Who we help

Founder- and leader-led businesses at £5–20m, where too much still runs through one person.

Doing well. At an inflection point. And somewhere between first enquiry and long-term customer, revenue is leaking through a single point of failure — a person, a customer, a channel or a system nobody else can run. If that is your business, or the one you have been asked to fix, this page is for you.

UK & Ireland · we come to you, and on-site days are batched by city · ideally already on HubSpot or a comparable platform
The fit, plainly

What a FounderProof client looks like

We are deliberately narrow. Four clients at a time means every one of them has to be a business we can move — and a room we want to be in.

Revenue

£5–20m a year (roughly €6–23m). Real revenue, real customers, real margin — the business has proven it works; the question is whether it can run without you.

People

10 to 250 people, with at least the beginnings of separate marketing, sales, delivery and finance functions — because that is where the hand-offs, and the leaks, live.

Leadership

Founder-led or leader-led. The owner who is still in everything, or the MD, revenue director, marketing director or FD who has been asked to fix it.

Geography

UK and Ireland. Every engagement starts in person and the first two days of the Diagnostic are on site — we come to you, and on-site days are batched by city so a Midlands client costs no more than a London one.

Systems

Ideally already on HubSpot or a comparable CRM, with a finance system that holds the truth. We build on what you have. If you are on nothing, the Assessment tells you whether you need to be.

Intent

Ready to implement, not to commission a report. The biggest leak gets stopped inside the business in month one — which only works if the leadership team wants it stopped.

Four kinds of business

What it looks like, what is usually leaking, and what we do first

The founder everything still runs through
What it looks like
Profitable, respected, and exhausted. Every escalation, pricing call and key relationship comes back to you. Holidays are theoretical; a week off costs a month of catching up. Calvin ran Centralise this way until he engineered his way out — and took December 2025 off.
What is usually leaking
Missed and slow-answered demand while you are busy; deals that stall waiting for your yes; knowledge in your head that nobody else can act on.
What we do first
Map the decisions that wait for you, in order of revenue at stake. Hand the first one to a standard — written, measured, owned by someone else — inside month one.
The business getting ready to sell
What it looks like
A sale is one to three years out. The numbers are good. The buyer’s adviser will ask about revenue concentration, owner-dependence and what is written down — and discount hard for the wrong answers.
What is usually leaking
One customer that is 40–50% of revenue; a sales engine that is one person; a forecast nobody outside the founder trusts; process that lives in people, not systems.
What we do first
Score the business through the buyer’s three lenses — Performance, Running, Worth — then fix Running first, because that is what converts trapped value into a price.
The leadership team in transition
What it looks like
A new MD, a new leadership team, a founder stepping back or a second generation stepping up. What one person carried has to become the way the business works.
What is usually leaking
Hand-offs that only worked because of one relationship; customers who buy from a person, not the company; nobody quite sure who owns what.
What we do first
The Architecture map: every stage of the journey with a named owner, a standard and a number. Then the weekly scorecard so the new team runs the business on evidence, not on the founder’s memory.
HubSpot that hasn’t paid for itself yet
What it looks like
The platform was bought with good intentions. The team half-uses it, the data is patchy, nobody trusts the reports, and the real pipeline lives in a spreadsheet — in one recent Assessment, £900,000 of it.
What is usually leaking
Enquiries falling between the inbox and the CRM; a forecast nobody uses; marketing spend nobody can attribute; three sources of truth for one customer.
What we do first
Treat it as a customer-journey problem, not a software problem: agree the stage definitions, connect the inboxes and forms, load the real pipeline, and make one number trustworthy before adding another.
Also familiar: the sales team that lives on one rainmaker · the ops team drowning in re-work · the marketing spend nobody can attribute · the partner network nobody has mapped · the CRM three people update and no one reads.
The person who calls us

Founders and leaders — never just founders

Half the people who call us own the business. The other half have been asked to fix it. They get the same seat at the table.

The founder or MD

You want the business to run without you — for a holiday, for a sale, or just for a Tuesday. You want a number on what it is costing you that it does not.

The revenue or sales director

You inherited a pipeline in a spreadsheet, a CRM nobody trusts and a forecast the board argues with. You need the journey defined and the numbers to hold.

The marketing director

You can see the spend but not the pipeline it generated. Enquiries disappear between your forms and the sales team. Attribution is a monthly argument.

The finance director

You are asked for a forecast you cannot build, from data that lives in three places. You want one customer key, one pipeline and margin by product you can stand over.

The operations director

Orders arrive re-keyed, hand-offs happen by email, and OTIF is only known to logistics. You want the journey to run to a standard the whole business can see.

The investor or acquirer

You are buying or backing a founder-led business. The Assessment (£4,500) names and costs the leaks and single points of failure before you price it; the Diagnostic (£20,000) is the first hundred days after you own it.

Single points of failure

A single point of failure is anything the revenue cannot survive losing

It is usually a person. It is often a customer. Sometimes it is one channel, one inbox or one spreadsheet. Every one of them is a leak waiting for a bad month.

A person

The founder every decision waits for. The one salesperson who brings in the work. The person who is the only one who knows how the system works — and what happens the week they are away.

A customer

One account that makes up 40–50% or more of revenue. Every buyer sees it, every lender prices it, and every renewal conversation is a negotiation you cannot afford to lose.

A source of business

One channel, one referrer, one platform or one partner that generates most of the new enquiries. When it changes its rules, your pipeline changes with it.

A system nobody else can run

The joint inbox nobody owns. The spreadsheet only one person understands. The CRM three people update and no one reads. The process that lives in someone’s head.

The Assessment names each one, measures how much revenue sits behind it — revenue concentration, owner-dependence, missed versus answered demand, knowledge written down versus in heads — and ranks them with the other leaks. One number goes on the weekly page from week one: the share of revenue that still originates with the founder, and how fast it is falling.
Industries

Where we have done this before, by industry

The problem is the same in every industry — a journey that depends on one person — but the leaks show up in different places. Find your industry to see who you are in company with.

Software & technology
AmplienceKeelvarCalypsoAIParentPayPayPropMove.aiIndeemoFlexigrantGreyparrotAxelera AIMeshh
Managed IT, cloud & cybersecurity
EkcoBlacknightBluecubeCyberOwlFiremind
Professional & business services
KefronBabel PRBB7Ledger BennettICS-digitalGlobal Business CultureCMG TrainingHuman Focus
Manufacturing, distribution & engineering
Duplo InternationalGallery DirectCambrian PackagingCharles Faram & CoPackmePlumisEakin HealthcareHunters Contracts
Financial services & insurance
Howden InsuranceCredit GloriousKaris CapitalOmega Financial ManagementLumiant
Healthcare, education & not-for-profit
MovemberGAAGaelic Players AssociationCarebaseEcctisHistologiXDogpatch Labs
Media, events, consumer & hospitality
Mark Allen GroupConnect Global GroupCraft Irish WhiskeyCamp KeralaEthica DiamondsDriveSimple
A selection of the 140+ companies Calvin and his teams have supported in building revenue engines, across HubSpot and Centralise. Results are quoted only where the company has approved them.
Not a fit, and we will say so

Who we are not right for

Saying no early is part of the service. If any of these is you, we will tell you on the first call and, where we can, point you to who is right.

Under £5m, or under ten people

The leaks are real but the fix is usually the founder’s own habits, not a journey redesign. The book and the free self-assessment are built for you.

Pre-product-market-fit

We start where most advice stops — after a paying customer exists. If you are still finding the first repeatable sale, we are too early for you.

You want a tool installed, not a journey fixed

We will happily build in HubSpot — but only after the stage definitions, owners and numbers are agreed. A CRM configured around a broken journey is a faster way to leak revenue.

You want a report, not implementation

The Assessment is yours to keep and act on yourself. But the Diagnostic ships the first fix live in month one — if the leadership team wants a plan on the shelf, we are the wrong choice.

Outside UK and Ireland

Every engagement starts in person and the first two days of the Diagnostic are on site. If we cannot get to you in a day, we are not the right fit yet.

You need a consultant on call seven days a week

What you get instead is a standard: something shipped every fortnight, your numbers every week, replies within one working day Monday to Wednesday, and a phone number for anything urgent.

FounderProof

We show you where revenue is being lost and help you fix it. A process-engineering practice for founder- and leader-led businesses in the UK and Ireland at £5–20m revenue: the customer journey mapped from first enquiry to long-term customer, then process, HubSpot and AI to make it run without relying on any single point of failure.

calvin@founderproof.comCork & Dublin, Ireland · London, UK
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