Issue No. 1 · The Quarterly Review of Operator Decisions
Senior advisory for operators who have already run things — and refuse to take counsel from people who haven't.
A.S. Vaughn is a solo senior advisor working directly with founders and operators on a small number of engagements each year. No decks for decks' sake. No junior teams. No quarter-long discovery phases. The work is short, senior, and meant to resolve a single high-stakes question in four to eight weeks.
§ I · On the Engagement
What you are actually buying: one senior operator's attention, applied to one question.
The practice accepts a maximum of fourteen engagements per year and has run referral-only since 2021. Each engagement begins with a single, named question — usually a pricing call, a build-versus-buy, a capital structure decision, a founder-level conflict, or a hire that cannot be unmade. The principal works the file himself. There are no associates, no analysts, no subcontractor bench.
An engagement typically compresses a six-month strategy review into 5.2 weeks. Deliverables are written, not presented. The output is a decision and a short rationale the client can carry into a board meeting, a vendor negotiation, or a Monday morning standup. Eighty-four percent of clients execute the primary recommendation within ninety days of project close.
Prospective clients are not sold on transformation, exits, or fundraising outcomes. They are invited into a paid ninety-minute Strategy Diagnostic to determine whether a real engagement is warranted — and, often, whether it isn't.
§ II · The Receipts
14
Engagements per year, capped. Referral-only since 2021.
5.2wks
Average engagement length across sixty-three completed projects, 2018–2025.
84%
Of clients execute the primary recommendation within ninety days of close.
$214M
Cumulative incremental ARR or EBITDA reported back by clients, 2019–2024.
§ III · On the Record
Documented elsewhere, by name.
The practice is not anonymous. It has been written about, bylined, and named in publications that vet their sources. A skeptical founder is encouraged to leave this page and confirm.
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Harvard Business Review
Eleven invited installments of the "Working It Out" advice column, 2023–2024.
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Operator Monthly, 2024
Named one of "The 30 Operators Who Actually Write."
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SaaStr Annual
Invited speaker, 2022, 2023, 2024.
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PEI Operating Partners Forum, 2024
Featured speaker; Operators vs. Consultants podcast, episode 142.
The principal additionally sits on two independent boards — a Series B vertical SaaS company and a thirty-eight-year-old specialty manufacturer — and writes a paid newsletter, The Margin File, with 6,400 subscribers and a 71% open rate.
§ IV · A Note on Audience
"This practice is for founder-led companies in the messy middle — doing two to fifty million in annual revenue, stuck, scaling sideways, or about to make a decision they cannot unmake. It is not for first-time founders looking for encouragement. It is not for boards in search of consensus. It is not for vendors hoping to be introduced."
A.S. Vaughn · Brooklyn, NY
§ V · The Next Move
Book the Diagnostic.
A paid, ninety-minute Strategy Diagnostic with A.S. Vaughn. It is not a discovery call, not a discovery phase, and not free. It is the first hour and a half of a senior operator's attention, applied directly to the question that brought you here. If an engagement is warranted, it is proposed at the close of the Diagnostic. If it isn't, you leave with the clarity of having been told so.
The practice is referral-only since 2021 and accepts a maximum of fourteen engagements per year. Booking is deliberate, not urgent.
Prefer to write first? [email protected]
67 Greenpoint Ave, Suite 4B
Brooklyn, NY 11222
+1 (212) 555-0186