An operator’s perspective. An independent sounding board.
I’m Harri Thomas. I spend my time inside growing companies, on the part nobody owns: how decisions get made, who carries which number, and what happens in the week between agreeing something and it being done.
A company gets stuck in one of two ways.
It is pointed somewhere that will not work. Or it is pointed somewhere sensible and nothing moves — nobody agreed who owns the number, the weekly meeting reads status aloud instead of deciding anything, and the decision made in March is quietly relitigated in June because it was never written down. Neither shows up in a board pack. Both show up in how fast the company actually moves.
I work at both ends: shaping direction when it is genuinely unclear, and turning direction into forward momentum. They are different problems and they need different work.
Where that comes from
I co-founded Respondent in 2016 and started by handing flyers out on the street. It grew to thirty-odd people and eight figures of annual GMV, with IBM, Microsoft, Uber and Airbnb as customers, raised $6M across four rounds, and I sold my stake to private equity in 2020. I also founded Elephants, which raised a pre-seed before it had a product, reached a hundred thousand installs in six months, and closed after eighteen because retention never came. Two companies, one sold, one shut.
In between: several years as chief of staff in a Series A business, which is the job of making an organisation work while it is changing shape underneath you. Sales, demand generation and programme management, done rather than supervised, so I can get specific about a pipeline or a delivery plan instead of staying at the level of advice. Before all of it, UX research at Meta, leading the Workplace integrations — which is where I learned to find out what is actually happening in a business rather than what everyone has agreed to say about it.
Most of what founders describe to me, I have already had a version of.
How I work with you.
Make the real issue discussable.
Surface the assumptions, tensions and decisions that are holding work up. Most stuck companies are not short of ideas — they are avoiding one conversation.
Make ownership clear.
Agree who will decide, who will do the work and how progress will be reviewed. Ambiguity about ownership is the most expensive thing in a growing company.
Say when to stop.
Not every business, product line or engagement should continue. I have made that call on my own company, so I can have the conversation without flinching and without pretending it is simple.
Make it usable.
Build enough structure to help the team, without adding process for its own sake. If it needs me in the room to keep working, it has not worked.
Founder feedback.
He prepared thoroughly, was very clear on where his experience and expertise lay and what he was qualified to comment on, and provided some critical insights on a topic fairly new to me which will really help with our strategic decision-making.
Rhys ForsythManaging Director, Code Nation Harri did a great job breaking down the complexities of equity deal structuring. He shared valuable insights on industry best practices and highlighted some potential red flags to be aware of.
Paul ZadieChief Creative, Zadie Studio He took the time to ask questions before the meeting so as to better understand our business' situation and provided really good points on my answers. Harri is genuinely interested in helping solve problems and draws from a wealth of knowledge and experience to address them with proposed solutions and probing questions.
Christopher DayFounder, Upficient
A small, independent practice.
You work directly with me. We agree the scope, responsibilities and rhythm before starting, and review whether the work is helping. If it is not, I would rather say so early than keep the engagement running.
