Fractional COO

Find the revenue you're already losing.

Between a new lead and a renewal, most founder-led businesses lose money they never see. I own that whole line — acquisition, conversion, retention, unit economics — and build the systems that close the gaps. One or two days a week, inside your business.

Worked with
Traktion Uber Urban Company Cloud Cycle Housekeep Zeelo Flylane
Where it goes

Three reasons a business misses out on revenue it has already paid for.

01

Nobody knows the full unit economics.

Not the gross number — the real one. What a customer costs to serve once support, delivery and refunds are counted, and which segments are quietly losing money while the top line grows.

02

The reporting can't be trusted.

The CRM says one thing, the finance export says another, and the spreadsheet somebody maintains says a third. So decisions get made on whichever number is nearest to hand rather than the one that's right.

03

Nobody audits the processes.

How you qualify, hand over, onboard and renew was decided once, when the business was a different size, and never looked at again. Nobody owns the question of whether it still makes sense.

These compound. You can't fix cost to serve without trustworthy reporting, and you can't trust the reporting while the processes underneath it are unexamined. Which is why they need one owner — one person carrying the line from a new lead all the way through to the revenue it becomes.
What I take

The whole customer lifecycle. Every stage instrumented.

Not a strategy for the lifecycle — the working system underneath it, so you can see where revenue leaks and what it's worth to fix.

Qualify
How a lead is qualified, enriched and routed. Company context attached before a rep picks up, and the accounts worth a conversation reaching the person who should be having it.
Convert
What happens between interested and closed. Speed to first response, pipeline stages that match how you actually sell, and calls that log themselves so context survives between touchpoints.
Onboard
Whether a customer ever reaches value. An activation funnel that names the milestone losing the most customers, instead of a vague sense that onboarding could be better.
Retain
Who is about to leave, and why. Every paying customer in one state with a grounded risk score, and a post-mortem that reconciles every system to explain a specific loss.
Expand
Which customers should be worth more than they are. Expansion treated as an operating motion with triggers and owners, not something an account manager remembers to raise.
Cost to serve
What each customer actually costs you. The number that tells you whether the problem is your funnel, your pricing, or the fact that your best-selling segment loses money.
I build these myself. CRM architecture, routing, enrichment, lifecycle scoring, reporting — in Claude Code, n8n and whatever CRM you already run. Your engineers stay on product. And I hold the P&L view throughout: I've run one, so I'll tell you when the problem isn't your funnel, it's your pricing or your cost to serve.
The work

Four times I've owned this line. Two as a hire, two as the operator.

Retention & activation · coaching business · six departments

Where a business loses money after the sale

The situation

They could tell you what they sold. They could not tell you which customers had actually got value, which were about to ask for their money back, or why. A single customer's data was spread across eight systems that didn't talk, and a large share of paying customers had never logged in at all.

What I built

A live value ladder placing every paying customer in exactly one state — never logged in, no value yet, reached value, or left — each with a grounded refund-risk score. Then an activation funnel that names the milestone losing the most customers, and a post-mortem engine that reconciles every system to explain a specific loss. Eight tools became one surface that re-scores itself hourly.

£500k
reduction in refunds
6–8 week build
fixed fee · handed over
Lead enrichment · ivee · hiring platform

Every lead, enriched before the call

The situation

The sales team was calling leads off blank records — no company name, no headcount, no idea what the business in front of them needed. Reps were finding out who they were talking to during the call itself. Leads who signed up with a personal email had their company silently thrown away at capture.

What I built

The front of the funnel rebuilt around enrichment: every lead resolved to a company record carrying headcount, sector and the prospect's own stated need before a rep picks up. Routing by account size, capture that never duplicates, calls transcribed and logged automatically, and ~2,100 historical records migrated, cleaned and enriched.

"They built our entire CRM from scratch in three weeks — leads route and log themselves now, and we run it day-to-day without them."
— Amelia, Founder, ivee
£25k/mo
net new revenue, same inbound
3 weeks
built and documented
Interim COO · Cloud Cycle · ConTech/SaaS

A cost base that couldn't survive the next round

The situation

The product worked and the deals were closing, but every deployment cost too much to make the gross margin profile fundable. The business was about to expand into three countries at once with the same economics underneath it — which would have multiplied the problem rather than outgrowing it.

What I did

Took the interim COO seat reporting to the CEO. Rebuilt the deployment process end to end rather than trimming around it, and built the operating frameworks for simultaneous entry into the UK, France and Italy. Left the business with a gross margin profile it could raise against.

−60%
unit costs
3 markets entered simultaneously
reported to the CEO
Founder & CEO · Traktion · B2B marketplace, acquired by IDX

The one where the P&L was mine

The situation

A B2B marketplace for the technical vetting and algorithmic matching of marketing technology experts — built from concept, bootstrapped, with no outside money to hide behind. Every unit-economics decision was one I had to live with.

What I did

Owned the full P&L and managed a team of seven. Built the matching and vetting systems the business actually ran on, which cut time-to-hire by 40%. Took it to acquisition by IDX in 2023 and led the handover with 100% organisational continuity.

Acquired
by IDX, 2023 — bootstrapped throughout
−40% time-to-hire
100% organisational continuity

Some clients are named here and some aren't. I don't publish a client's numbers without asking, and not everyone wants theirs public.

About

I've done this from three seats.

Saher Shodhan, fractional COO and founder of Shodhan Advisory

Saher Shodhan is an exited founder and senior operator who has been in the founder seat, not the advisor seat. That's the difference.

Most people at this level arrive with a framework and leave with a deck. I build the systems myself — CRM architecture, routing, enrichment, lifecycle scoring, reporting — in Claude Code, n8n and HubSpot. Your engineering team never sees a ticket.

And I hold the P&L view throughout. I've run one, so I'll tell you when the problem isn't your funnel — it's your pricing, or what your customers cost to serve.

Based in London. Working with founder-led businesses across Europe, roughly £1–10M, past product-market fit.

Track record
Interim COO
Cloud Cycle · ConTech/SaaS

Cut unit costs 60%, rebuilt the deployment process end to end, and built the operating frameworks for simultaneous entry into the UK, France and Italy. Reported to the CEO; left the business with a fundable gross margin profile.

Founder & CEO
Traktion · acquired by IDX, 2023

Built a B2B marketplace from concept to acquisition, bootstrapped. Owned the full P&L, managed a team of 7, built the matching and vetting systems that cut time-to-hire 40%, and led the acquisition handover with 100% organisational continuity.

Demand operations
Uber India · Urban Company

Joined the Uber India launch team at 19 rides a day and left at 1.2 million. Then ran demand generation operations and strategic partnerships at Urban Company, where rearchitecting the supply-demand mechanics on a consumer services marketplace lifted transaction volume 20%.

Education
Sciences Po, Paris

MSc International Project Finance. Emily Boutmy Scholar.

Common questions

What founders ask before reaching out.

What does a fractional COO actually do?

In my case, one specific half of the job: the commercial operating machine. How a lead is qualified, enriched and routed; what happens between interested and closed; and then onboarding, retention, expansion, and what each customer costs to serve. I hold the P&L view throughout, and I build the systems myself rather than specifying them for someone else to build.

How is this different from a growth consultant?

A consultant hands you a recommendation and leaves. I carry the line from a new lead through to the revenue it becomes — qualification, conversion, onboarding, retention, and the unit economics underneath all of it — and I build the systems that make each stage visible. One person accountable for the whole of it, not advice about part of it.

Do you need my engineering team?

No. I build the CRM architecture, routing, enrichment, lifecycle scoring and reporting myself, using Claude Code, n8n and whatever CRM you already run. Your engineers stay on product.

How long before I see anything?

The diagnostic takes two weeks and ends with the leaks found, priced and sequenced. A build runs four to six weeks — a recent front-of-funnel rebuild went live in three.

What size of business is this for?

Founder-led, roughly £1–10M, past product-market fit, where the founder is still the operating system. Below that there usually isn't enough process to instrument yet — you'd be paying me to build reporting on a business that's still changing shape. Above it, you should be hiring a full-time COO, and I'll tell you that rather than take the engagement.

How do fees work?

A fractional seat costs materially less than the loaded cost of a full-time operations hire at the same level of seniority — that's the comparison worth making, rather than comparing it to a consultant's day rate.

The shape: a fixed fee for the diagnostic, a fixed fee for a build, and the seat as a monthly retainer against an agreed number of days. No consulting hours, no meter running, no surprise invoices.

I don't publish a rate card because the scope genuinely depends on the business. You'll have a number and a scope inside a week of the first call.

What happens to the systems when you leave?

You own them. Every engagement ends with a documented handover — architecture, workflows node by node, a troubleshooting guide — so your team runs the machine without me. That's the deliverable. A system that only works while I'm still being paid isn't one.

Book a call

30 minutes. No brief required. Just a conversation.

We'll work out where your customer lifecycle is losing money and whether it's a problem I can fix. No pitch, no pressure — and if it isn't a fit, I'll tell you inside the first ten minutes.