I've spent 22 years building and scaling bootstrapped SaaS businesses: the kind where every pound matters and there's no safety net. I've been the CCO twice: first taking a company from early stage to a successful exit, then spending 12 years at Eploy, where we grew from a small startup to acquisition by the Access Group.

Here's what those 22 years taught me: the messy reality of bootstrapped SaaS isn't taught in business school. It's learnt by wrestling with founder-led sales that won't scale, building investor-grade metrics from scratch when you've never been through due diligence, and figuring out how to professionalise your commercial operation without losing what made you successful in the first place.

What I actually do:

I work with 3-4 SaaS companies at a time, typically bootstrapped businesses between £500k and £5m ARR who are hitting an inflection point. That might mean:

• Getting investment-ready (my signature work: I've prepared two companies for successful exits)

• Building go-to-market strategy that actually works beyond founder selling

• Fractional CCO leadership when you need the expertise but can't justify the full-time hire

• Partnership strategy that unlocks growth without burning cash

• Positioning and pricing that stops you competing on features

I don't do strategy decks from a distance. I roll up my sleeves, work alongside founders, and focus on what actually moves revenue: not what looks good in slides.

Why this works:

At 56, I'm not building a massive consulting empire. I'm working with founders I respect, on problems I've solved before, in a way that gives me the variety and creative freedom I actually enjoy. No corporate politics, no theoretical frameworks that don't survive contact with reality, just hands-on work that makes a difference.

If you're a bootstrapped SaaS founder who's built something real and now needs to scale it properly (without making the expensive mistakes I've seen and made along the way), let's talk.