Strategy consulting from someone who has actually run the company.
Right now every board, CEO, and business owner is asking the same two questions: where does AI actually pay, and who has actually done this? Most consultants answer with a deck. I answer with the route I’ve driven.
Advice when you want counsel. Execution when you want it done. From board strategy to AI adoption that pays for itself, I have driven the route as CEO, COO and CTO, and I will drive it with your team.
How I engage: three levels of ownership.
The thesis is the same at every level: advice when you need judgment, ownership when you need the outcome delivered, from someone with no stake in which answer you choose. You get the playbooks I paid full price to learn, and the judgment of someone who has run them. We pick the level together on the discovery call.
Advise
I advise you on how to do the work: standing counsel to the CEO, the board, or the leadership team. You make the calls; I make sure you see them clearly. Retainer or cadence-based. For a single facilitated offsite instead of standing advisory, see facilitation.
Enable
I help your team drive the execution: a scoped initiative with a plan, owners, and dates, where your people do the work and I keep it honest and moving. A go-to-market reset, a platform decision, an AI adoption plan. Clear start, clear end, project fee.
Drive
I take the problem and drive the solution directly, in consultation with you: transformation leadership, post-merger integration, restarting a stalled transformation, company-wide change too big to advise from the sidelines. I do not just advise the change, I drive it. Priced like the operating commitment it is.
Hiring the right kind of help.
A strategy consultant studies your problem and hands you a recommendation. A business advisor stands beside you over time while you make the calls. An interim executive takes the seat and delivers the outcome. Most firms sell you the first. Most of what companies at inflection points actually need is the second or the third.
I work all three ways, and I will tell you plainly which one your situation needs. The test is simple: if the problem is missing evidence, a firm can fix that. If the problem is a decision under uncertainty, or a change your organisation has to live through, you want someone who has run the company. I have held the CEO, COO and CTO seats through a Nasdaq IPO, a $250M transformation at Cox Automotive, growth from $300M to $500M at New Relic, and PE-backed turnarounds, with 35 M&A transactions and 18 exits along the way.
And because the goal is your team running without me, everything is built to end. Advice you rent forever is not advice. It is dependency with a logo. And when the work is about the leader rather than the company, that is executive coaching.
Ken led our $160M+ cloud, engineering, and DevOps modernization across a $3B+ portfolio. He brought clarity, velocity, and accountability to every initiative.
Decisions I have sat in.
The product is strategic judgment under uncertainty: the calls with no undo. The method behind those calls is written up in Strategic Judgment Under Uncertainty. Names and companies withheld. The situations are real.
The $80M sell-or-die decision
M&A · foundersTwo founders, months of runway, and one question with no undo: sell now or push through. We worked the decision the way it deserved: real numbers, real floor, what each outcome meant for the people. They sold for $80M. Each founder left with $10M and a company that landed intact.
The write-off that wasn’t
Restructuring · ventureA tier-one VC had $50M in and the company was heading to zero. Instead of the funeral, we restructured and merged it into another portfolio company. A 100% loss became a 10% haircut. Nobody frames that deal on a wall, but the LPs know the difference.
The registration-desk question
IPO · boardsMid-IPO registration, a strategic buyer shows up. Go public or take the exit? There is no generic answer; there is a disciplined way to decide. We built the criteria before the emotion built them for us. They went public.
The relaunch
Public company · turnaroundA public company under stock pressure, the old team gone, a new executive team that had to land fast and be seen landing. The work was sequencing: early wins, honest internal narrative, an operating rhythm the street could feel. Five months in, the verdict came from their Fortune 100 customer advisory board: the most valuable functionality they had delivered.
The interim who stayed ahead of it
PE · interim leadershipA PE firm removed his boss and asked him to hold the seat. Interim is a trap when you play it safe. We treated it as the job interview it really was: run the operating rhythm like an owner, make the two decisions the firm was watching, and give the board a reason to stop looking. He learned to lead a team through transformation, and held it until the new CTO landed.
Private equity firms and family offices.
I work directly with PE firms and family offices on their portfolio companies, especially technology and tech-enabled businesses. The work is operational, not slide-deck: troubleshooting a company that is off plan, leadership transitions and cover while you search, post-merger integration that actually captures the deal thesis, and exit readiness.
I have sat on your side of the table too: a decade as Managing Partner at Fortress Capital Partners, 15+ exits, an 11x return on Invirtus, and 35+ M&A transactions as an operator. I have written about why integration beats growth speed and how a private equity firm gets AI into its portfolio companies. I turn AI into EBITDA for portfolio companies: workload by workload, starting with the boring wins. That work now has its own page: AI consulting.
Where AI actually pays.
I build with this technology myself, and I have deployed it inside real companies at real budgets. That changes the advice. No platform worship, no doom, no deck: a workload-by-workload answer to where AI pays in your business, and where it does not yet. For portfolio companies the question is simpler than the conferences make it. I turn AI into EBITDA for portfolio companies: workload by workload, starting with the boring wins. I have written up the playbooks for AI business transformation and for PE portfolio companies.
The moderate-budget AI win
Mid-market · automationA mid-market CEO asked the question I hear most: how do we use AI smartly without an enterprise budget? We skipped the strategy deck and went looking for the boring wins: the phone calls, voice, texts, emails, and browser work his team was re-typing into systems all day. Those flows did not need a platform. They needed AI reasoning in the middle of known inputs and outputs. One $25M company took $250,000 of annual cost out with a one-time $50,000 investment.
The tokenomics correction
Enterprise · AI spendAn enterprise went all in with a frontier model vendor, then noticed the bill: tokens burning with no clear proof of value. Nobody had thought through the tokenomics. We mapped the workloads honestly. Open models were plenty smart for a large share of the tasks, which cut some workload spend by 80 percent. For the speed-critical paths we moved inference to emerging silicon like Cerebras, with responses coming back roughly 18X faster than the frontier setup. Same outcomes, a fraction of the bill.
Based in Alpharetta, Georgia. I work remotely with leaders everywhere, and on-site when the work calls for it: offsites, working sessions, and engagements anywhere in the country. Atlanta metro in person is easy. (629) 304-8755 · ken@kengavranovic.com
The ones people actually ask.
What does a strategy consultant actually do?
Helps you make the calls that decide the company: where to play, what to stop, how to organise, when to buy or sell. The difference between consultants is what stands behind the advice. Mine is having made those calls with my own name on the result, as a founder, CEO, COO and CTO.
What does strategy consulting cost?
It depends on the level of ownership: standing advisory runs on a retainer, scoped projects carry a project fee, and transformation leadership is priced like the operating commitment it is. What moves the number is the scope, the cadence, and how much of the work is on-site. We agree the number on the discovery call, once we both know the shape of the work.
Consultant, advisor, or interim executive: which do I need?
A consultant studies your problem and hands you a recommendation. An advisor stands beside you over time while you make the calls. An interim executive takes the seat and delivers the outcome. I work all three ways; the honest answer about which you need is usually clear within one conversation.
When does an operator beat a consulting firm?
When the problem is a decision rather than an analysis. Firms are excellent at producing evidence. They are structurally unable to own an outcome. If what you need is judgment under uncertainty and someone accountable for what happens next, you want a person who has run the company, not a team that has studied it.
Do you work with private equity firms?
Yes, directly: portfolio-company troubleshooting, leadership transitions, post-merger integration, AI value creation, and exit readiness, especially in technology and tech-enabled businesses. I spent a decade as a Managing Partner investing in and sitting on the boards of early-stage companies, so I have been on both sides of the table.
What does a typical engagement look like?
A discovery call, then a short calibration: what success looks like and how we will know. Advisory work runs as standing sessions with ad hoc access between them. Project and transformation work carries its own plan with owners and dates. Everything is built to end: the goal is your team running without me.
Do you work on-site, and where are you based?
Based in Alpharetta, Georgia. Advisory sessions run remotely with leaders everywhere; for offsites, board meetings and transformation work I am on-site anywhere in the country. Atlanta metro in person is easy.
Bring me the decision.
Forty-five minutes, no pressure, no pitch. Bring the decision that is actually on your desk, and we will work out together whether you need advice, a project, or an operator, and whether I am the right one.
Or reach me directly:
(629) 304-8755
ken@kengavranovic.com