Which of your portfolio companies is actually on plan?
Humus & Shore moves stuck enterprise deals at private equity portfolio companies, then builds the sales system that keeps them moving, comparable across the portfolio.
Brandon Geter, founder. You work with him directly.
Eight questions, about three minutes. Your answers stay in this browser.
An example reading
A composite $1B mid-market fund with 8 portfolio companies, built from published benchmarks rather than a client.
- Binding constraint
- Comparability
- Portfolio companies are not measured the same way, so they cannot be ranked. Everything downstream — where operating time goes, what the playbook fixes, what an LP is shown — is being decided without a comparable base.
- Baseline
- 52 of 100
- Suggested engagement
- Foundations
What this example is built on
Working now inside a private equity–backed industrial platform. Before the practice: ten years selling complex solutions into large enterprises, then building and running the teams that did.
See the workFive questions to ask before Monday’s partner review
Ask every portfolio company CEO the same five. The answers line up side by side, and the gaps show where to look first.
- Which deals moved forward in the last 30 days, and what did the buyer do to move each one?
- On the largest open deal, who signs, and has anyone from the company met them?
- Who inside that customer wants this to happen, and what changes for them personally if it does?
- What has to be true before a deal counts as qualified here, and would the other companies count it the same way?
- Which deals in the forecast have gone quiet, and when do they get marked lost?
The week before the partner review
Five companies, five decks, five definitions of a qualified pipeline.
The answer gets assembled from impressions, and underneath every deck sit six-figure deals, five months deep in buying committees nobody has mapped.
So which do you choose? Another quarter of operating time spent on instinct? Or a revenue engine you can read the same way at every company?
How it works
First 60 days
The stuck deals, who on the committee actually signs, and what the product is worth in that buyer’s own words. It opens with a two-week Diagnostic.
What stays behind
Sales stages that follow how buyers decide, champions who carry the deal internally, and forecasts that mean the same thing at company five as at company one.
Later
Add-ons that sell as one company, and the evidence the next owner will test, built before anyone asks for it.
Try it on one company
Name a company and paste its website, or two sentences on what it does. The read comes back as one page, laid out to paste into a partner memo, with a link to share it.
Two or three concrete sentences
What you type here is sent to write the read and kept so its link works. It is never sold or shared for advertising.
See a real readWhat the work looks like
Three deliverables from a current engagement, rebuilt with invented figures. Same structure, same method, same standard of evidence.
Multi-unit industrial platform
Path to 2.5× revenue
Commercial analysis: Exhibits 1–2
Illustrative · invented figures
Marketing agency renewal
Pipeline or activity?
Agency audit: Exhibits 3–4
Illustrative · invented figures
Inside sales and business development
New customer playbook
Sales playbook: Exhibit 5
Illustrative · generic plays
Who you’d work with
Brandon Geter
Founder, Humus & Shore
- Ten years selling complex solutions into large enterprises: first carrying a number, then building and running the teams that did.
- Since 2023 the practice has worked across advanced manufacturing, nuclear energy, cybersecurity and B2B software.
- One operator, a limited number of engagements at a time.
How it starts, and what it costs
Every engagement opens with a first sprint (sixty days for a private equity portfolio company, thirty otherwise), refunded in full if none of the strategies the client acts on has moved a stuck deal forward by the end of it.
At a portfolio company, Sprint 1 opens with a two-week Diagnostic, $15,000, that counts toward it. The firm can stop after the Diagnostic, or after Sprint 1.
Questions
What does it cost, and when can we stop?
Every engagement starts with Sprint 1: 60 days at one portfolio company, opening with a two-week Diagnostic ($15,000) that counts toward it. The firm can stop after the Diagnostic or after Sprint 1, and each later sprint is invoiced as it begins. Foundations, Growth and Scale are priced in full on the private equity page.
Who does the work?
Brandon Geter, directly. Humus & Shore is one operator, so nothing is handed to someone more junior than the problem, and only a few companies run at a time.
What happens to company data?
In the diagnostic on this page, nothing you type leaves your browser. In an engagement, each company keeps its CRM: the work reads the exports or read access the company grants. The website read is different: what you type there is sent to write the read and kept so its link works.
How does Sprint 1 work?
Sprint 1 works the live opportunities that are already stuck: thirty days for a founder, sixty for a private equity portfolio company, where the first two weeks are a Diagnostic. In week one the opportunities are written down — stage, value, and when each last moved — with the strategies recommended for each, and the client keeps a copy. If none of the strategies the client acts on has moved a stuck deal forward by the end of Sprint 1, the fee is returned in full. Moving forward means a deal advances a stage, or one that had gone quiet re-engages.
Who decides whether the outcome was met?
The measures are agreed during Sprint 1, set against the week-one baseline, and written into the contract before any fee depends on them.
How does this work across a portfolio?
The same diagnostic, definitions and scorecard are used at each company, so results come back in the same units and can be compared. Each company keeps its CRM: today the work reads exports or read access, and the comparison sits above it.
Does Sprint 1 count toward the engagement?
For a private equity portfolio company or a founder, yes: Sprint 1 is the first sprint of the engagement and part of its total. For a venture platform, no: its pilot is a separate decision, judged on its own, and paying for it is how both sides learn whether the problem is urgent enough to solve properly.