What does the mandate own?
The Operating Partner mandate owns the technology and data view an investor is accountable for: what the target's estate can carry, what will break the thesis, what the first budget after close has to fund, and whether the value plan converts into a delivery plan. The operator answers to the fund, not to the company being assessed.
When do you bring it in?
Bring the mandate in before signing, when the technology and data position of a target has to be understood by people who will own the consequence — or immediately after close, when the synergy plan is still a model and no one holds the integration to it. It also fits a portfolio company where the investor needs a technology read that is not written by the team being read.
What does the operator bring?
The collective takes the seat with an operator who has held the C-level seats being assessed, which changes what comes back. An estate read by someone who has had to migrate one produces different findings from an estate read against a checklist, and the difference shows up in which risks are called material.
Which side of the table is this seat on?
The fund's. Every other seat in the catalogue sits inside the client organisation and answers to its executive committee. This one answers to the investor, and it is offered separately for that reason rather than as a variant of the CTO or CDIO mandate: the buyer is different, the question is different, and so is what a good answer looks like.
What does the mandate own?
The technology and data position an investor is accountable for. Before the deal: what the target's estate can actually carry, which risks are material to the thesis rather than merely present, and what the first budget after close has to fund. After it: whether the value plan converts into a delivery plan with dates and an owner, or stays a model that nobody is held to.
What is the state of the proof?
Erwan Deschamps held a CDIO advisory mandate on The Kooples across 2024 and 2025, which carried the technology and data due diligence behind the acquisition by Verdoso. That is the mandate this seat is offered on.
No figure is cited here. The engagement has no published metric with a source behind it, and a seat page that invents one to look better proven costs more than the silence does.
What the Operating Partner mandate is not?
It is not a second due diligence. Where a bounded assessment is what is wanted, that is Due Diligence, and it ends in a report rather than a seat.
It is not a portfolio-wide advisory retainer. The mandate attaches to a transaction and the ownership period that follows it, with an entry, an exit and a named permanent owner at the end — the same shape every other seat in the catalogue carries.
It is not the company's seat. The operator answers to the investor, and the organisation being assessed is told so.
This section is being written. Contact the collective for details in the meantime.
What the mandate fixes at entry
We leave when the function can run without us: an identified permanent owner, a roadmap they hold, and a team that no longer routes through the interim.
- Who is the buyer of this seat?
- A fund, an acquirer or a corporate development team — the investor side, not the company side. That is what separates it from every other seat in the catalogue: the other eight sit inside the client organisation and answer to its executive, while this one answers to whoever is putting the money in.
- How is it different from Due Diligence?
- Due Diligence is a bounded engagement that ends in a report an investment committee can act on. The Operating Partner seat is held: the same judgment carried across the deal and into the ownership period, through the integration and the first budget cycles, rather than handed over at signature.
- Is there a published mandate behind this seat?
- Yes. Erwan Deschamps held a CDIO advisory mandate on The Kooples through 2024 and 2025, covering the technology and data due diligence behind its acquisition by Verdoso. No figure is cited on this page because none has been published with a source.
- What does it connect to?
- Due Diligence before the deal, and the From Deal to Value programme after it. The seat is what carries one reading of the estate across both rather than restarting it at close.
- How does it end?
- With the investment thesis translated into a technology and data plan the portfolio company owns, and a named permanent owner inside it on an agreed date.