The work speaks
for itself.

Regal Entertainment was a $3.5 billion public company in an industry that Wall Street loved to worry about. Every year brought a new existential narrative: streaming would kill movie theaters. Video-on-demand would empty the multiplex. Home theater technology would make the cinema irrelevant. My job, at its core, was to make sure Regal didn't get valued like a dying industry when it wasn't one.

When I joined, Regal had minimal sell-side coverage and a largely undeveloped institutional investor base. I built that from zero — growing equity analyst coverage to twenty analysts and debt coverage to ten, building a loyal base of long-term institutional shareholders, and establishing the company as the credible voice in theatrical exhibition.

What I'm most proud of isn't the coverage numbers. It's the approach. I didn't manage the narrative. I built one. I helped the management team articulate why the theatrical experience was durable, what the business model actually looked like in terms of cash generation, and how to think about the risks honestly rather than dismissively. I created CinemaCon as an investor event platform. I ran investor days that were substantive rather than promotional. I stayed close to analysts and investors when things weren't perfect — because that's when credibility is either built or destroyed.

The result was a premium valuation sustained for over eleven years, a shareholder base that was sticky and sophisticated, and a company that earned the Street's respect even when the headlines suggested they should sell.

"Most IR professionals manage the message. I built the credibility behind it."

The most instructive thing about Larkin is that I had no background in freight brokerage when we started. None. That's not a caveat — it's the point. Building something you know nothing about forces you to ask first principles questions that industry veterans have stopped asking.

I incorporated the company, obtained operating authority and licensing, selected the technology stack including the TMS, stood up banking and operational infrastructure, helped hire the initial team, and managed finance, billing, accounts receivable, accounts payable, and payroll. I helped establish offices, solved operating problems, and handled the customer issues that come with building a logistics company in real time.

The business reached approximately $15 million in about two and a half years. Today it generates $80 million or more annually, operates across multiple East Coast offices, and moves roughly 20,000 loads per year with close to 1,000 carrier relationships. It may top $100 million.

Without the foundational operating work — the systems, the infrastructure, the discipline of building operations correctly from the beginning — the company likely doesn't exist. That's not an exaggeration. Companies built on weak foundations fail as they scale. Larkin didn't, because the foundation was right.

Zep was a specialty chemicals company where I was brought in to build institutional credibility and analyst coverage — standard investor relations work. I built strong relationships with both the sell side and institutional investors, establishing the company as a credible, well-governed mid-cap industrial.

Then a facility fire destroyed approximately 35% of the company's production capacity. That's the kind of event that breaks a company's relationship with the Street, particularly when institutional investors have been told the story of operational reliability. The question wasn't just operational recovery — it was whether the management team would handle the communication in a way that preserved trust.

I helped management communicate the event and the recovery clearly, honestly, and without spin. Not minimizing the impact. Not getting ahead of the recovery timeline. Telling investors what we knew, what we didn't know, and what we were doing. That approach — counterintuitive as it sometimes feels — is the one that preserves long-term credibility. The operations recovered in approximately three months. The company was sold to private equity approximately nine months later.

XenonArc had a real value proposition buried inside an offering that was nearly impossible to explain. It took me approximately 90 days to fully understand what the company actually did. That's not a knock on the company — it's an honest reflection of how difficult the positioning was. If someone who is paid to understand these things needed three months, the commercial approach needed to change.

The breakthrough was reframing what the company did in terms its customers could understand and relate to immediately. XenonArc helped manufacturers and suppliers serve non-strategic, long-tail customers — the ones too small and fragmented to justify dedicated attention — with dedicated focus and better economics. Once that framing was clear, the commercial motion became much more intuitive.

I helped rebuild the commercial narrative and then put it to work. In under a year, I personally generated approximately $150 million of near-close pipeline — which would have ranked me among the top salespeople in the company. That's not about sales skill. It's about narrative clarity translating directly into commercial momentum.

PartPic was an early-stage company with genuine technology and a compelling vision — visual parts recognition that could save enterprise customers significant time and cost. The founders were technically excellent and product-focused. What they were struggling with was translating that technology vision into enterprise commercial traction.

The problem, on arrival, was familiar: the product and offering needed better positioning for the enterprise buyers they were targeting. The pitch was product-first rather than problem-first. Enterprise procurement decisions are made on the basis of business problems solved, not technology capabilities described.

I helped reposition the offering, improved the commercial pipeline, and better aligned the company with how enterprise customers made decisions. The pipeline strengthened. Approximately five months after I joined, Amazon acquired the company. I can't claim the acquisition was my work — the technology was clearly the driver — but improved commercial clarity and positioning almost certainly contributed to the acquisition positioning.

Over the past several years, I've mentored more than 300 companies across a wide range of industries, stages, and founder backgrounds. Those companies have collectively raised more than $400 million. Multiple founders I've worked with have won $1 million prizes at 43North, one of the world's most competitive startup competitions.

The common thread through all of these engagements is the same thing I see at every level: founders who are further along in their thinking than their evidence warrants. Not because they're delusional — most of them are smart, driven, and genuinely onto something. But the instinct of every founder is to fall in love with their solution before they've fully proven the problem. Customer discovery isn't a box to check. It's the most important work a founder does before they build anything.

I've worked extensively with founders from underserved communities — women founders, Black and Brown founders, founders with disabilities. The strategic challenges are the same. The ecosystem challenges are often meaningfully different. That experience has made me a better advisor to every founder I work with.

What I give founders isn't encouragement. It's clarity. The ones who want the hard truth tend to be the ones who go on to raise real capital and build real companies.