GrowthMatters › Who this isn’t for
The anti-ICPWho this
isn’t for
Every advisory firm publishes who it works with. Almost none publish who it turns away, because saying no in public costs you leads. It is also the only claim on a website that a stranger can verify without asking anyone's permission — so here it is, in full, with the reasoning.
The hard boundaries
These are not preferences. They are the edges of what I have personally done, and taking work outside them would mean charging you to watch me guess.
Consumer businesses. The whole method is built on how American businesses buy — champion, economic buyer, security review, procurement, legal, reference call. Consumer go-to-market is a different discipline and I have not run it.
Government and public sector. U.S. public procurement is its own world: set-asides, schedules, cycles measured in years, rules with nothing in common with enterprise buying. Not my experience.
Anyone competing with Berkeley Payments. Branded payment programs, prepaid or virtual card issuing, embedded disbursements in North America. I am Berkeley’s CEO. Anyone holding an operating role while advising should draw this line, and draw it out loud.
Fundraising. I do not raise money for clients, do not introduce clients to investors for a fee, and do not take success fees on capital raised. Success fees attach to commercial revenue only.
The judgement calls
These are the ones I decline more often than founders expect, and they are all about fit rather than category.
Founders who are certain. If you already know what the U.S. plan is and want someone to execute it, you do not need me — you need hands, and I will be an expensive irritation. The clients this works for are the ones who have concluded they don’t yet know how Americans buy their kind of product.
Companies where the U.S. isn’t the binding constraint. If the product, the home market or the team is the real problem, U.S. entry is an expensive distraction. I will say so in the first conversation and decline, because taking that engagement wastes your money and my reputation.
More than three decision-makers. This works when the founder can change direction inside a week. Above a certain size the meeting count alone defeats a thirteen-week clock.
Product-led-only motions with no sales layer. If nobody ever talks to a buyer and the plan is for that to stay true, the method has nothing to attach to.
A U.S. revenue leader already in the seat and working. If someone is already running a functioning American motion, you do not need this. Protect what you have.
The one that matters most
If your honest answer to “what’s stopping you in America?” is “we need more budget and more people on the ground” — we will not work well together.
Not because it is always wrong. Sometimes it is right, and when it is, you should go and spend the money. But it is the single answer most strongly associated with a second failed U.S. attempt, because more budget applied to a motion nobody has located buys a larger team running the same unproven play against a buying process nobody has mapped.
Israeli companies do not fail in America because they underfunded it. They fail because they ran an Israeli motion against an American buying process. In Israel you can meet the entire market and a warm introduction reaches almost anyone; that instinct is precisely what breaks in the United States, and no cheque repairs it. The companies I can help are the ones who have already discovered that for themselves — usually expensively — and want to know what to do instead.
The free post-mortem asks the twelve questions I would ask, and one of them is exactly this. It gives you the read on the spot, no email, and if it says your motion is already working it tells you that too.