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Haney Strategy

For Private Equity

The fractional marketing and AI seat for your value creation plan.

I hold this seat today, inside a private-equity-backed, multi-brand physical security platform.

Marketing and AI capability rarely arrives the same way in every company. I drop into the ones where it moves the number, carrying one playbook from brand to revenue, instead of a full-time hire on every cap table.

The model, as written

Organic growth

needs a seat inside the company

Add-on M&A

the deal team's play

Margin expansion

the operating playbook

Debt paydown

structured at close

Multiple at exit

the market's verdict

The rest of the model has owners on day one. The growth line is the seat I fill.

Where portfolio growth gets unlocked

What the model needs from marketing and AI.

The thesis assumes organic growth. Here are the four places marketing and AI decide whether the model hits, and the opportunity in each.

  • Every company arrived with its own marketing

    Different agency, different stack, different story in each one. The opportunity is a shared playbook and one clear view of what is working across the whole portfolio.

  • The growth in the model is not in the pipeline yet

    The plan assumes organic growth, and producing it means putting marketing squarely on the number the thesis needs. In most portfolio companies, that is not where the marketing began, and pointing it there is the work.

  • AI is a board-level question without a portfolio answer

    Every operating partner is being asked about AI. The edge goes to the portfolio with one credible answer and a way to roll it across companies, instead of solving it company by company.

  • The senior seat can be portfolio-wide, not one hire per company

    Each company needs senior marketing and AI leadership, and it does not need a separate full-time hire on every cap table. One seat that carries a shared playbook into the companies where it moves the number compounds faster, and costs less, than five separate hires.

What I believe

The portfolios that compound treat marketing and AI leadership as part of the operating model, not a line item to optimize later.They build the seat once and drop it into the companies where it moves the number most.

Jim Haney, AI Advisor and Fractional CMTO

Ways to work together

How I plug into a portfolio.

The same four ways in I run inside any company, scaled to a portfolio: fixed-price Power-Ups that power up one part of a company, embedded leadership to own the growth number, a four-week training that leaves one team running its real work with Claude, or a scoped build to ship what a company already knows it needs.

  1. Start fast

    Power-Ups

    Two are working sessions for a portfolio company's sales team, built before we meet: the LinkedIn Profile Power-Up rebuilds how the team looks before the first call for $199 per sales professional, and the AI Prospecting Power-Up powers up the outbound they send for $499 per sales professional. A third, the AI Search Power-Up, brings a portfolio company's whole search and AI visibility up to a defined standard for $12,000 all-in.

  2. Run it

    Fractional CMTO

    Senior marketing and technology leadership embedded in a portfolio company's weekly cadence, owning the growth number, without a full-time executive on the cap table. A senior leader setting direction and executing alongside the team. Outcomes tied to pipeline and revenue.

  3. Train a team

    Claude Team Training

    A four-week engagement for one portfolio company team: one manager, about ten people, and the real work they produce every week, rebuilt to run with Claude, Anthropic's AI assistant, with a named person signing off on every output. $6,500 per team, ending with the team demoing its own work to its leadership. A repeatable play: prove it in one company, then run it across the portfolio team by team.

  4. Rebuild the front door

    Website Rebuild

    A ground-up rebuild of a portfolio company's website for the buyer journey and AI search. The $5,000 Blueprint maps every buyer question and produces the exact build quote; the build ships from $25,000 all-in, with copy, design, build, and launch engineering from one senior seat, and a True-Up against the day-one baseline ninety days after launch. The company owns everything from day one.

FAQ

Common questions

Do you work for the fund or for the portfolio companies?
The portfolio companies. I am not a diligence shop or an operating partner to the fund. A firm brings me in as a fractional CMTO and I work inside its companies, leading marketing and AI on the ground, with reporting back up to the operating team that sponsors the work.
Can you work across several companies at once?
Yes, and that is where this earns its keep. I am doing it now across a multi-brand platform: one playbook, shared visibility into what is working, and senior leadership dropped into the companies where it moves the number, rather than a different agency and a different story in each one.
How does this compare to a full-time CMO in each company?
A full-time CMO is the right hire when a single company needs a dedicated leader in the seat every day. Across a portfolio, one senior leader carrying a shared playbook into the companies where it moves the number compounds faster than a separate hire in each, and the seat scales up or down with what each one actually needs.
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Next step

Put the seat where the plan needs it.

Point me at the companies that carry the growth in your model. From there we map where a marketing and AI seat moves the number fastest, and which companies it should land in first.