I say no far more often than yes.
Start here
Your biggest opportunity probably doesn't need another meeting.
It needs someone to see it clearly, decide and move. If you have a strategic challenge that matters, let's talk about it directly.
A direct conversation
Book a slot or write me on WhatsApp. Thirty minutes on the actual situation — not a sales call. You describe what is happening; I tell you what I see and whether I think I can help.
A clear proposal
If there is a fit, you receive a short note: the problem as I understand it, the format that makes sense — sprint, fractional mandate or project — and how we would start.
Movement
The first weeks are about understanding the real business and making the first decision that changes what happens next. Momentum comes from that, not from a kick-off deck.