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Apex engagement · Application only

Fractional Growth Leadership. For when growth is a board-level question.

A senior leadership role taken on by the principal — not a service tier, not an agency engagement. Strategic ownership of marketing, growth operations, and revenue infrastructure across one or more brands. For companies where the work is too consequential for outsourced execution.

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One to two engagements held at any time. Application-based by design.

Problems this role solves

When the gap is leadership, not execution.

A Growth Partnership embeds with your team to fix execution. Fractional Growth Leadership owns the strategy itself — including what your team should look like and how the board should hear about it.

Marketing leadership absent at the C-suite table

Growth is a board priority, but the leadership team has no senior marketing voice. Founders end up making channel decisions, brand decisions, and hiring decisions without strategic context — and the cost compounds across every quarter.

Multi-brand or multi-product strategic coordination

Holding company structures, parent + spin-off brands, or multi-SKU portfolios need someone holding the through-line. Without that voice, every brand competes for the same attention internally and gets none externally.

Investor / board reporting needs a senior marketing voice

Boards want to hear about CAC, LTV, payback, contribution margin, attribution — framed in their language, with a credible operator answering the hard questions. A senior fractional CMO is the right voice for that room.

Team building, hiring, and growth architecture

The next CMO, head of growth, performance lead, or RevOps owner needs to be identified, hired, and onboarded. Most founders make at least one expensive bad hire here. A fractional senior leader writes the JDs, screens, and structures the team.

How the role works

A leadership seat. Not a deliverable list.

01

Strategic ownership

Full strategic responsibility for growth, performance, retention, and revenue infrastructure. The principal sits in your leadership team — not as an advisor, as an owner of the function.

02

Board + investor support

Board decks, investor updates, growth narrative ownership. We translate operating metrics into the language your board actually decides in.

03

Hiring + team architecture

JDs, screening, structured interviews, and onboarding for senior marketing + growth roles. We hire the team that will eventually replace us.

04

Multi-brand orchestration

Where applicable, we coordinate growth strategy across brands or product lines — shared infrastructure, distinct positioning, no internal competition.

05

Equity-tied retainer options

For the right fit, we structure retainers with an equity or success-fee component. We have skin in the outcome.

What it isn't

The boundary conditions, said plainly.

A premium category attracts misuses. Naming what this role is not is a courtesy to both sides — it saves the wrong conversations.

Not a service tier

You cannot bundle this. It is a leadership role on your team, not a deliverable list.

Not an agency engagement

No account management layer, no team of juniors. The principal does the work — and is named in your org chart.

Not media management

The role is strategic ownership. Performance marketing execution flows through it but is not the core deliverable.

Not infinite-scale

We hold one or two of these at any time. The model breaks if we take on more.

Who this is for

A narrow fit, intentionally.

Fractional Growth Leadership is the right intervention for a small set of company stages. Naming them precisely saves wasted conversations on both sides.

Best fit

  • Scaling D2C brands at ₹15–50 Cr ARR planning a 3–5x trajectory
  • Post-PMF B2B SaaS with growth as a board-level priority
  • Founder-led companies with no senior marketing leader yet
  • Holding-company or multi-brand structures needing growth coordination
  • Pre-IPO or pre-Series-B brands needing CMO-grade reporting

The application process

How an engagement actually begins.

01

Application

Brief intake form. We need company stage, revenue band, why now, who the principal would report to, and the strategic question driving the search.

02

Discovery call

A 45-minute call with Rishabh. We pressure-test fit honestly — for both sides. About a third of applications close here because the fit is wrong.

03

Diagnostic engagement

Every Fractional Growth Leadership engagement begins with a 2–3 week paid Strategic Diagnostic. This is non-negotiable. Both sides need the same baseline before strategic ownership is handed over.

04

Engagement structure

Scope, cadence, retainer + equity terms (if applicable), and a 6-month minimum commitment. 30-day notice after that.

FAQ

Questions worth asking

How is this different from a Growth Partnership?
A Growth Partnership embeds with your existing team to execute on a strategy. Fractional Growth Leadership owns the strategy itself — including which team to build and how to report to the board. The first is operator-grade; the second is leadership-grade. Most companies need the former. A specific kind of company needs the latter.
Why must every engagement start with a Diagnostic?
Taking strategic ownership without a shared baseline is malpractice. The Diagnostic gives both sides a documented view of unit economics, funnel mechanics, retention reality, and the actual operating constraints. Without that document, the first 60 days of any engagement are wasted re-discovering what could have been mapped in three weeks.
What kind of equity structures are typical?
Where applicable, we have used a small equity grant (0.25%–1%, vesting over 24 months) layered onto a reduced cash retainer. For companies with strong cash but constrained equity, we run a pure-cash retainer with a quarterly performance bonus tied to specific KPIs. The structure is negotiated to align incentives, not to extract value.
What is the minimum commitment?
Six months. Strategic ownership cannot deliver results in a shorter horizon — the first 90 days are diagnostic, the next 90 are when the systems actually start compounding. After the six-month minimum, the engagement is 30-day notice on either side.
Why are you application-based?
We hold one or two of these engagements at any time, alongside a small roster of Growth Partnerships. The application step is honest about that capacity and protects both sides from wasted conversations. About a third of applicants are referred to a Growth Partnership instead because that's the right intervention for their stage.
Can you take a board observer or advisor seat instead?
For some companies, yes. Board advisor and board observer structures are appropriate when the company already has senior marketing leadership and needs strategic outside counsel rather than embedded ownership. Scoped separately, often quarterly cadence, equity-only compensation.
What happens when we hire a full-time CMO?
That is the goal. The fractional role exists to bridge the period before a full-time CMO can be productively hired — and to help find and onboard that person. Most engagements transition to advisor structure (or end cleanly) once the full-time hire is in seat for 90 days.

If this is the right intervention.

Tell us about the company and the strategic question driving the search. We reply to every application within 48 hours.

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