I work with founders, family principals, senior operators, and the funds that back them — in situations where they need someone close enough to their world to see what they cannot see themselves, and to tell them what they actually need to hear.
How I workPrivate Strategic Counsel
I work directly with principals — founders, family principals, board members, senior operators — navigating situations where the dynamics are not what they appear and the people around them cannot be fully objective.
Portfolio Counsel
I work with funds that need an independent view of what is actually happening inside a portfolio business. Engaged by the fund, deployed into the business — present in the room, reading the team and the situation, seeing the gap between what is being reported and what is true.
Both engagements follow the same structure and are designed to sustain. The discovery is the work.
Advisors protect their mandates. Lawyers counsel caution. Boards manage optics. Colleagues, however capable, are too invested in the outcome to be genuinely objective.
The most consequential decisions rarely arrive with clean information or time to think. They arrive when the stakes are highest, the room is most crowded, and the truth is most inconvenient. That is precisely when I am available.
A founder whose board is splitting along lines everyone is pretending not to see.
A family principal trying to read whether their adult children are ready — or whether one of them is positioning against the others.
An operator stepping into a chief executive role with a chair who is going to be a problem. And no one is saying it out loud.
A fund with a portfolio business where the numbers are holding but something is wrong — and the management team’s version of events and the reality are beginning to diverge.
The pattern is always the same. A situation that matters. Dynamics that are not what they appear. No one in the room who can be honest about it without consequences.
My background is in law and mediation; I then moved into operating roles, most recently as Chief Operating Officer of a deep-tech business in London.
Most of my working life has been spent in rooms where the visible conversation and the actual conversation were two different things. The work I do now is the work I have always done alongside whatever else my title said.
I take on a small number of engagements at a time — principals and funds. Each begins with Discovery: in the meetings, with the people, in the papers. The discovery is the work. It cannot be done from a distance, and it takes weeks, not days.
Months 1–3
Approximately eight days a month in person: in your meetings, with the people around you, in the papers. I am reading the situation, the dynamics, the things that are not being said. The period ends with counsel — not a report. A conversation.
Months 4–6
Approximately four days a month. The ground is known. I attend the meetings that matter, remain available when something shifts, and stay close enough to be useful in real time as the situation evolves.
Month 7 onwards
Four days a month, billed monthly in advance. Either side can end the arrangement with thirty days' written notice. While it runs, I am in it.
The structure above is the starting point. Cadence, access, and how I am introduced within your organisation are agreed before we begin. Every engagement is shaped around what the situation actually requires.
I am a private adviser to people and funds who need to think clearly about hard situations, and who need someone close enough to the ground to do that honestly. What I do requires sustained presence. That is the only model under which it works.
Veryan Office works by referral and introduction. If you are reading this, someone has decided you should talk to me.
The first step is a private conversation — typically twenty minutes, by telephone or a video call. No obligation on either side.
If you know someone else who would benefit from this, you are welcome to pass this on. The same process applies.
magda@veryanoffice.com