The funding closed. The burn did not slow down.
Seattle companies hired and spent against funding that was easier to raise than it is to repeat. Biotech and hardware businesses live and die on the next milestone, and software firms on the next round. When the money tightens, the founder needs a steady second pair of hands.
How a sound company slips into trouble
It is rarely sudden:
Costs sized for the next round
Headcount, leases and cloud commitments were bought against funding that did not arrive on time.
The investors want a plan
A board and a lender who expect a credible path to the next milestone and do not yet have one.
Hard to unwind your own bets
Those who made the bets are not always the best people to reverse them.
The team is watching
Staff read every signal, and the best have offers from larger employers.
A fractional turnaround executive brings steadiness and a clear method. They build the cash forecast, talk to the investors and the lender, sequence the cuts and steady the team. They stay through the hardest weeks and leave when the business no longer needs them.
Who this is for, and who it is not
Best for
- A cash crisis that needs visibility and control now
- A business in operational or financial distress
- Lender or investor pressure that needs a credible plan
- A leadership vacuum that has stalled key decisions
- Stabilising the business before planning recovery
Not for
- A business that only needs advice or a written report
- A situation whose primary need is a formal insolvency practitioner
- A stable business planning improvements at its own pace
- A one-off review with no mandate to act
How a turnaround engagement runs
We find the operator, scope the work around the investors' and lenders' timetable, and stay close throughout.
Closer governance
Under pressure we check in more often and say early when the plan and the numbers drift apart.
Hard-won experience
The collective includes operators who have reset cost bases and negotiated with investors and lenders, ready to give a second view.
Process, not standby
We keep the plan and the brief current, so if the executive must step away the next search starts from there and we manage the handover.
Composure counts
The team reads every signal from the person in charge. We match for steadiness as well as experience.
The turnaround engagement
Each engagement moves from crisis to recovery with structured urgency.
Rapid assessment (week 1)
Financial position, operational status, commercial pipeline and team capability, mapped with a structured diagnostic framework.
Priority triage (week 2)
The 3–5 interventions that will have the most impact on stabilisation are identified and begun. Ruthless prioritisation.
Stabilisation (weeks 3–8)
Cash flow is visible and managed. Acute operational failures resolved. Lenders or investors briefed with a credible recovery narrative.
Recovery (month 2 onwards)
Processes rebuilt. Commercial momentum recovered. Financial infrastructure strengthened. Business guided from crisis to sustainable operation.
Turnaround triage
The leadership a situation calls for depends on where the business is breaking.
The roles a turnaround usually calls for.
For a complex turnaround, we can deploy more than one operator at once and layer in further specialists as recovery progresses.
Restructuring experience from
The questions buyers ask first
Fractional Seattle provides operational and executive leadership support. Where a situation requires insolvency, legal, restructuring or regulated financial advice, we work alongside the appropriate specialist advisers.
