Whatever the sector, senior expertise solves the challenge.

My commitment has always been to the start-up and scale-up work where I held my C suite roles. I have spent more than 23 years in business, 14 of them in the C suite. The last decade has been almost entirely in start-ups, scale-ups and exits: senior executive roles brought in under investors, working with the biggest VC in the world and its founders, and staying the course through to exit. Before that, years in MedTech and senior leadership roles across healthcare providers and biotech companies.

My route into healthcare was a personal one. I lost a child, and I made a commitment that the loss would mean something: that I would spend my career making a difference. Through that I found animal therapy and horses, which led me to found a platform of my own dedicated to giving something back to these remarkable animals. It has always had its own team because I was only ever the ideas person, and I never worked on it day to day, but it remains what I am proudest of, and proof that a mission, held for long enough, becomes something that stands on its own.

Because that business stands on its own, I still needed to work. And in March I found myself unexpectedly out of work. Navigating the C suite world and applying for roles I was more than qualified for, I realised the world had changed underneath me: we are moving away from the old way of doing things. It gave me space to ask a bigger question: what does this industry actually need right now? I spoke with trusted colleagues I have worked with for more than ten years, across industries and C suite functions, and we were all in the same place. The old model no longer works.

Too many businesses skip the senior roles, or take them on alone, and don't want to listen when things go wrong. But having an idea is only a quarter of the problem. What makes a business is real experience: product market fit and real execution. It is the failures that make the successes.

And bringing in one senior leader for a few days a week does not solve it either. When they leave, the work and the gap are still there. What is needed is expertise around the table with no ego: the full mix of leadership, marketing, finance, operations, science, technology, regulation, defence and deep tech, assembled around the business that needs it.

That is why I started ExecFoundry. A network of around 20 senior people I have worked with and trusted for years, with exceptional skills from marketing to finance, defence and government, regulation, operations and deep tech. A platform where founders can access the right expertise at the right time, be supported through the highs and lows, and keep hold of their business.

Michelle Lea