About James
When a problem is too messy to delegate in-house and too important to ignore, founders bring it to me.
I help you find the real shape of the problem, weigh the trade-offs, and decide what to do. Then I shift gears and execute the solution alongside your team. Founders tell me they also leave our conversations clearer and more energised.
I spent four years as a VC deploying over £100m, then crossed over to build startups from scratch, including taking one from stealth to £1m revenue in six months.
I work with Seed to Series B founders and teams as a strategic thinking partner and an extra pair of hands. That covers cross-functional special projects, pricing and commercial strategy, financial modelling, operations and process design, AI adoption, fundraising support, and investor-facing brand strategy.
Messy problems compound. The earlier you shape them, the cheaper they are to fix.
English
Native or bilingual
Can work on-site
London (up to 50km)
Experience
- FreelanceStrategy and Operations ConsultantCONSULTING AND AUDITSJune 2025 - Today (1 year and 2 months)London, United KingdomPartner with founders on strategy, ops and pricing decisions, turning messy problems into shipped outcomes.
- Pricing Strategy & Positioning: Co-developed a GTM and pricing product; repositioned clients’ pricing architecture and revenue strategy. Transformed them from a cost to a revenue tool.
- Fundraising & Brand Strategy: Prepared founder for fundraise by building their financial model, shaping their investor-facing company/category narrative, and defining 3-year growth strategy.
- Electron GreenOperations Strategy ManagerENERGY AND UTILITIESDecember 2023 - May 2025 (1 year and 5 months)London, United KingdomJoined as part of a two-person founding team to build and launch a B2C solar spin-off from 0 to national rollout.
- 0→£1m Launch: Acted as de facto Chief of Staff to the COO, building the business from concept to £1m+ contracted revenue in 6 months by driving execution across product, ops and GTM.
- Product & UX Ownership: Worked closely with users to shape product and processes, designing onboarding flows, legal journeys and internal tools to handle complex consumer sign-ups.
- GTM & Strategy Build: Developed and iterated on sales, product and operational strategy from scratch, rapidly adapting to constraints and unlocking scalable growth.
- Process & Ops Systems Design: Built pre-CRM systems, databases and KPI dashboards to manage the customer lifecycle and enable data-driven decision making.
- Regulatory Execution: Led a 9-month certification process with the consumer code body, navigating complex legal requirements to unlock full market launch.
- B2B Scale-Up Impact: Transitioned to the parent B2B business (Series A, £2.5m ARR) to design and build scalable processes and automation across the larger organisation.
- AI Product Development: Product-managed the build of a proprietary AI tool automating lead qualification, solar design and proposal generation, reducing prep time by 95% and cost per pitch by 90%.
- Revenue Acceleration: Owned and rebuilt the deal funding workflow, reducing cycle time from 8 months to 3 weeks and unlocking £600k in cash.
- FreelanceStrategy and Operations ConsultantTECHJanuary 2018 - December 2022 (4 years and 11 months)London, United KingdomWorked directly with founders and C-suite across high-growth startups, owning and executing on critical product, operational and commercial challenges. Selected engagements:
- Customer Ops Automation (Mojo, Series A): Redesigned and automated support systems, reducing operational load and improving user experience; resolved payment and cancellation issues to cut disputes and friction.
- Customer Experience & Growth (NAAMA Studios, Series A): Mapped end-to-end user journeys, delivering service improvements and identifying new revenue opportunities.
- Org Design & Cost Strategy (Codesmiths): Rebuilt payroll data and advised the CEO on compensation structure amid wage inflation, improving cost visibility and enabling more sustainable scaling.
Recommendations
Be the first to recommend James
Help this freelancer shine by sharing your experience working together.
These freelancer profiles also match your criteria
Agatha Frydrych
Backend Java Software Engineer
4.7
(3)
2
Baptiste Duhen
Fullstack developer
4.6
(4)
5
Amed Hamou
Senior Lead Developer
4
(2)
7
Audrey Champion
Web developer
4.3
(3)
4
Education
- MSc in Finance & InvestmentDurham University
- MA (Hons) in EconomicsUniversity of St Andrews