AthenePartners... What the heck have I been up to

Some of you noticed that I updated my LinkedIn profile a while ago and were asking me about it, so it is time to let the cat out of the bag. For the last 13 months I have been quietly starting a company, AthenePartners.

So what is AthenePartners?

I love partnering with awesome people, on technology missions that matter, to transform a company and an industry, so I started a company to do just that. 

I have found that in many cases, the advisory, board, and investor models don’t serve the CEOs well at critical inflection points, to transform. I felt there was a better way.

Transformations by their very nature are an incredibly heavy lift. The depth of engagement often needs to be at a daily and weekly basis, deeply embedded in the business, to effectively impact. Transformations aren’t constrained to a single function or capability, though advisory constructs often are. Instead, to best accelerate the transformation, AthenePartners works across the complex latticework of product, GTM, people, financial architecture, and how the company operates. 

This means

• being a thought partner to the CEO, discussing and brainstorming and refining the strategy,
• designing and refining the GTM motions with the CEO and CRO
• evolving the product and platform with the CEO and product leader(s),
• refining and tuning the financial architecture with the CEO and CFO
• mentoring and recruiting the right leaders
• challenging and supporting the leadership team to operate faster & better from dashboards to MBOs
• connecting with other great people to learn from, be inspired by and have fun along the way

It means being deeply embedded in the business and operating from a position of knowledge & curiosity, experience & empathy.   

So, netting it out, AthenePartners deeply partners with a select group of CEOs at critical inflections in their company’s journey to accelerate value creation and de-risk execution 

All these fancy words, means finding awesome companies with amazing CEOs that want a true partner at a critical inflection in their journey, and then rolling up our sleeves and going to work to help them transform. 

What do leaders say about me and AthenePartners?

I have had the privilege of working with some wonderful CEOs over the years and here is what a few have to say as I more publicly “launch” AthenePartners...

 “I have worked with Bill for many years and continue to learn from him. I can always count on Bill to bring energy and thoughtful insight to everything he engages on. He connects product and go-to-market in a way few people can.” 

        - Satya Nadella (CEO, Microsoft)

"Bill is one of those rare people who is able to elevate the performance of a leadership team by creating strategic clarity, reinforcing operational excellence, and amplifying the power of teamwork. He is purpose-driven. He is passionate. He is a servant leader. "

         - Kevin Johnson (CEO, Juniper Networks, Starbucks)

"I have worked with many great leaders over the years and Bill stands out in his ability to see the broader picture and then go deep to drive transformation with speed and focus, catalyzing change from people to product to partnerships to financial architecture. He was a wonderful partner for me." 

        - Meg Whitman (CEO, eBay, HP, Quibi)

"When Bill presents his well-considered thoughts everyone reaches for their pens and paper and gets to work on his suggestions. He is especially good at coaching execs on Product and Marketing strategies and people issues. It was an absolute pleasure to work with Bill, learn from his broad experience at the top of the IT industry and enjoy his sense of humour and high energy. Any company and company founder would be lucky to have Bill alongside them."

        - Rod Drury (Founder and CEO, Xero)

"Bill possesses great wisdom born of experience that is broad in scope and traverses from the most universal strategic questions to detailed execution. He frames the big issues with incredible insight and then moves to action quickly. He is unique in his ability to communicate deep and wide across all functions and does so with intensity, humility, and passion. Everyone looks forward to interacting with Bill because he makes us better. He has increased the company's value significantly and is a great partner for me."

        - Jeff Hudson (CEO, Venafi, Vhayu Technologies, MS2)

Lets drill down a bit more on the work that AthenePartners does…

The reality is that transforming a company (and an industry) is incredibly challenging. It is a tremendous amount of work where speed and quality of strategy and execution is critical. 

CEOs often find themselves alone, with a variety of investor and employee agendas swirling around them, with limited capacity to fulfill the transformation opportunity. Having a trusted, objective, experienced partner who works with them side-by-side can make the difference between success and failure. Having a partner that has both an inside perspective and outside perspective is often incredibly valuable. Making decisions with the help of a trusted partner who has walked in their shoes and those of their GTM and product leaders and who has a deep network of advisors alongside them gives these CEOs a significant advantage.  

We think and work together at 50,000 feet and at 500 feet. We brainstorm from a position of depth and breadth as CEOs and their leadership team determine strategy and translate into execution. 

Transformations have to happen across a variety of areas to be effective and AthenePartners bring the experience and capability to do just that. As a result, the work we do with CEOs generally is focused in the following 10 areas….

A.   Revamping the go-to-market (i.e. marketing, sales, customer success) to deal with a rapidly scaling business, customer base, customer audience, and geographies.

B.   Evolving the product(s) and their associated business model (e.g., product capabilities, pricing, packaging, positioning)

C.   Transforming the operating model of the company so the right metrics are tracked, the cadence for reviewing results, and the right incentives in place to drive these outcomes

D.   Revamping the financial architecture and cost structure of the company to ensure every dollar spent has maximum impact and accelerates growth.

E.   Activating and enabling the right strategic partners

F.   Reconstructing the customer journey and rethinking the resulting product and GTM motion to enable customers to realize more value, faster. 

G.   Refining how the CEOs and leadership team spend their time to maximize impact and leverage their “zones of genius.

H.   Raising the game of each member of the leadership team and/or recruiting new leaders

I.     Introducing and engaging with specific customers, investors and/or thought partners

What type of companies are best suited for AthenePartners?

It starts with the CEO and their desire for a partner. It is then about the transformation and the mission of the company. AthenePartners focuses on two transformations: 

• Scale-up companies.  Companies with emerging product-market fit and the associated dramatic acceleration in scale and complexity.
• Established companies that are market leaders, but at an inflection point in repositioning and recapitalizing to ensure continues market leadership and expansion.

Who are the initial cohort of AthenePartner companies?

The initial cohort of AthenePartners companies are transforming a wide range of markets from commercial insurance to collaboration software, from healthcare payments to healthcare delivery, from quick-serve retail experiences to commercial workspaces and IT security. These are iconic companies like Color www.color.com, Mural www.mural.co, Venafi www.venafi.com, Embroker www.embroker.com, and MultiPlan www.multiplan.com.  These companies are led by passionate, capable, and committed leaders who want a partner to deliver the best outcomes for their companies, their customers, their investors, and the people they bring along with them.

These leaders and and their companies provide software and technology that reduces the cost of healthcare in the US by billions; secures the identifies of tens of millions of software workloads; turns people into collaboration superheroes; ensures that specific populations are safer from Covid infection, heart disease and breast cancer; and reduces the cost and friction for small- and medium-sized business to get the best insurance for their needs.

www.AthenePartners.com