Case study · Consulting + SaaS · Rio AI

Bringing a climate business back to life, and handing it back stronger.

Rio was a sustainability consultancy with a software product inside it. In late 2023 it was short on runway, and the board was short on confidence. I came in through LOB as an adviser to the CEO and board — and stayed for two and a half years.

The situation

Rio needed someone to own product, customers, sales and marketing — four senior hires at around £150k a year each, which it couldn't afford. What it really needed was one person who could see across all four, move quickly, and tell the board the truth.

The first ninety days

Three days a week from October to December 2023, I reviewed the whole business: every person, every customer account, who was selling what and who was delivering it. From that came a new target operating model, which I took to the board. It secured a bridge round to put the changes into action from January 2024.

What changed

1. 01Quality, connected. Rebuilt the processes linking platform and services delivery back to what each contract actually promised.
2. 02A new commercial engine. Rebuilt the offer end to end — front of house, marketing, sales motion and delivery — with AI used throughout.
3. 03A hybrid team. Retrained and rehired the customer team into a combined consulting and sales model, and rebuilt HR, retention and policies around it.
4. 04Rio ESG became Rio AI. Rebranded and restructured the company from a consultancy into a platform-first sustainability SaaS business.
5. 05Growth. More sales, double the marketing audience, and partnerships beyond anything the company had done before.
6. 06Honest advice on capital. I sat in every fundraising pitch, and in the end advised the business to stay lean rather than chase a Series A — growing with the market and focusing on private-markets investors and infrastructure customers.

What it added up to

• SaaS revenue grew from around £400k to £1.2m, through new customers and existing ones upgrading.
• The company moved from loss-making to EBITDA-positive.
• Customer NPS went from not being measured to the highest score possible, and churn came down.
• Rio was ranked highest in its category by KanataQ.
• A 20-person team across product, engineering, marketing, sales and customer, running on operating playbooks, real SaaS KPIs and board forecasting built from scratch — including true opex and capex visibility for the board.

Handing it back

For a period I ran the company day to day. Then I handed the reins back to the CEO, with a stronger business, a clear plan and a team that could run it. That's the shape of the job: go in, solve the problem, build the engine, give it back.

A problem solver and abstract thinker who knows sustainability inside out — sent in to bring a business back, and hand it over stronger.