CEO Opportunity, Private Prep

Operations Dashboard

Last updated: September 10, 2026 at 9:07 AM EDT

AIOps platform purpose-built for the SAP ecosystem (avantra.com). London-founded, majority-backed by Resurgens Technology Partners since Aug 2024. Via Alexandra Bossetta, Bespoke Partners.

€18.69M ARR (~$21.8M), 9.4% 1H26 growth Profitable: +€0.4M Q2 Adj. EBITDA (~$0.47M), ~90% gross margin Board: 100% Resurgens Technology Partners

€18.69M (~$21.8M)

ARR (Q2 26 actual)

essentially on budget, per the board deck

9.4%

1H26 growth

vs. 9.9% budget, per the board deck

+€0.4M (~$0.47M)

Q2 26 Adj. EBITDA

7.64% margin, €0.65M (~$0.76M) ahead of budget, per the board deck

93%

Gross retention (board-confirmed)

corroborates Dave Keil's low-to-mid-90s account, still conflicts with spec's >100% net claim

1 rep

NA Sales Director has left

region down to one salesperson while recruiting, per the board deck. WORSE (Sept 2, full Q2 26 board pack): 2 Sales Directors were lost in Q2 total (1 DACH, 1 NA), and NA hit only 25% of its bookings target for the quarter

~2 yrs

CAC payback

per Dave Keil, inefficient acquisition model

IBM/Kyndryl/TechM

GSI channel talks underway

newly staffed Alliances team, per the board deck

73-75

Headcount (Mar-Jun 2026, board deck's own tables)

RESOLVED (Sept 1, per Seth Green): confirmed ~73 is correct; the 150 figure "has never" been accurate. CONFIRMED (Sept 2, full Q2 26 board pack): 75 actual at June 30, 2026 vs. 79 budget, 4 behind plan, consistent with the ~73-75 range now on record; Bespoke's 150 figure was never right.

50-60%

Revenue in Europe

30-40% US, under 10% APAC, per Dave Keil

100%

Resurgens-held board

majority stake since Aug 2024, sole institutional investor

Jan 2026

Prior CEO removed

per Dave Keil, background misrepresentation, hidden SAP termination

$650-700K

OTE (comp anchor)

plus ~$10-15M equity at plan, per Bespoke

$100M

Path, per Dave Keil

"clear path" with the right GTM leader, no year attached

Only

purpose-built SAP AIOps platform

per Bespoke, true end-to-end niche leader

~$38M

Debt on balance sheet

cash-neutral operating model, no raise planned, 90% Resurgens-owned, per Mark Haidet Aug 26

Healthy / on-thesis Watch Below target / needs restoring Context / unconfirmed

The pitch, in one paragraph

The only AIOps platform purpose-built for the SAP ecosystem, a real, differentiated product with 93% gross retention (board-confirmed) and genuine profitability: Q2 26 Adj. EBITDA of +€0.4M (~$0.47M) at a 7.64% margin, €0.65M (~$0.76M) ahead of budget, not merely breakeven. The problem is entirely go-to-market: per Dave Keil (Resurgens Operating Partner) on the Aug 20 call, the company has never had a formalized channel strategy, acquisition is inefficient (a two-year CAC payback), and the real competitive threat isn't Datadog or Dynatrace, it's SAP's own free, minimal tooling, now sharpened by the Q2 26 board deck into a specific, unresolved issue: SAP's own Product team is resistant to granting Avantra Endorsed-partner status, and SAP Cloud ALM is a real free/bundled threat in the Corporate segment. On the positive side, GSI channel talks are underway with IBM, Kyndryl and TechM, with a newly staffed Alliances team, early signs the channel motion is starting to form. The fix is a channel-centric motion through MSPs and GSIs, something the company is only now beginning to formalize, complicated by a fresh gap: the NA Sales Director has left, leaving the region down to one salesperson while recruiting. Not a product turnaround: a GTM build, with Dave Keil calling a path to a $100M business "clear" under the right leader.

Status

Bryan expects a decision on how to proceed within a week or two, complicated by Dave Keil and Mark Haidet's London offsite next week. Emilie has her own call with Resurgens planned next week (still being confirmed). Comp/equity structure and the retention gross/net reconciliation remain the significant open items. If things continue well: an in-person whiteboard meeting with Resurgens' founders in Atlanta.

Sept 9

Text thread with Emilie Pritchard, same day as the Bryan West call. Mike confirmed he bcc'd her on his follow-up email to Bryan and that the team's next week offsite is specifically in London. Asked directly "what's next"; Emilie said she'll update him once she has signal from Resurgens. Mike pressed on timing given the team may be largely unreachable next week; Emilie confirmed she has her own call planned with Resurgens next week, still being confirmed. Mike asked whether there's a main point of contact at Resurgens or if Emilie speaks to the whole team, no reply yet. Full detail in the panel below.

Sept 9

Call held with Bryan West, ~50 minutes, a warm, substantive fit conversation rather than a numbers Q&A. He personally ran the diagnostic meeting with Avantra's management team ~4-5 months ago that identified leadership/GTM as the core gap. Mike gave him the fullest track-record readout of the process so far (CoreStory join story, SentryOne, OutSystems, the Quarterly Operating System) plus a live, candid read on CoreStory's own cash situation. Bryan confirmed 2-3 other candidates active, Mike at the top of the batch, and gave the fullest answer yet on board risk tolerance since the January CEO removal (no structural change, though he admitted hindsight says Resurgens could have pushed sooner). Full detail in the Call notes panel below.

Sept 4

Emilie sets up the next interview step: Bryan West, Resurgens MD of Portfolio Operations and Talent, 60-75 min via Zoom, deeper on how Mike makes decisions and his motivators rather than a resume review. Not a cold contact, resolves the Aug 31 "Brian Welsh, likely Brian West" ambiguity from the Lizzie Henry call, the same person Mike has known since 2022 (see Aug 12 entry above). Emilie also confirms Mike's Sept 2 note to Seth was "well received." Scheduling pending Bryan's availability; Emilie connects live with the Resurgens team next week and expects "marching orders" after.

Sept 2

Catch-up call with Emilie Pritchard (Bespoke). Mike reports being in "hell yes" mode after the Seth call (roughly 75% of his own questions addressed) and names a real reason: no founder-dynamic risk, since Bernd Engist is "clearly an IC" with no vested stake, per Seth, a second independent restatement of the Sept 1 finding. He also volunteers that his former sales leader and other past colleagues have said they'd want to join if this happens, a real if informal signal on bench strength for the open NA sales-leadership gap. He'd floated meeting the founders in Atlanta this Friday; Lizzie replied the team is out for the long weekend, so that specific date is off, the general in-person Atlanta step (below) still stands. Emilie coached Mike, off the record, to send Seth a detailed, enthusiastic note on his fit (cc Dave Keil and Mark Haidet), which he plans to send.

Sept 2

Seth delivers as promised: the full 72-slide Q2 26 board deck, a 21-slide Customer Office deep dive, and a 17-slide GSI strategy deck authored by Sean Thompson. Confirms and enriches the Sept 1 call: NA sales leadership worse than known (2 director losses in Q2), GSI/channel motion much further along than known ($13M Tier-1 opportunity, executive sponsors secured), a new Swisscom account-retention risk, and a favorable SAP market shift (EU-forced end to all-or-nothing maintenance). Full detail in the new panel below.

Sept 1

Seth Green call held, 4pm ET. A dense, substantive hour: capital-allocation mechanics (3x MOIC hurdle, PNC + Saratoga debt, tuck-in M&A confirmed active), the SAP-vs-multi-ERP question answered directly, headcount fully resolved at ~73, a major correction on Bernd Engist (still employed, individual-contributor role, never CEO), Sean Thompson strongly validated, and Q2 new-logo performance confirmed ahead of Q1. Full detail in the Call notes panel below.

Aug 31

Mike signs the NDA. Lizzie emails the current Q1 2026 board deck (replacing the outdated CIM, as she flagged on the call) and confirms tomorrow's Seth Green call is "your hour to get smarter on and engage with the business," asking Mike to bring questions. Mike reviews the deck: consistent with, and a fuller earlier-quarter complement to, the Q2 26 deck already on file, plus a real headcount discrepancy worth asking about (board table shows 73, Bespoke had said 150), a sharper sales-leadership-bandwidth picture, and useful color on 2025's retention root causes and remediation. See the Market tab for the full breakdown.

Aug 31

Call with Lizzie Henry (People leader). Warm relationship-building call, not a formal interview; confirmed Seth Green tomorrow (Sept 1) is on the calendar. Real new substance: the CEO removal came from the management team itself flagging behavior concerns (a complementary, not contradictory, account to Dave Keil's background-misrepresentation detail); leadership changes since the Aug 2024 deal have mostly been additions, and the CMO's departure predates the deal (already known, not a post-deal surprise); and the sales-leadership gap sounds sharper than previously read, the person promoted into the global sales leader role has proven himself in EMEA but is struggling to scale, "more of a doer than a manager," which may describe the Chief Sales Officer himself rather than just an open NA Sales Director seat. Lizzie independently flagged the June 2024 CIM as dated and less useful than a current board deck, corroborating the CIM-vs-today gap analysis already on this dashboard. Also resurfaced "Sean," a recent Dave Keil hire, as someone worth learning more about; Mike separately confirmed the seanthompson4 LinkedIn profile the same day, resolving the Aug 24 question, see Exec Team tab. Next process step, if things go well: an in-person whiteboard meeting with Resurgens' founders in Atlanta, one of the final steps before offer talks.

Aug 28

Feedback call with Emilie Pritchard (Bespoke). Relayed real coaching from Dave Keil and Mark Haidet (both want more tactical depth and numbers-driven answers, not just strategy), clarified that the cash/runway question is genuinely Seth Green's domain given Resurgens' near-full ownership stake (not the typical VC-style answer), and confirmed the Lizzie Henry call for Monday 8/31 afternoon. Also shared that a prior late-stage finalist candidate was recently passed over for lacking PE-operating readiness, useful process context.

Aug 27

Bespoke (Meghan Maxwell) reaches out to schedule separate 1-hour Zoom calls with Lizzie Henry (People) and Seth Green (Investment Principal, original deal lead), the two next steps Dave Keil had flagged. Lizzie's offered windows: Mon 8/31 3:30-4:30pm ET, Tue 9/1 9:30-11am or 3:30-4:30pm ET, Thu 9/3 10:30am-12:30pm or 2-4pm ET. Mike offered Monday or Tuesday 9:30am; Bespoke is holding the Monday slot pending Resurgens confirmation (team was at an offsite Aug 28). Seth's times still pending from Resurgens.

Aug 26

Video call with Mark Haidet (Operating Partner, Board Chair). Mostly rapport and background-swapping rather than a structured Q&A: Mike walked Mark through the CoreStory story (including the paused Series B); Mark gave color on Avantra's GTM/partnership posture (Accenture relationship still "early level," North America the biggest addressable market but not the biggest revenue source). Asked directly about cash, Mark gave the first real financial color of the process: about $38M of debt on the business, Resurgens runs portfolio companies "cash neutral" (no raise planned, funds any gap itself as 90% owner), typical hold around five years. None of the planned prep items (retention gross-vs-net, the January CEO removal, process/timeline, comp structure) came up. No next step was scheduled by end of call.

Aug 24

4:00pm ET debrief call held with Alexandra Bossetta and Emilie Pritchard (Bespoke). Post-call, Alex flagged a LinkedIn for a "recent hire Dave mentioned," Sean Thompson (seanthompson4); Mike replied that the profile he already had (sean-thompson-6894b4408, SVP Global Alliances) was "the one I had." RESOLVED (Aug 31): Mike confirms seanthompson4 is the correct profile, likely Dave Keil's Tricentis channel-lead hire.

Aug 21

Dave Keil replies to Mike's thank-you note, confirms the call landed well, and introduces a second next-step contact: Lizzie Henry, Avantra's People leader, alongside Mark Haidet.

Aug 21

Mike reviews Avantra's Q2 26 board deck (VCP Initiatives 2026 / Executive Summary Q2 26 Update): EBITDA beat, 93% gross retention confirmed, an NA sales-leadership gap, and a live, unresolved SAP relationship.

Aug 20

Alex relays that Dave "thought you had a great meeting" and wants an intro to Mark Haidet (Operating Partner, Board Member). Bespoke confirms a debrief call for Monday, Aug 24, 4:00pm ET; the Haidet meeting is still being scheduled.

Aug 20

Mike sends a same-day thank-you note to Dave Keil, referencing the OutSystems parallel and the SAP-free-tooling competitive read.

Aug 20

49-minute interview with Dave Keil (Resurgens Operating Partner, ex-CEO of QA Symphony). Candid rundown of the real numbers, competitive picture, and leadership backstory. Mutual interest confirmed; next step is Mark Haidet.

Aug 13

First call held with Alex Bossetta: real backstory on the CEO change, hard numbers (150 employees, ~$19M ARR, ~9% growth), confirmed SAP-specific experience is not required.

Aug 12

Mike replies with Resurgens history (2022 conversations with Bryan West and Wayne Williams, NDA signed 2024) and six diligence questions. Call booked for Aug 13.

Aug 12

Alexandra Bossetta (Bespoke) re-engages with a new CEO search after Thread closed out. Full position spec sent.

Leadership team

Running the company through the search under interim leadership. LinkedIn column: connection degree and mutual connections as of Aug 24, 2026.

Name	Role	LinkedIn
Diogo Freire	CFO & Interim CEO. CONFIRMED (Aug 13 call) NOT a candidate for the permanent seat: a strong, operational CFO, but not seen by the board as having the GTM/strategic capability the role needs. His own LinkedIn headline reads "CEO at Avantra," not "Interim," worth a direct read with Mark Haidet.	2nd 3 mutual (Teitelman, Azzolino)
Jan Karstens	Chief Technology Officer.	2nd 2 mutual (Keil, Zafran)
Brenton O'Callaghan	Chief Product Officer. Per Bespoke, well regarded by the board. NEW (Sept 1, per a LinkedIn post Mike shared, published Aug 13): a substantive piece on rebuilding the product org for the AI era, Jobs-to-be-Done as the roadmap anchor, AI-accelerated research raising the evidence bar, and a strict prototype-vs-production line. Reads as a thoughtful, modern operator, a genuine plus for whoever takes the CEO seat, since a strong CPO lowers the product-execution risk. Also confirms his own listed title as CPO (the June 2024 CIM's "CCO" label predates a later title change).	2nd 4 mutual (Shimel, Keil +2)
Steve Randall	Chief Sales Officer. Per Dave Keil (Aug 20 call), the current revenue leader is effective in Europe but has not yet proven he can scale the US team, a flag worth raising directly rather than assuming it maps cleanly to this title. NEW (Q2 26 board deck): the NA Sales Director has actually left, region down to one salesperson while recruiting, a bigger immediate gap than the earlier "unproven at scale" read.	2nd 5 mutual (Schwartz, Ash +3)
Liz Blackman	Chief Marketing Officer.	2nd 12 mutual (Bloomberg, Lo Giudice +10)
Darina Donohoe	Chief Transformation Officer.	2nd 5 mutual (West, Keil +3)
Lizzie Henry	People leader. NEW (Aug 21): introduced by Dave Keil in his reply as a second next-step contact alongside Mark Haidet, pairing a board/operating conversation with a people/org one. LinkedIn confirmed by Mike (Aug 31).	link confirmed by Mike

Board, Resurgens Technology Partners

Sole institutional investor. Majority stake taken Aug 2024. No other outside board members. LinkedIn column: connection degree and mutual connections as of Aug 24, 2026.

Name	Role	LinkedIn
Mark Haidet	Operating Partner, Board Chair. NEXT STEP, confirmed again in Dave Keil's Aug 21 reply, alongside Lizzie Henry.	2nd 13 mutual (Millard, Gorey +11)
Dave Keil	Operating Partner. Ex-CEO of QA Symphony (acquired by Tricentis, adjacent to the observability space). Held the Aug 20 interview; gave the most candid read on the business to date. His Aug 21 reply confirmed the call landed well and introduced Lizzie Henry as a second next step.	1st 104 mutual (Skok, Nussey +102)
Fred Sturgis	Managing Director, Resurgens co-founder.	2nd 57 mutual (Asay, Sabrin +55)
Adi Filipovic	Managing Director, Resurgens co-founder.	2nd 19 mutual (Clark, Shure +17)
Seth Green	Investment Principal, deal lead on the original Avantra investment.	1st connected by Mike, early Sept 2026 (was 2nd, 12 mutual)
Bryan West	Managing Director, Portfolio Operations and Talent (confirmed via Resurgens' own team page; joined 2021, oversees CEO programs and portfolio value-creation work). CALL HELD (Sept 9): 60-75 min Zoom, a warm, substantive fit conversation, not a numbers Q&A. He personally ran the diagnostic meeting with Avantra's management team ~4-5 months ago that identified leadership and GTM tooling as the core gap, the direct origin of this search. Confirmed 2-3 other candidates active, Mike at the top of the current batch, a decision on next steps expected within a week or two (Dave Keil and Mark Haidet are in the UK next week on an Avantra offsite, the main wrinkle on timing). On board risk tolerance since the January CEO removal: no structural overreaction, though he candidly admitted hindsight suggests Resurgens could have pushed sooner. See Call notes panel below for the full readout. Not a cold contact, resolves the "Brian Welsh, likely Brian West" ambiguity from the Aug 31 Lizzie Henry call, same person Mike has known since 2022.	known personally since 2022, per Mike

Leadership transition, January 2026

Material governance context, per Dave Keil on the Aug 20 call.

The prior CEO (the company's second, following the original founders' 2024 exit at the Resurgens deal) was removed by the board in January 2026 after it came to light that he had misrepresented parts of his background, including a prior termination from SAP that he had not disclosed. Separately, and earlier in the process, the executive team itself had already flagged a GTM execution gap (including a failed CRO hire) to the board. Worth understanding directly from Mark Haidet how the January change was communicated internally and to customers, and what, if anything, it changed about how the board evaluates candidates now.

Recruiter chain

Alexandra Bossetta, Partner at Bespoke Partners (leads their PE-backed CEO recruiting practice), re-engaged Mike on Aug 12 after the Thread search closed out. She's a 1st-degree LinkedIn connection. Emilie Pritchard (Bespoke) is cc'd but currently on vacation; an intro is still pending. Emma Sheldon (Bespoke, Search Coordinator) handles scheduling logistics.

Rank-and-file employees found on LinkedIn

Pulled from a LinkedIn people search filtered to current Avantra employees (company ID 1840320, disambiguated from ~13 unrelated companies also named "Avantra" worldwide), cross-checked against LeadIQ's public directory. Only profiles whose visible LinkedIn headline explicitly names Avantra are included, per the same only-genuine-verified standard used for the rest of this dashboard. Names link to LinkedIn; connection degree and mutual connections are LinkedIn's own labels as of Aug 24, 2026.

1st-degree connections: none of the ~28 rank-and-file employees below are 1st-degree. The only two people in Mike's network with a confirmed Avantra tie are both already covered elsewhere: Dave Keil (board, Resurgens Operating Partner) and Alexandra Bossetta (the recruiter running this search, Bespoke Partners). If a warm intro to someone inside the company is useful, it would have to route through one of them or through a 2nd-degree mutual below.

Sales, Alliances & Partnerships (~8)

Name	Title	Location	LinkedIn
Sean Thompson	Head of Global Alliances & Channel Partnerships (title confirmed Sept 2, per his own GSI strategy board deck; SVP, Global Alliances per LinkedIn). RESOLVED (Aug 31): Mike confirms this is the correct profile, settling the Aug 24 two-candidate ambiguity (this vs. sean-thompson-6894b4408). Likely Dave Keil's recent Tricentis channel-lead hire, tasked with formalizing the MSP motion and targeting Indian SAP GCCs, and the same "Sean" Mike expressed interest in on the Aug 31 Lizzie Henry call. VALIDATED (Sept 1, per Seth Green): strong, warm endorsement on the call, plus specific praise for his channel-strategy input at a recent board meeting. MAJOR UPDATE (Sept 2): authored a real, numbered 17-slide GSI/Alliances strategy for the board, a $13M near-term ARR opportunity across four Tier 1 partners with executive sponsors already secured, direct evidence the channel motion is being actively built, see Market and Risk tabs.	—	confirmed by Mike (Aug 31); validated by Seth (Sept 1); authored GSI strategy deck (Sept 2)
Vinay Joseph	Global Channels & Alliances (SAP AIOps/SaaS/Cloud)	Hyderabad, India	2nd 2 mutual (Keil)
Alexandre Berthier	Sales Director, SAP Observability & Automation	Paris, France	2nd 2 mutual (Keil)
Thorsten Staby	Sales Director	Switzerland	2nd 2 mutual (Keil)
Andy Fairbairn	Senior Account Manager	Halifax, UK	3rd+
Aaron Briggs	Business Development Representative	Appleton-Oshkosh-Neenah, US	3rd+
Stephen Jacobs	Account Director, LINK/Avantra	Leeds, UK	3rd+
Mukul Kansal	Promoter (partner/reseller side)	Gurgaon, India	3rd+

Customer Success & Technical Support (~6)

Name	Title	Location	LinkedIn
Andy Tate	Senior CSM	Milwaukee, WI, US	3rd+
Lothar Leonhard	SAP Landscape Operations Consultant	Frankfurt, Germany	3rd+
Jarek Moromizato	Technical Support Specialist	Peru	3rd+
Oleh Kalynyak	Second Line Support Engineer	Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine	3rd+
Ivan Ivanov	Principal SAP Engineer	Lisbon, Portugal	3rd+
Lukáš Jesenský	SAP Basis Automation Engineer	Košice, Slovakia	3rd+

Product, Engineering & Design (~5)

Name	Title	Location	LinkedIn
Oliver Rogers	Product Manager	Towcester, UK	3rd+
Bart-Floris Visscher	Principal AI Engineer	Chester, UK	3rd+
Thomas Alker	Senior Software Engineer	Rawtenstall, UK	3rd+
Will Holmes	Product Operations Manager	UK	3rd+
Tiina Golub	Design Lead	Brighton & Hove, UK	3rd+

Marketing & Evangelism (~2)

Name	Title	Location	LinkedIn
Bernd Engist	Chief Evangelist	Basel, Switzerland	2nd 2 mutual
Frank Lindemann	SAP Observability / self-healing ops	—	2nd 2 mutual (Likins, Bedford)

People & IT (~2)

Name	Title	Location	LinkedIn
Kelly Gallagher	HR Business Partner	Rotherham, UK	3rd+
Ben Griffiths	Head of IT	Woodley, UK	3rd+

Role not confirmed in search snippet (~5)

Name	Title	Location	LinkedIn
Robert MacDonald	—	UK	2nd
Chris Garside	—	—	4 mutual (Law, Azambujo +2)
Tim Reiss	—	—	degree n/a
Hendrik Freytag	—	—	No LinkedIn link yet
Kyle Keehan	—	—	No LinkedIn link yet

~28 confirmed names out of an estimated 150 employees (per Bespoke, Aug 13). CORRECTED (Aug 31): the Q1 26 board deck's own headcount table gives 73 total (Mar 2026), less than half of Bespoke's figure, so ~28 confirmed is actually a much larger share of the real headcount than it first appeared, see the Market tab for the full discrepancy note. LinkedIn's own search noise (unrelated same-named companies, hidden "LinkedIn Member" results, staffing/partner-side profiles) means this is a floor, not a full roster. Hendrik Freytag and Kyle Keehan were confirmed as Avantra employees in an earlier pass but their profile links didn't re-resolve this run (a Chrome connection drop); linking them is next on the list.

Other ways to dig into the org

Ideas beyond the LinkedIn roster, none built yet, flagging for a steer on which are worth the time.

Open-roles signal. Avantra's careers page / LinkedIn Jobs would show where they're actively hiring right now, a decent proxy for where investment (and possibly gaps, like the NA sales seat) is concentrated.

Headcount and hiring-velocity trend. LinkedIn's company page sometimes exposes headcount growth over time; useful to sanity-check the "150 employees" figure and see if it's growing, flat, or shrinking.

Recent arrivals/departures. A pass for people who list "Former Avantra" or recently changed jobs into/out of the company would be a churn signal worth watching, especially post-January CEO transition.

Company-page activity. Avantra's own LinkedIn posts (product launches, hires, customer wins) as a running feed, similar to what this dashboard already does for CoreStory's threat radar.

Outside sentiment. Glassdoor/Comparably reviews, if accessible, for a read on culture and morale through the leadership transition, independent of what the board or Bespoke says.

Threat radar

The real competitive picture, per Dave Keil (Aug 20) and Alex Bossetta (Aug 13).

SAP itself: unresolved Endorsed-partner status, and SAP Cloud ALM as a bundled substitute (elevated). NEW (Q2 26 board deck, reviewed Aug 21): the SAP relationship is live and unresolved, not a settled channel partnership. SAP's own Product team is resistant to granting Avantra Endorsed-partner status, and SAP Cloud ALM is emerging as a real free/bundled competitive threat specifically in the Corporate segment. A sharper, board-confirmed version of the "SAP's own free tooling" risk Dave Keil flagged verbally on Aug 20, now with a segment attached. UPDATED (Sept 2, per the full Q2 26 board pack Seth sent): SAP itself is described as "two seemingly different approaches," the Alliances GTM team is "welcoming (but quite slow)" while the Product team remains resistant, so Endorsed status is still unresolved, possibly not achievable at all. But a real structural tailwind has emerged: in July 2026 the European Commission secured binding, ten-year commitments from SAP ending its all-or-nothing maintenance model, customers can now split SAP landscapes across support providers, terminate maintenance on unused/end-of-life systems, and return to SAP support without penalty. Avantra's own read is this favors its vendor-neutral operations-layer positioning as estates fragment and hybridize; still early, with real work needed to translate the opening into product/pricing (e.g. differentiated pricing for systems under different support segments).

The real threat is SAP's own free tooling, not horizontal observability players (low-med). CONFIRMED (Aug 20 call, Dave Keil): the primary competitive threat is not Datadog or Dynatrace, it's SAP's own free, minimal built-in solution, which is "good enough" for customers who don't want to buy a dedicated tool. This reframes the competitive set entirely away from well-funded horizontal rivals.

Named vendor alternatives and inertia (watch). CONFIRMED (Aug 13 call, Alex Bossetta): when Avantra loses a deal, it's typically to "no decision" or a homegrown in-house tool that's good enough on observability/data collection even if it doesn't do everything Avantra does. Splunk shows up as a named general alternative; Sumo Logic competes more narrowly on the security side. Per Bespoke, Avantra remains the only niche player doing true end-to-end SAP observability today.

Channel motion is unbuilt (high, and the actual job). Per Dave Keil, go-to-market has historically been "very weak" with no concerted channel strategy. The path forward is channel-centric, leveraging MSPs and GSIs to win deals inside large organizations, a strategy the company is only now beginning to formalize under new channel leadership. This is the core of the mandate, not a side project.

Early GSI channel progress (positive signal). NEW (Q2 26 board deck): senior-level talks are underway with IBM, Kyndryl and TechM, and a dedicated Alliances team is now staffed. Still early and unproven, but the first concrete evidence the channel motion the mandate calls for is actually starting to form. MAJOR UPDATE (Sept 2, per a full GSI strategy board deck Seth sent, authored by Sean Thompson, "Head of Global Alliances & Channel Partnerships"): the channel motion is far more developed than earlier signals suggested. 16 GSIs were formally evaluated on a 7-factor framework; four Tier 1 partners (IBM, Kyndryl, Tech Mahindra, Wipro) are the strategic focus, representing a $13M ARR opportunity over 12-24 months (deployable base of 2,750 SAP customers across the four), with a broader $20M+ ecosystem potential including Tier 2 (Accenture, Infosys, LTIMindtree, DXC, Fujitsu, Hexaware). Executive sponsors are secured at all four Tier 1 partners, 10+ technical relationships and 8 active opportunities exist after the first four weeks, and Kyndryl already shows active pipeline and revenue. Board is being asked to approve $200-275K of incremental investment (India partner days, GSI-targeted demand gen, an India GCC motion) plus a second Global Alliance Director (Tier 2/India) and a presales engineer, alongside a separate push into India's GCC market ($65B, 1,800+ centers). This is the single most concrete evidence yet that the mandate's core GTM problem is being actively solved, not just discussed.

What "AIOps for SAP" actually means, and who else is in it

NEW (Sept 3): independent web research, category definition, competitors, and analyst coverage, since Avantra's self-description ("the only AIOps platform purpose-built for the SAP ecosystem") is worth pressure-testing directly.

The category itself is narrower than "AIOps" sounds. Gartner's own AIOps platform category (its Market Guide for AIOps Platforms lists 28 representative vendors: BigPanda, Moogsoft, ScienceLogic, Splunk, IBM, Elastic, and similar) is about horizontal, cross-stack IT operations analytics, ingesting data from anything and everything. Avantra doesn't compete there and isn't listed there. What it actually does is SAP Basis operations monitoring and automation (patching, system copies, landscape health, incident/root-cause detection) with AI-assisted features layered on top. It sits between SAP Basis administration tooling and general APM/observability, a real but genuinely narrow vertical, not a slice of the big horizontal AIOps market.

Direct SAP-specific competitors: small, and mostly SAP itself. The head-to-head competitive set is thin. SAP's own tooling (Solution Manager, Focused Run, Cloud ALM) remains the dominant threat, per Dave Keil, since it's free and bundled. Empirius (Germany, EPOS and BlueCopy, 11 to 50 employees, privately held, no disclosed funding) is the closest direct peer in SAP Basis automation. IT-Conductor (US) positions aggressively against Avantra by name (agentless monitoring vs. Avantra's agent-based model, claims broader cross-platform orchestration), but is tiny, an independent estimate puts it at roughly a 9-person team and under $1M revenue, not a scale threat. AI Automatics and SAP FRUN were already named in the company's own Q1 26 win-loss analysis. None of these are well-funded, venture-backed challengers; this is a fragmented field of small specialists plus SAP itself.

Horizontal players show up as comparisons, not real losses. Third-party listing sites (G2, Capterra) group Avantra alongside Datadog, Dynatrace, Splunk AppDynamics, LogicMonitor, ManageEngine Applications Manager, Site24x7, and Groundcover, generalist APM/observability tools. This matches Dave Keil's read exactly: these are the names that come up in comparison shopping, not where Avantra actually loses deals. The real loss reasons stay "no decision" or an in-house tool, per Bespoke, and SAP's own bundled tooling.

No flagship analyst coverage found, a real gap worth knowing walking in. Avantra does not appear in Gartner's Market Guide for AIOps Platforms or in IDC's 2026 MarketScape: Worldwide AIOps Vendor Assessment (Leaders there include ServiceNow and Digitate), both of which cover the broad horizontal category, not vertical SAP tooling. No Forrester Wave coverage found either. The only third-party signal is crowd-sourced review sites: Gartner Peer Insights shows 4.1 of 5 from just 8 ratings, filed under "SAP Security Software," and G2 shows 4.6 of 5 from 12 reviews, also filed under "SAP Security Software," an odd category fit either way, and a small sample either way. Bottom line: "industry-leading" is Avantra's own description. No independent analyst firm has validated that claim.

Acquisition efficiency

Per Dave Keil, the business runs at roughly break-even with strong ~90% gross margins, but the customer acquisition model is inefficient: about a two-year payback period. That combination, healthy unit margins but slow payback, points squarely at a GTM efficiency problem (spend, targeting, channel leverage) rather than a product or pricing problem.

Geography

Per Dave Keil (Aug 20), revenue splits roughly 50-60% Europe, 30-40% US, and under 10% APAC. This is the same structural shape as the OutSystems turnaround Mike led (joined at 65% EMEA revenue, grew the business from $65M to $200M over three years while flipping the mix toward North America), which he raised directly on both calls.

Dave Keil, Aug 20 call: a strong, differentiated product with retention in the low-to-mid-nineties and a real path to a hundred-million-dollar business, if the right go-to-market leader can build the channel motion the company has never had.

Deal background: the June 2024 sell-side CIM (Synova → Resurgens)

NEW (Aug 31, reviewed from a document Mike shared): the Confidential Information Memorandum Shea & Company prepared on Synova's behalf for the sale of Avantra, dated June 2024, roughly two months before Resurgens took its Aug 2024 majority stake. Genuine primary source on how the business was pitched at deal time, useful as a baseline to check the current insider read against.

What was claimed at deal time, vs. what Dave Keil says now: a real gap. The CIM pitched Q1 2024A ARR of €15.3m (+25% LTM growth, projected to €60.4m by 2028F), 122% net retention, 97% gross retention, a profitable €4.8m run-rate Adjusted EBITDA (32% margin), 95% gross margins, +81 NPS, and a 7.0x LTV:CAC. Two years later, Dave Keil (Aug 20, 2026 call, a board member speaking candidly) describes retention as "low-to-mid-nineties," the business as "roughly break-even," and CAC payback at roughly two years, materially weaker on every axis than what was underwritten. Worth a direct, specific question to Mark Haidet and/or Seth Green (who per the board table led the original 2024 deal) about what changed since the acquisition and why performance has diverged this far from the deal-time numbers, rather than assuming it's just normal post-acquisition softness.

Executive team churn, timing corrected Aug 31. The CIM's June 2024 leadership team was John Appleby (CEO, joined May 2020), Diogo Freire (CFO, Jan 2018), Bernd Engist (CTO, joined June 2001, a 23-year tenure predating even the Synova acquisition), Brenton O'Callaghan (CCO, Sep 2019), Emily Tippins (CMO, Aug 2020), Darina Donohoe (Chief Transformation Officer, Oct 2020), and Steve Randall (VP Sales, joined May 2023). Comparing to the current leadership table above: Bernd Engist and Emily Tippins are no longer listed, replaced by Jan Karstens (CTO) and Liz Blackman (CMO), and Steve Randall has been promoted from VP Sales to Chief Sales Officer. CORRECTED (Aug 31, per Lizzie Henry): the CMO change actually predates the Aug 2024 Resurgens deal, "the prior leader had left before the deal had closed, so we always knew that," not a post-acquisition surprise as this panel originally implied; the CIM (dated June 2024, weeks before close) may simply have been already slightly stale on this one point. CORRECTED (Sept 1, per Seth Green): Bernd Engist never left and was never CEO, always CTO; he is still at the company today, now working as an individual-contributor "super solutions engineer" on the most complex customer environments, with no ownership stake and no board seat. The original read that he was "no longer listed" on the leadership table reflected a title/org change, not a departure. Note also (Sept 1, per a LinkedIn post Mike shared): Brenton O'Callaghan's "CCO" title above is the CIM's June 2024/Sep 2019 label; his current title, confirmed by his own LinkedIn byline, is Chief Product Officer, consistent with the current leadership table.

Pre-acquisition cap table, for context only, does not reflect current ownership. As of June 30, 2024 the CIM shows Synova holding 64.5% of the fully-diluted ordinary shares (management 14.0%, non-exec chairman 4.0%, other 17.5%), plus €49.9m of preference shares ranking ahead of ordinary (91.3% Synova, 8.7% chairman/management). This is the seller's cap table before Resurgens' Aug 2024 majority-stake purchase, not the current structure Mark Haidet described on Aug 26 (~90% Resurgens-owned, cash-neutral, no raise planned). Don't conflate the two; the CIM is useful for market/product/financial-history context, not for reading current ownership.

Market and product context, still likely current. $1.1bn SAM (2024, growing to $1.3bn by 2027 in-scope, $4.6bn full TAM including regions/segments Avantra hadn't yet built sales teams for), 100+ blue-chip customers reaching ~1,000 end customers via MSPs, positioned as the only enterprise-grade SAP-specific AIOps platform (competitors are either horizontal APM, generalists like Datadog/Dynatrace/Splunk, or SAP's own in-house tooling, which SAP was planning to sunset three legacy monitoring products by 2027). 2021-2023 deferred consideration payments (€1.4m in 2021-2022, related to the 2017 Synova/Syslink deal) were fully retired in December 2023, which the CIM cites as the reason the company was "now primed to self-fund strategic investments," worth checking whether that promised investment ramp actually happened.

The Q1 2026 board deck (what Lizzie actually sent, Aug 31)

NEW (Aug 31): after Mike signed the NDA, Lizzie sent the current, watermarked board deck rather than the outdated CIM, exactly as she flagged on the call. It turns out to be the Q1 2026 (Jan-Mar) board meeting deck, an earlier and more granular sibling of the Q2 26 deck already reviewed Aug 21, not a replacement for it. The two decks agree with each other everywhere they overlap, a good sign this is one consistent, credible data set rather than shifting numbers.

Headcount: a real discrepancy worth asking about directly. The Q1 26 deck's own headcount summary table shows total headcount of 73 (Mar 2026 actual) against a plan of 76, broken out by department (Engineering 21, Product Office 12, Sales 9, Marketing 8, Customer Office 7, Finance/Ops/IT 7, Leadership 7, People 2). That is well under half of the "150 employees" figure Bespoke gave on the Aug 13 call. Possible explanations: Bespoke's number was simply wrong or stale, it includes contractors/MSP-partner staff not on the board's payroll table, or it's a different scope entirely; no way to tell from the documents alone. Worth a direct, simple question to Lizzie or Mark Haidet.

Financial trajectory: consistent, improving quarter over quarter. Q1 26 actuals were €18.25m ARR and €34k Adj. EBITDA (0.8% margin); by Q2 26 (already on file) that had grown to €18.69M ARR and +€0.4M Adj. EBITDA. Same company, same trend line, no contradiction, a real improvement in profitability within the half.

Retention: 91% (FY25) → 95% (Q1 26 actual, vs. 93.2% target) → 93% (Q2 26, already on file). The deck's own "7 Root Causes behind 2025 performance" section is a candid, structured self-diagnosis of why 2025 retention was weak (no shared playbook, siloed functions, a broken CRM/Zendesk single-source-of-truth, no 2025 NPS programme, and more) with a specific H1 2026 remediation plan against each cause and a 2026 target of >93% gross retention / >€1.5m upsells. A genuinely useful data point: this reads as real organizational rigor, not just a number moving around, and it's consistent with (not contradicting) the "93% gross retention, board-confirmed" figure already on this dashboard.

Sales leadership: the bandwidth concern gets sharper, not resolved. The deck's own initiative grid states plainly that executive-relationship-building with top MSP targets was "allocated to outgoing CEO. To be taken up by Steve Randall as CSO," meaning Randall is now absorbing C-level relationship duties on top of the NA sales-scaling gap Lizzie flagged Aug 31 ("more of a doer than a manager"). Separately, the CRO hire is listed explicitly "on hold, following CEO exit." Three things pointing the same direction: no CRO, the CSO covering for the departed CEO, and an unresolved NA leadership gap.

Operational flags: a support-quality miss and a data-integrity bug. Q1 support resolved-within-SLA came in at 67% against a 90% target (1st-response SLA was fine, 93% vs. 90%). Lemongrass, described elsewhere in the deck as the company's largest MSP customer, gave two bad support ratings during a stretch of "intense white glove" support weeks. Separately, a CRM Data Manager resigned mid-quarter (drafted for the war in Ukraine) and a Salesforce RCA/bug affected renewal and upsell tracking, worth confirming that's been fully resolved and didn't distort the retention numbers above.

Customer signal: real wins, one real loss. Positive: named case studies with SoftwareOne and Watches of Switzerland, plus an AIR (the newer product line) beta and case study with Lemongrass, and an early MCP/agentic-access signal from Lemongrass and Delaware, consistent with where the market's heading. Negative: €23k of unplanned churn at Fujitsu (end customer Betrago), who kicked off a competitive RFP; a bid was submitted with a decision expected in May, outcome not in this document. New competitor names surfaced in Q1 win/loss analysis worth knowing: Empirius, AI Automatics, and SAP FRUN, in addition to Datadog/Dynatrace/SAP Cloud ALM already tracked.

Product discipline: a real NO-GO, not just feature-building. The deck documents a full build-and-kill cycle on a "Selective Data Refresh" product: a working technical prototype and customer interviews confirmed real demand, but the team killed it as a standalone product (explicit "NO-GO") once SAP RISE's Clean Core constraints made direct table access non-compliant, pivoting instead to a lower-risk near-term play (Post-Copy Automation) and a medium-term one (Clean-Core-compliant Synthetic Test Data Generation). A small but genuine signal of GTM/product discipline rather than chasing every opportunity.

The mandate, per the position spec and the two calls

A GTM build on a profitable, differentiated product, not a product turnaround.

Target	Value
Revenue growth	Grow NA revenue materially while sustaining EMEA; re-accelerate off ~9% 1H26 growth
Retention	Spec claims >100% net retention, NPS 81; Dave Keil's insider figure (Aug 20) was low-to-mid-nineties, and the Q2 26 board deck (reviewed Aug 21) now confirms 93% gross retention, corroborating Keil and contradicting the spec.
GTM infrastructure	Build a formal coverage model and channel strategy (MSPs, GSIs); none has existed to date
CAC efficiency	Improve on the current roughly two-year payback period
Product alignment	Keep the platform aligned to SAP's own roadmap (S/4HANA, RISE with SAP, cloud, AI)
Exit	Spec names an explicit outcome: "company prepared for 4-year exit"
Geography	Remote, NA or Europe, East Coast presence required; meaningful India-based team too

SAP-specific experience is explicitly NOT required, per Alex Bossetta on the Aug 13 call: a similar or applicable channel motion is what matters. That removes the one real stretch item on the earlier read of the spec.

The retention discrepancy, unpacked

The Aug 12 position spec states net retention above 100% and an NPS of 81, a genuinely strong number if accurate. But Dave Keil, a board member speaking candidly on Aug 20, put actual retention at "low-to-mid-nineties," a materially weaker figure, and the Q2 26 board deck reviewed Aug 21 now confirms this at the board level: 93% gross retention. Two independent sources (an insider's verbal account and the board's own deck) now agree with each other and disagree with the recruiter-facing spec, which resolves most of the doubt about which number is real, though gross-versus-net still needs a direct answer from Mark Haidet or Lizzie Henry. That is a meaningful, now well-corroborated gap between the recruiter-facing story and reality, and it echoes the same "restore" pattern seen on the Tyk opportunity. Top diligence priority once real data is available: cohort retention actuals, and an honest reconciliation of why the spec's number was so far off.

Working first-90-days plan

My own draft, built against the mandate and everything surfaced through diligence so far. Not something the board has seen or approved, a prep exercise to sharpen ahead of the Mark Haidet and Lizzie Henry conversations.

The mandate is a GTM build on a genuinely profitable, differentiated product, not a turnaround. That means the first 90 days are about getting an honest baseline fast, then standing up the channel motion that has never existed, while not letting the two live execution gaps (NA sales leadership, the SAP relationship) sit unaddressed. Sequenced in three 30-day blocks below.

Days 1-30: Listen and get to ground truth

Wk 1-2

1:1s across the leadership team (Karstens, O'Callagan, Randall, Blackman, Donohoe) and with Lizzie Henry on org health since the January transition.

Wk 1-2

Get real cohort retention data (gross vs. net) to resolve the spec's >100% claim against the board deck's 93% gross figure once and for all.

Wk 2-3

Sit with Mark Haidet and the board on what's actually blocking SAP Endorsed-partner status, and get the unfiltered version of the January CEO transition.

Wk 3-4

Review the channel strategy deck and meet the newly staffed Alliances team directly; assess the real state of the IBM, Kyndryl and TechM conversations.

Wk 3-4

Scope the NA Sales Director vacancy properly before backfilling reactively, get the CAC payback and pipeline data behind the two-year figure.

Days 31-60: Set the plan, start closing gaps

Wk 5-6

Formalize the channel strategy: a real coverage model for MSPs and GSIs, not an informal set of conversations, built on the early IBM/Kyndryl/TechM traction.

Wk 5-6

Move on the NA Sales Director hire, interim coverage in the meantime so the region isn't running on one rep through the search.

Wk 6-8

Bring a specific ask to SAP's Product team on Endorsed-partner status, informed by what Days 1-30 surfaced, and start scoping a competitive response to SAP Cloud ALM in the Corporate segment.

Wk 6-8

Share a first cut of the retention/churn diagnosis with the board: what's driving the gap between 93% gross and the spec's claims, and a plan to close it.

Days 61-90: Show early motion

Wk 9-11

First GSI-sourced pipeline should be visible, even if early; report it against the board's H2 26 pipeline coverage target.

Wk 9-11

NA Sales Director hired or a credible interim structure in place, with a plan for the broader NA team build.

Wk 11-12

Board update: the formalized channel strategy, a retention/CAC improvement plan with real targets, and a clear position on the SAP relationship, not just a status report.

90-day mark

The test: has the GTM motion actually started, not just been diagnosed. That's the whole job per the mandate.

What "on track" looks like at 90 days

Area	90-day marker
Retention	Gross-vs-net reconciled with real cohort data; a named plan to close the gap to spec-level numbers, not just a diagnosis
NA sales leadership	Director hired or a credible interim structure running, region no longer down to one rep
Channel/GSI	A formal coverage model in place; first sourced pipeline from IBM, Kyndryl or TechM visible, even if early
SAP relationship	A specific, board-visible ask on Endorsed-partner status made, and a first competitive response to SAP Cloud ALM scoped
CAC payback	Root causes identified (spend mix, targeting, channel leverage); a plan to move off the ~2-year figure
Team	Full leadership 1:1s done; a clear read on any further changes needed beyond the NA sales gap

This plan will get sharper after real conversations with Mark Haidet and Lizzie Henry and post-NDA data; treat it as a working draft to bring into the process, not a finished commitment.

Full process timeline

Aug 12

Alex Bossetta (Bespoke) re-engages: new CEO search at Avantra, position spec attached.

Aug 12

Mike replies with Resurgens history and six diligence questions (prior CEO, Diogo Freire's candidacy, search timeline, NA underperformance, board involvement, comp). Call booked for Aug 13, 10:30am-12:00pm ET.

Aug 13

First call with Alex Bossetta (90 min). Real backstory on the CEO change (board-driven, after execs flagged the GTM gap); Diogo Freire confirmed not a candidate; hard numbers surfaced for the first time; SAP experience confirmed not required; search had been widened beyond SAP-only candidates.

Aug 20

Interview with Dave Keil (49 min). Far more candid rundown: real retention figure (low-to-mid-nineties, not >100%), ~2-year CAC payback, the SAP-free-tooling competitive threat, the January leadership change and why it happened, and Mike's own CoreStory situation discussed as part of mutual vetting.

Aug 20

Mike sends a same-day thank-you email to Dave Keil. Alex relays Dave's positive read and proposes a Mark Haidet intro. Bespoke confirms a Monday, Aug 24, 4:00pm ET debrief call; the Haidet meeting is still being scheduled.

Aug 21

Mike reviews Avantra's Q2 26 board deck (VCP Initiatives 2026 / Executive Summary Q2 26 Update): ARR and growth essentially on budget, Q2 Adj. EBITDA beat, 93% gross retention board-confirmed, an NA Sales Director departure, early GSI channel progress, and a live, unresolved SAP relationship.

Aug 21

Dave Keil replies, confirms the Aug 20 call landed well, and introduces Lizzie Henry (Avantra's People leader) as a second next-step contact alongside Mark Haidet.

Aug 24

4:00pm ET debrief call held with Alex Bossetta and Emilie Pritchard (Bespoke). Post-call email mix-up on a Sean Thompson LinkedIn profile, resolved Aug 31, see Overview timeline and the Exec Team tab.

Aug 26

Call with Mark Haidet held. Largely background/rapport rather than the planned diligence agenda, see the Call notes panel below for what got covered (cash/debt posture, hold period, GSI color) versus what's still open (retention, Jan CEO removal, process timeline, comp).

Aug 27

Bespoke reaches out to schedule Lizzie Henry and Seth Green calls, separate 1-hour Zooms, for next week. Windows offered for Lizzie: Mon 8/31, Tue 9/1, or Thu 9/3; Mike offered Monday or Tuesday 9:30am. Bespoke holding the Monday slot pending Resurgens confirmation. Seth's times still pending.

Aug 28

Feedback call with Emilie Pritchard (Bespoke). Coaching from Dave Keil and Mark Haidet, cash/cap-table clarification, Lizzie Henry now confirmed Monday 8/31. See the Call notes panel below.

Aug 31

Call with Lizzie Henry (60 min). Relationship-building, not a formal interview; confirmed Seth Green tomorrow (Sept 1). See the Call notes panel below for the org/leadership detail surfaced.

Aug 31

NDA signed; Lizzie emails the current Q1 2026 board deck (per Anna Chattaway's cc'd note, cc: Seth Green, Alex Bossetta, Emilie Pritchard, Mark Haidet) and confirms the Sept 1 Seth Green call. Mike reviews the deck, see the new panel on the Market tab: consistent with the Q2 26 deck, a headcount discrepancy worth asking about, sharper sales-leadership-bandwidth detail, and 2025 retention root-cause color.

Sept 1

Personal prep call with Bob Potter (former SentryOne colleague, not Avantra/Resurgens) to refresh SentryOne's before/after metrics ahead of today's Seth Green call. One real nugget: the sales-leader seat may have been held open on purpose, pending the CEO hire, per Mike's own framing, unconfirmed, see the Call notes panel below.

Sept 1

Seth Green call held, 4pm ET. Headcount resolved (~73 confirmed), capital-allocation and cash-neutral-model mechanics fully explained, SAP-vs-multi-ERP direction discussed, and a major correction on Bernd Engist's status. See the Call notes panel below for the full readout.

Sept 2

Seth delivers the full Q2 26 board deck, Customer Office deep dive, and Sean Thompson's GSI strategy deck as promised. See the new panel below for the full readout: NA sales worse than known, GSI motion further along than known, a new Swisscom risk, and a favorable SAP market shift.

Sept 2

Catch-up call with Emilie Pritchard (Bespoke), relationship coaching rather than diligence. Mike relays being in "hell yes" mode, no founder-dynamic risk (Bernd Engist "clearly an IC," per Seth, corroborating Sept 1), and unprompted interest from his former sales leader and other past colleagues in joining if this happens. Floated Friday in Atlanta; Lizzie says the team is out for the long weekend, so that date is off. Emilie coached Mike to send Seth a detailed, enthusiastic note on his fit (cc Dave Keil and Mark Haidet); he plans to.

Sept 4

Text from Emilie Pritchard (Bespoke): sets up Bryan West (Resurgens MD, Portfolio Operations and Talent) as the next interview, 60-75 min Zoom. See Call notes panel below for the full exchange and Exec Team tab for Bryan's entry; resolves the Aug 31 Lizzie Henry ambiguity over "Brian Welsh, likely Brian West," confirmed the same person and a contact Mike has known since 2022.

Sept 9

Bryan expects a decision on how to proceed within a week or two, complicated by Dave Keil and Mark Haidet's London offsite next week. Emilie has her own call with Resurgens planned next week (still being confirmed). Comp/equity structure and the retention gross/net reconciliation remain the significant open items. If things go well: an in-person whiteboard meeting with Resurgens' founders in Atlanta, one of the final steps before offer talks.

Open questions by stakeholder

To close before a decision point.

Mark Haidet / board: gross-vs-net retention definitions now that 93% gross is board-confirmed; real comp/equity structure once a genuine conversation starts, still not addressed as of Sept 9. ANSWERED IN PART (Sept 9, per Bryan West): the search has 2-3 other candidates active, described as slightly behind Mike, with Dave Keil and Mark Haidet meeting them this week before a London offsite next week; Bryan expects a decision on how to proceed within a week or two, though he couldn't be crisp on exact timing given the Europe trip. Board risk tolerance since the January CEO removal: no structural overreaction per Bryan, Resurgens' philosophy is "the perfect ops team is no ops team, just the right CEO in the seat," though he candidly admitted hindsight says Resurgens could have pushed the prior CEO situation sooner. NEW OPEN ITEM (Sept 9, per the Emilie text thread): asked directly whether there's a main point of contact at Resurgens on this process or whether Emilie speaks to the entire team, not yet answered.

Lizzie Henry (People): ANSWERED IN PART (Aug 31): the CEO removal came from the management team flagging behavior concerns directly to the board, a complementary account to Dave Keil's background-misrepresentation detail, not a contradiction, but worth a direct reconciling question with Mark Haidet if it comes up naturally. Headcount: the Q1 26 board deck's own table gives 73 (Mar 2026), materially below the "150" Bespoke cited Aug 13; still worth asking Lizzie to confirm the current number and reconcile the gap. Still open: what's actually blocking the NA Sales Director backfill; culture/retention of the existing team through the search.

Team: NEW (Aug 31, sharper read): per Lizzie, the person promoted into the global sales leader role has proven himself in EMEA but is struggling to scale, "more of a doer than a manager." Worth clarifying directly whether this describes the Chief Sales Officer (Steve Randall) himself or a separate NA Sales Director report, the board deck's "NA Sales Director has left" framing may understate this. Also still open: review the channel strategy deck once Bespoke sends it (requested Aug 20); what's actually blocking SAP Endorsed-partner status and the plan if SAP keeps bundling via Cloud ALM.

Data (post-NDA): true cohort retention data (gross vs. net), CAC payback trend, pipeline and win-loss versus Splunk, Sumo Logic, and DIY/no-decision, customer concentration, and the actual H2 26 pipeline coverage behind the board's ~€9.8M (~$11.5M) / 2.1x figure.

Seth Green (Investment Principal): the cash/runway question specifically. Per Emilie Pritchard (Aug 28), this doesn't have a typical answer given Resurgens' near-full ownership stake, and she doesn't have visibility into the cap table herself. This is Seth's domain to ask directly.

Call notes: Emilie Pritchard feedback, Aug 28

Coaching relayed from Dave Keil and Mark Haidet after the Aug 20/26 calls, plus process context.

Dave Keil's read: strong on career progression and the strategic/tactical blend. His coaching: come across as very operational, not just strategic, this is a fresh acquisition for Resurgens. Diogo (CFO/interim CEO) is strongly operational; the incoming CEO should complement him with real operating rigor, not just external-facing strategy.

Mark Haidet's read: values the domain relevance and European-to-US expansion experience, sees real pattern-match value even outside SAP (Microsoft ecosystem, GSI motions). His coaching: wants more tactical depth in answers, not just outcomes but the specific levers and what didn't work. Emilie's advice: answer the question, then go a layer deeper into mechanics and lessons learned.

Prep for Seth Green: be tight and fluent on personal metrics (revenue, growth rate, gross/net retention, ACV movement), Seth brings an investor lens and responds well to numbers-driven answers. Also the right person to ask directly about cash/cap table/runway, per the open question above.

Prep for Lizzie Henry: Emilie has a prior relationship with her from ~4 years ago (then "Lizzie Brown," met via Brian Welsh, likely a mishearing of Brian West, during Emilie's VC/PE consulting days). CORRECTED (Aug 31): on the actual Lizzie Henry call, Lizzie herself confirmed the ~4-years-ago introduction (June 2022, right after Mike joined CoreStory, the "Saperna" search) was via Brian West, still at Resurgens (now runs their ops group), the same person and timeframe as Mike's own "Bryan West" history above, so this is very likely one and the same event described from two sides, not a separate contact. RESOLVED (Sept 4): confirmed, it's Bryan West, now the next scheduled interview step, see the Board table above. Coaching from the Aug 28 call: bring a talk track on what matters in an investor partnership and how Mike approaches talent decisions, a thoughtful lens on the team, where to uplevel, who he'd bring from his network. Despite being "the talent partner," she has real influence at Resurgens, worth taking seriously. Lead with metrics here too.

Process context: candidates are well-calibrated at this stage, Mike is not the first person they talked to. Resurgens was in late-stage talks a few weeks ago with another candidate, a first-time "step-up" CEO, who ultimately didn't move forward: his inexperience showed late in the process, struggling with the shift from a larger-company background to a PE-backed setting and partnering with investors. Emilie framed Mike's timing as "a really nice, refreshing breath of air." Dave had already told Mike this backstory separately.

If conversations go well: Emilie suggested offering Seth and/or Lizzie an in-person meeting, coffee, lunch, or office visit, especially convenient since Mike is in Auburn starting Aug 29, about 90 minutes from Atlanta.

Call notes: Lizzie Henry, Aug 31

Relationship-building call, per Lizzie's own framing, not a formal interview. Real substance surfaced anyway on org history and leadership.

CEO removal, a second account. Lizzie: it was the management team itself (chief product, chief sales, chief financial, chief customer) who proactively brought concerns about the prior CEO's behavior to Resurgens, "very thoughtfully done." This is a complementary account to Dave Keil's background-misrepresentation/undisclosed-SAP-termination detail, likely both true, but worth a direct reconciling question if the topic comes up with Mark Haidet.

Org reaction: relief, not shock. Deeper in the org needed "some management" but no real cultural blowup, since leadership had flagged the issue themselves. Search has run since Q1 2026, genuine fatigue by now. Started narrowly SAP-experienced-CEO-only, a small pool, later widened (consistent with what's already known).

Leadership changes since Aug 2024: mostly additions, not departures. Retained the Chief Product Officer and CFO (Diogo); promoted the Chief Sales Officer into a global sales role and someone else into running Customer. The CMO's prior leader left BEFORE the deal closed, already known and priced in, not a post-deal surprise, worth revising the earlier CIM-comparison read that treated this as post-acquisition churn.

Sales leadership gap, sharper than the board deck suggested. The person promoted into the global sales leader role has proven himself within EMEA but has struggled to scale it, per Lizzie because he's "more of a doer than a manager," strong at hero deal-closing moves, weaker at building the management layer underneath. Likely describes the Chief Sales Officer (Steve Randall) himself, not just a subordinate NA Sales Director vacancy, worth confirming directly.

Diogo (CFO): "very serviceable and trusted" per the investment team, but would benefit from a CEO who paints the bigger picture rather than "brute execution." Consistent with the existing read that he's not a CEO candidate.

The June 2024 CIM, independently flagged as dated. Lizzie, unprompted, suggested sending the current board deck rather than the "summer 2024" CIM since it predates the interim-CEO period and is "two plus years dated at this point," a nice independent corroboration of the CIM-vs-today gap analysis already on this dashboard (Aug 31 entry above).

"Sean" resurfaces. Mike expressed interest in a recent hire Dave Keil brought in, referred to only as "Sean," someone Dave thinks highly of. RESOLVED (Aug 31, same day): Mike confirmed the seanthompson4 LinkedIn profile is correct, settling the Aug 24 ambiguity, see the Exec Team tab. Likely this same person, Dave's Tricentis channel-lead hire.

Process outlook: if things continue positively, the next major step is an in-person full whiteboard meeting with Resurgens' founders in Atlanta, one of the final steps before offer talks. No date set. Immediate next steps: sign the NDA (Adobe eSign), review the current board deck, then the Seth Green call today, Sept 1, 4pm ET.

Call notes: Mark Haidet, Aug 26

What actually got covered on the call, against the planned prep agenda.

Not addressed: retention, gross vs. net. Never came up. Still needs a direct answer, from Mark or the board, reconciling the board deck's 93% gross figure against the spec's >100% net claim.

Not addressed: the January CEO removal. Never raised by either side. Still an open question on how it was communicated and what it changed about the board's process.

Not addressed: process and timeline. No discussion of other candidates in process or a decision timeline.

Not addressed: comp structure. No comp conversation at all this call.

NEW: cash, debt, and capital structure. Asked directly, Mark gave the first real financial color of the process: about $38M of debt on the business; Resurgens runs its portfolio "cash neutral" (cash flow reinvested into growth, pre-funds the balance sheet if it expects to burn); no raise is planned, Resurgens (90% owner) funds any incremental need itself via debt or equity; typical hold period is "five-ish years," reassessed at year four. No specific cash-on-hand balance was given despite being asked twice. UPDATED (Sept 1, per Seth Green): confirmed the debt sits with PNC and Saratoga, is transaction-related (financed the Resurgens acquisition, not operating losses) and upsizable if needed; Resurgens underwrites to a 3x MOIC hurdle; interest expense does not gate growth-investment decisions; tuck-in M&A is confirmed active, run through Brenton O'Callaghan (CPO; the CIM's "CCO" title above reflects his 2019 hire, current title per his own LinkedIn is Chief Product Officer); hold period widened to "three to seven years, as much runway as makes sense," a broader range than Mark's "five-ish years."

NEW: GSI/partnership color. Accenture relationship described as "early level"; a few other GSIs are more advanced. Confirmed North America is the biggest addressable market but not the biggest revenue source today, a live opportunity gap.

Read on the call: mostly rapport-building and mutual background-swapping (Mike spent significant time on the CoreStory story, including the paused Series B) rather than the structured diligence agenda planned going in. None of the five original prep items got a direct answer, and no follow-up was scheduled, worth closing that loop proactively rather than waiting on Bespoke.

Prep call: Bob Potter (SentryOne), Sept 1

Personal prep call, not with anyone at Avantra or Resurgens. Bob is a former SentryOne colleague; Mike used the call to refresh SentryOne's before/after metrics as track-record proof points, and recapped the opportunity for Bob along the way. Dated Aug 1 on the recording; almost certainly a mislabeled Sept 1, the same-day timing (hours before the Seth Green call) fits far better than three weeks before the search even started (Aug 12), and every detail matches Avantra exactly. Worth a quick self-check, not treated as a discrepancy in the numbers below.

NEW: the sales-leader seat may have been held open on purpose. Per Mike's own framing to Bob: "they've been waiting for the CEO to be filled before putting that person in a seat," implying the vacancy could be a deliberate sequencing choice (let the incoming CEO pick their own sales leader) rather than an unexplained gap. Secondhand and unconfirmed by anyone at Avantra or Resurgens; worth a direct, simple confirmation with Seth or Lizzie rather than assuming either read.

SentryOne comp metrics, refreshed for reuse: before/after story on the 5-year CAGR the deal was measured on, 27% CAGR / 0% EBITDA at Mike's start to 35% CAGR / 14% EBITDA at exit ("rule of 49"); 93.5% gross retention, 114% net revenue retention at exit; YoY growth popped to 65% a few quarters after the SHIP sales model went in; exit run-rate of 100 orders/month and 30 new logos/month; CAC payback under 24 months; churn ~5%/year on 4,000 customers; average deal size $26K, enterprise (>$100K) deals averaging $225K. Per the CIM found live on the call: $28M estimated 2020 ARR, $35M revenue, 92% gross margins, 150+ net new logos in 2019, 109% 2019 NRR (Bob flagged this NRR figure as likely using a nonstandard broker methodology, not a clean comparison).

Read on the call: mostly a friendly metrics-refresh with a trusted former colleague, not diligence on Avantra itself. Useful for two things: sharpening Mike's own track-record numbers ahead of investor-style conversations, and one real, if unconfirmed, nugget on the sales-leader vacancy worth checking directly.

Call notes: Seth Green, Sept 1 (4pm ET)

The real diligence call: "your hour to get smarter on and engage with the business," per Lizzie's framing. Dated Aug 1 on the recording, same mislabeling pattern as the Bob Potter call; content matches the prep sheet almost verbatim, treated here as the real Sept 1 call. A dense, substantive hour covering capital allocation, product strategy, the executive-team record, headcount, and growth/retention context.

RESOLVED: headcount is ~73. Seth confirmed the board deck's own table; the 150 figure Bespoke gave on Aug 13 "has never" been accurate.

MAJOR CORRECTION: Bernd Engist is still with the company. Not departed as this dashboard previously read from the leadership-table comparison. He's now an individual contributor, a "super solutions engineer" working the most complex customer environments, with no ownership stake and no board seat. He was always CTO, never CEO.

Capital allocation and the cash-neutral model, fully explained. Resurgens underwrites to a 3x MOIC hurdle. The ~$38M of debt sits with PNC and Saratoga, is transaction-related (financed the original acquisition, not operating losses), and can be upsized if a good use of capital presents itself. Interest expense does not gate growth-investment decisions. Tuck-in M&A is confirmed active, run through Brenton O'Callaghan (CPO). Hold period: "three to seven years, as much runway as makes sense," wider than Mark Haidet's earlier "five-ish years, reassessed at year four."

SAP-vs-multi-ERP, answered directly. Seth is genuinely open to either path, expanding beyond pure-SAP is on the table, but leans toward deepening the SAP moat by default given where the product and customer base already sit. Explained the 2027 forcing function in technical detail: SAP's ECC retirement is pushing customers toward S/4HANA and RISE, with Solution Manager also being sunset, a real, dated catalyst for SAP-shop customers to need exactly what Avantra does.

Growth and retention context. The softer 2026 growth/retention figures reflect known, long-anticipated churn (not a new problem surfacing), not a deteriorating book. Internal growth target is 25%; gross retention is "typically mid-90s" in a normal period. Q2's new-logo performance was confirmed better than Q1 and slightly ahead of plan, a genuinely positive update the Q1 deck alone didn't fully convey; Seth will send the Q2 board deck.

Employee churn, partly deliberate. Some of the headcount movement reflects intentional decisions: resistance to AI-adoption within R&D, and corrections on a handful of sales hires that didn't work out, not pure attrition.

Sean Thompson, strongly validated. Warm, specific praise, including his channel-strategy contribution at a recent board meeting. Corroborates the Aug 31 Lizzie Henry read.

Pricing and channel mechanics. Pricing is per-landscape plus tiering. MSPs run their own operations on top of Avantra (not simple resale); GSI motion is mixed maturity across partners; pricing is the same whether sold direct or through an MSP.

Not directly addressed: the "sales-leader seat held open on purpose" theory from the Bob Potter prep call was not confirmed or denied here, still worth a direct check with Seth or Lizzie. The retention gross/net reconciliation, January CEO removal detail, process timeline, and comp questions from the Aug 26 Mark Haidet call also remain open.

Read on the call: the most substantive diligence conversation of the process so far, resolving several open threads (headcount, Bernd Engist, capital allocation, hold period) while surfacing one genuinely positive update (Q2 new-logo pace) and leaving the sales-leadership and process/comp questions for a direct follow-up.

Full Q2 26 board pack, Customer Office deep dive & GSI strategy (Sept 2, sent by Seth Green as promised)

Three documents: the complete 72-slide Q2 26 board deck (Seth's earlier 3-slide summary was a partial extract of this same deck), a 21-slide Customer Office deep dive (Darina Donohoe), and a 17-slide GSI/Alliances strategy deck authored by Sean Thompson. The richest single batch of primary material received in this process.

Financial reconciliation: consistent with everything on file, with useful new detail. H1 2026 ARR €18.688M actual vs. €18.733M budget (99.8%), Q2 Adj. EBITDA €354K vs. €297K budget (Q2 alone) confirming the earlier beat. Rule of 40 fell to 11.7% actual (vs. 22.4% prior year, 5.5% budget), a real deceleration worth understanding. Cash balance €2.826M actual vs. €3.578M budget, meaningfully below plan (driven by delayed customer receipts, no credit risk per the deck); the Max ARR debt covenant sits comfortably within limits at 1.86x (covenant <2.19x). H1 bookings landed at 81% of budget (€1.281M of €1.588M).

NA sales collapse is the single biggest H1 GTM story. H1 bookings attainment: DACH 67%, ROW 209% (two large SoftwareOne deals plus a Kyndryl Belgium upsell), NA just 25%. Two Sales Directors were lost in Q2 alone (1 DACH, 1 NA); NA is down to a US sales-director search with 4 candidates at 2nd/3rd round. Pipeline coverage entering Q3 sits at only 1.9x vs. a 3.5x target, though 88% of that pipeline is in late stage (Proof/Proposal/Closing) and two of the biggest Q3 deals (Ford, Safran) had already completed their POV by the deck date.

Product: Avantra 26 and AIR shipped, 6 weeks late, and a real first AI-security win. Avantra 26 (reskinned UI, BTP support, automation runner) and Avantra AIR (root-cause analyzer) both launched, well received, but GA landed 6 weeks behind plan; leadership named a not-well-enough-defined NPI process as the cause, with ownership now assigned to Brenton O'Callaghan. Nestlé (Operational Services Worldwide) closed as a new-logo win, €99.5K ARR, Security edition, beating Opsapsis in a POV-driven security evaluation, with €200K+ of 2027 expansion pipeline already identified across ~477 SIDs. Notably, Bernd Engist is named on the Nestlé deal team for "strategy & MVP," direct, primary-source corroboration of Seth Green's Sept 1 description of him as a hands-on individual contributor on complex customer work.

Customer Office: real root-cause work behind the retention numbers. A new Customer Office leader (Darina Donohoe, since end of January 2026) ran a structured review naming 7 root causes behind 2025's retention miss (no shared strategy/playbook, siloed functions, weak tooling/AI adoption, no single source of truth, inconsistent QBR coverage, mixed team performance, no 2025 NPS program) and has visibly executed against most of them in H1: a playbook is live, 95 accounts now in a formal QBR cadence (22 completed, 10 scheduled), and a catch-up 2025 NPS survey scored +50 (target +55 by Dec 2026). Gross retention is genuinely trending up (95% Q2 26 vs. 93% Q1) and H1 churn/reductions ran €442K against a €704K budget, meaningfully better than plan; the H2 outlook is less favorable (€728K predicted against a €541K H2 budget), with Swisscom the single largest exposure, see Risk tab.

GSI/Alliances: a real, numbered strategy now exists. Authored by Sean Thompson ("Head of Global Alliances & Channel Partnerships"), covering H2 2026-Q2 2027. 16 GSIs scored on a 7-factor framework; Tier 1 (IBM, Kyndryl, Tech Mahindra, Wipro) represents a $13M ARR opportunity over 12-24 months, with Tier 2 (Accenture, Infosys, LTIMindtree, DXC, Fujitsu, Hexaware) adding another $6.4M, for $20M+ total ecosystem potential. Executive sponsors are in place at all four Tier 1 partners; Kyndryl already shows active pipeline and early revenue. A parallel push targets India's Global Capability Center market ($65B, 1,800+ centers). Board is asked to approve $200-275K of investment plus two new hires (a Tier 2/India Global Alliance Director and a presales engineer), against FY26 targets of $1M partner pipeline, $250-500K partner-sourced ARR, and 3-4 signed MSAs.

Bottom line on this batch: the two biggest new facts both cut against the base case's biggest known weakness (GTM) in opposite directions: NA sales leadership is genuinely worse than previously known (2 director losses, not 1; 25% attainment), while the GSI/channel motion is genuinely further along than previously known (a real strategy with named partners, dollars, and executive sponsors, not just "talks underway"). Net read: the mandate's core job is still wide open, but there's now real evidence someone is already building the channel engine the next CEO would inherit and scale, not starting from zero.

Call notes: Bryan West, Sept 9 (Zoom, recovered via Plaud)

A warm, substantive fit conversation, per Emilie's framing going in, not a numbers or diligence Q&A. Roughly 50 minutes. Both sides went deep: Bryan on his own CEO-engagement role and the board's risk posture, Mike on his full career track record as concrete decision-making and operating proof points.

The origin of this search, firsthand. Bryan personally ran the diagnostic breakfast with Avantra's management team about four to five months ago where Resurgens, as board and sponsor, asked the team directly what would most help or catalyze them. His own summary of their answer: leadership and go-to-market tooling, a direct, primary-source confirmation of the mandate already on this dashboard, not a secondhand read.

Mike's full track record, laid out in detail for the first time on a call. The CoreStory join story (NEA's Aaron Jacobson intro, the founder keeping the CEO title while Mike ran the company, ~120 employees/~$20M ARR to zero to $4M ARR today), the SentryOne "rule of 49" story (27% to 35% CAGR, 0% to 14% EBITDA, sold to SolarWinds), and new depth on the OutSystems chapter: joined a dysfunctional ~$65M ARR company (no formal QBRs, EMEA at 65% of revenue with no EMEA leader) and grew it to ~$200M ARR in under three years on a $360M KKR/Goldman raise, a run explicitly "his baby." A person he hired from Capital One and trained on the same playbook later took OutSystems to ~$600M (recently departed). Also new: Mike's own Quarterly Operating System (already sent to Dave Keil, Mark Haidet, and Seth Green) is his own creation, used at every company he's run, a structured 13-week cadence (QBRs week 2, initial call week 4, board meeting week 5, board update week 7, final call week 10). He told Bryan directly that he's built his own Avantra dashboard the same way, pulling everything he's learned from calls and research into one place, essentially describing this dashboard to him.

CoreStory's live crisis, used candidly as a decision-making example. Mike gave Bryan the real-time picture: ~$100M pref stack, a Series B raise running into investor "stage fright" over proximity to the foundation-model layer, a board meeting ~2 weeks ago on fumes on cash, headcount already cut to 36, and his own read that the likely outcomes are a sale, a bridge into a sale, or finding someone to let the company limp along. He was direct that even a sale would likely net him little given $4M ARR against a probable $100-200M exit range. Consistent with, and more current than, everything already on the CoreStory panel of the options dashboard.

Bryan's own role and the board risk-tolerance answer. When Mike asked how Bryan personally engages CEOs across the portfolio: a monthly CEO-cohort call he facilitates without dominating, the CEO summit, third-party 360 pulse checks, a competency matrix, and an informal "black box" line he offers every CEO, though he estimates he steers more than 80% of black-box conversations back to the board rather than keeping them private. On board risk tolerance since the January CEO removal, when Mike asked directly: no structural overreaction, his stated philosophy is that the ideal ops team is no ops team at all, just the right CEO in the seat by day two, with Resurgens' role being to stabilize, hold the fort, and help a CEO know what good looks like. He candidly added that hindsight suggests Resurgens could have pushed the prior CEO situation sooner, called it "a little bit of art." A more complete answer than this dashboard had before to the open board-risk-tolerance question.

Process and timeline, the most concrete update yet. Confirmed 2-3 other candidates are active, being met by Dave Keil and Mark Haidet this week before the two of them head to a UK/Avantra offsite next week (an all-week strategic planning session ahead of budget). Bryan said the others are "slightly behind" Mike and that Mike is at the top of the current batch, with a decision on next steps expected within a week or two, the Europe trip being the main wrinkle on exact timing. Comp and equity structure still did not come up.

A concrete new bench-strength signal. Mike named, in specific terms this time, a former SentryOne colleague now at Tricentis (a company with an offering that overlaps Avantra's category) who he's already informally floated to run sales if this comes together, sharper than the general "former colleagues have expressed interest" note from the Sept 2 status entry. See the Risk register for the NA sales-leadership item.

Direct engagement on hard questions, not just rapport. Bryan pushed Mike to argue both sides of Avantra being "pre-category" (the real AWS Transform/free-tooling comparison versus the case for differentiation), raised the CoreStory-VP-flagged-Claude-parity moment directly (Mike agreed with the substance, chalked the poor reception up to timing and audience), and asked pointed questions on where Avantra ranks among Mike's live conversations, what concerns him operationally, and what his top lieutenants would need. Mike's answer on ranking: Avantra is his favorite specifically because of the missing founder dynamic, "a pretty fresh piece of clay."

Read on the call: the strongest two-way conversation of the process so far, both sides went deep rather than staying at the level of pleasantries. Net effect: reinforces Mike's own high conviction, gives Resurgens a much fuller picture of his track record than any prior call, and moves two of the longest-open questions (search timeline/candidate count, board risk tolerance) from unaddressed to genuinely answered, even if not fully resolved. Comp/equity timing remains the one significant open item from the original prep list.

Text thread with Emilie Pritchard, Sept 9

Same-day follow-up after the Bryan West call, Mike proactively checking on timeline rather than waiting on Bespoke to reach out.

Follow-up sent, and the offsite is specifically London. Mike confirmed he bcc'd Emilie on his follow-up email to Bryan, and separately told her the team will be in London next week for the Avantra offsite (a firmer detail than the general "UK" Bryan gave on the call).

Mike asked directly, "What's next?" Emilie's answer: she'll update him as soon as she has signal from RTP (Resurgens Technology Partners), no concrete commitment beyond that.

Pressed further on timing. Mike asked if Emilie has a planned call with the Resurgens team, explicitly framing it as trying to balance the timeline given the team may be largely unreachable another week during the offsite. Emilie confirmed she does have a call planned next week, but it's still being confirmed on her end; she'll keep him posted.

Still open as of this thread: Mike asked whether there's a main point of contact at Resurgens on this process or whether Emilie speaks to the entire team. No reply yet (message shows Delivered only). Worth watching for her answer, it clarifies who's actually driving the decision on the other side.

Read on the thread: normal, expected process rhythm, nothing alarming, but it concretely corroborates what Bryan said directly on the call, next week is genuinely a lower-visibility week, and shows Mike staying proactively engaged without over-pushing.

Risk register

Key risks to the opportunity and the business.

Risk	Severity	Mitigation / note
NA Sales Director has left; region down to one salesperson	High	NEW (Q2 26 board deck). A live, immediate hiring gap in the exact region the mandate is built around. UPDATED (Aug 31, per Lizzie Henry): the promoted global sales leader himself, not just a subordinate NA hire, has struggled to scale beyond EMEA, "more of a doer than a manager." May be a leadership-capability risk, not just a headcount gap, worth clarifying who exactly this describes before assuming it's a simple backfill. UPDATED (Sept 1, per a Bob Potter prep call, unconfirmed secondhand source): the sales-leader seat may have been held open on purpose, pending the CEO hire, so the incoming CEO can bring in their own person, rather than a plain unexplained vacancy. Still open after the Seth Green call, not directly addressed there; the "held open on purpose" theory remains unconfirmed at the Avantra/Resurgens level. WORSE (Sept 2, full Q2 26 board pack): 2 Sales Directors were actually lost in Q2 (1 DACH, 1 NA, not just the one NA seat previously known), and NA hit only 25% of its Q2 bookings target with a US sales director search still running (4 candidates at 2nd/3rd round as of the deck). H1 bookings overall landed at 81% of budget, entirely dragged by NA (25% attainment) against DACH's 67% and ROW's 209% (two large SoftwareOne deals). This is a bigger, more active leadership-bench problem than a single open seat. NEW (Sept 9, per the Bryan West call): Mike named a specific, real candidate for the seat, a former SentryOne colleague now at Tricentis (whose own offering overlaps with Avantra's category), already informally floated to run sales if this comes together, a more concrete bench-strength signal than the general "former colleagues have expressed interest" note from Sept 2.
SAP relationship unresolved: Endorsed-partner status blocked, SAP Cloud ALM a bundled threat	High	NEW (Q2 26 board deck). Whoever takes this seat inherits a live vendor-relationship problem in the Corporate segment, not just a market one; understand what's actually blocking SAP's Product team. UPDATED (Sept 2, full Q2 26 board pack): still unresolved, described as "two seemingly different approaches" inside SAP itself, but a real tailwind has emerged: a July 2026 EU Commission ruling forces SAP into binding 10-year commitments ending its all-or-nothing maintenance model, potentially favoring Avantra's vendor-neutral positioning as estates fragment; see the Threat radar for detail.
No formalized go-to-market or channel strategy to date	High	This is the entire job. Early GSI progress (IBM, Kyndryl, TechM talks; a staffed Alliances team) is a positive early sign, but still unproven; review the channel strategy deck once sent. MAJOR UPDATE (Sept 2, full GSI strategy deck, authored by Sean Thompson): a real strategy now exists, not just early talks, four Tier 1 GSIs (IBM, Kyndryl, Tech Mahindra, Wipro) evaluated and engaged with executive sponsors secured at all four, a $13M ARR opportunity over 12-24 months, and board-approved investment underway ($200-275K plus two new hires). Still unproven in revenue terms (only Kyndryl shows active pipeline/revenue so far) but this is the clearest evidence yet the core job is being executed, not just diagnosed.
Retention discrepancy: spec says >100%, board deck confirms 93% gross	Medium	UPDATED: now corroborated by two independent sources (Dave Keil verbally, the board deck formally), materially reducing uncertainty about which number is real; still need gross-vs-net clarity and cohort data post-NDA. UPDATED (Sept 2, full Q2 26 board pack): Q2 26 gross retention actually came in at 95% (vs. 93% budget), a genuine improvement quarter-over-quarter, though a single account (Swisscom, see below) is now a real H2 watch item.
Swisscom churn risk: detractor NPS score, live RFP, largest single H2 exposure	Medium	NEW (Sept 2, full Q2 26 board pack / Customer Office Deep Dive). Pino Calzo (Swisscom) gave an NPS detractor score of 5, "quality of automation logic/code is subpar, needs serious quality improvements," at odds with an "everything is great" message he'd given the team F2F in March. An RFP is now live (response due mid-August), a weekly war room is running, and Bernd Engist is personally engaged on the ground. Listed at €270K ARR, medium confidence, "reduction" predicted outcome on the company's own H2 churn/reduction outlook, the single largest account on that list. A real, live account-retention fire the incoming CEO would inherit mid-fight.
Inefficient acquisition: ~2-year CAC payback	Medium	Understand the spend/targeting mix driving this before committing to a re-acceleration plan
January 2026 CEO removal for background misrepresentation	Medium	A governance red flag, though board-driven and handled directly; understand internal/customer fallout and any lasting trust deficit
Single institutional investor, no outside check on the board	Medium	100% Resurgens-controlled board, which cuts both ways: fast decisions, but no outside counterweight if priorities diverge
Concentrated platform risk: tied to SAP's own roadmap pace	Medium	Growth is capped by SAP's cloud/RISE migration timeline regardless of GTM execution; sharpened by the SAP relationship issue above
Sales-leadership bandwidth: no CRO, CSO absorbing exec-relationship duties too	High	NEW (Q1 26 board deck, Aug 31). The CRO hire is explicitly "on hold following CEO exit," and executive relationship-building with top MSP targets, previously the outgoing CEO's job, has been reassigned to Steve Randall (CSO), stacked on top of the NA sales-scaling gap Lizzie flagged the same day. Three separate signals now point at one leadership-capacity problem, not three unrelated ones
Headcount discrepancy: board deck says 73, Bespoke said 150	Medium	NEW (Q1 26 board deck, Aug 31). A large, unexplained gap between the recruiter-facing figure and the board's own headcount table; low-stakes to resolve (one direct question) but worth confirming before anchoring on either number
Small scale, early process	Low-Med	€18.69M (~$21.8M) ARR, 73 employees confirmed (per the board deck's own table and Seth Green directly, Sept 1; Bespoke's Aug 13 estimate of 150 was never accurate); three calls plus two board-deck reviews done, no live comp negotiation yet, other candidates reportedly still in the process
Competitive threat from horizontal players is actually low relative to the category	Low	Real threat is SAP itself (relationship + Cloud ALM) and inertia, not a well-funded horizontal rival like Datadog/Dynatrace; a genuine positive versus Tyk's more crowded field
Process momentum: no follow-up scheduled after the Mark Haidet call	Low-Med	NEW. The Aug 26 call covered rapport and cash/capital-structure color but none of the planned diligence items (retention, Jan CEO removal, timeline, comp); no next step was set. Worth reaching out proactively rather than waiting on Bespoke to schedule.

Comp position (as shared by Bespoke, Aug 13)

Roughly $650 to $700K OTE plus $10 to $15M in equity at plan, with Bespoke describing it as flexible for the right candidate. No live negotiation has happened yet, this is an early anchor shared ahead of the Dave Keil call, not a comp discussion with the board itself. The Mark Haidet conversation is the first real chance to test structure (cash versus equity mix, vesting, acceleration) rather than a fixed number.

Equity at plan, as framed by Bespoke (placeholder, no offer or cap table shared yet)

Resurgens quoted a ~$10-15M equity range directly rather than a percentage; no exit valuation, preference stack, or fully diluted ownership number has been shared. Treat the figures below as bounding the recruiter's own framing, not an independent model.

Scenario	Low end	High end
Equity at plan, as quoted	$10M	$15M
Annual OTE	$650K	$700K

Because no fully diluted percentage or preference terms exist yet, the exit-multiple table used for Tyk isn't meaningful here until real numbers are shared. See the equity model on options.mikelambert.com for the general framework once Avantra terms are known.

Open items before signing: fully diluted ownership percentage, preference stack and participating vs. non-participating terms, option pool sizing, vesting schedule, and change-of-control acceleration. None of this has been discussed yet.

Path-to-$100M model

Stress-test Dave Keil's "clear path to $100M" claim against different growth assumptions. Inputs save in your browser.

Current ARR ($M)

Assumed YoY growth (%)

Retention assumption (%)

Adjusted EBITDA margin (%)

CAC payback (years)

ARR at 24 months

ARR at 36 months

Years to $100M, at this rate

Rule of 40 (est.)

ARR at 24/36mo compounds the assumed growth rate over current ARR. Years to $100M solves the same compounding for time instead of level (shown as 15+ if the growth rate would never realistically get there). Rule of 40 = growth% + adjusted EBITDA margin%, useful mainly to show how far a still-modest growth rate is from that bar today. Retention and CAC payback are shown for reference but not yet wired into the compounding; both are qualitative until real cohort data is available post-NDA.

Pros / cons (current read, post-Dave Keil call)

My current read, weighed against CoreStory and the other live options. Updated from the options.mikelambert.com decision board to reflect the Aug 20 Dave Keil call.

Pros

Real, differentiated product: the only AIOps platform purpose-built for the SAP ecosystem, genuinely profitable, not just breakeven (Q2 26 Adj. EBITDA +€0.4M / ~$0.47M at a 7.64% margin, €0.65M / ~$0.76M ahead of budget), and per Dave Keil, a "clear path" to a hundred-million-dollar business with the right GTM leader.
Confirmed a pure GTM mandate, not a product turnaround, and a near-identical structural match to the OutSystems flip I already executed: EMEA-heavy revenue, an underbuilt NA channel motion, and a two-year payback problem I've solved before. The NA Sales Director departure (below) is arguably an opening, not just a gap: a clean seat to rebuild the NA org my way.
SAP-specific experience is explicitly not required (Aug 13 call), removing the one real stretch item on the original spec.
Healthy governance signal on balance: the January CEO change was ultimately board-driven after the executive team itself flagged the GTM gap, and I'm not a cold start with Resurgens (2022 history, an NDA signed in 2024).
Real forward motion, not a stall: after the well-received Aug 20 Dave Keil call, his Aug 21 reply introduced a second next-step contact, Lizzie Henry (People leader), alongside Mark Haidet, a good sign the process is advancing on two tracks at once.
Early channel tailwind: senior GSI talks are underway with IBM, Kyndryl and TechM, with a newly staffed Alliances team, the first real evidence the partner motion this mandate needs is starting to form.
Comp is real and reasonable this early: roughly $650 to $700K OTE plus $10 to $15M equity at plan, with Bespoke describing it as flexible.
Remote, NA or Europe, no relocation requirement.
NEW (Aug 26, Mark Haidet call): reasonable capital discipline, about $38M of debt, a deliberate cash-neutral operating model, and no raise planned since Resurgens (90% owner) funds any gap itself. Removes a category of downside risk (a distressed cap table or urgent fundraise) that's live on some of the other options.
NEW (Aug 28, Emilie Pritchard feedback call): genuine, substantive interest, not a courtesy process. Real, specific coaching relayed from two board operating partners (Dave Keil, Mark Haidet) rather than generic praise, and confirmation the field is well-calibrated: a prior late-stage finalist was recently passed over for lacking PE-operating readiness, the exact muscle Mike's track record demonstrates.

Cons

The retention story is now well-corroborated but still short of the spec: Dave Keil's low-to-mid-90s figure and the Q2 26 board deck's 93% gross retention agree with each other and contradict the spec's stated >100% net retention. A real credibility gap in the recruiter-facing materials, and gross-vs-net still needs a direct answer.
Go-to-market is a genuine blank slate, not a tuneup: per Dave Keil, there has never been a formalized channel strategy, and the ~2-year CAC payback shows it in the numbers. NEW (Q2 26 board deck): the NA Sales Director has actually left, leaving the region down to one salesperson while recruiting, a bigger immediate gap than "unproven at scale."
A live, unresolved vendor relationship, not just a market risk: NEW (Q2 26 board deck) SAP's own Product team is resistant to granting Avantra Endorsed-partner status, and SAP Cloud ALM is a real free/bundled threat in the Corporate segment. Whoever takes this seat inherits this problem directly.
Small scale: €18.69M (~$21.8M) ARR, 73 employees confirmed (board deck's own headcount table, and Seth Green directly on Sept 1; Bespoke's Aug 13 figure of 150 "has never" been accurate, resolved), 9.4% 1H26 growth (just under the 9.9% budget). Earlier and smaller than the "leader" framing in the original spec suggested.
NEW (Q1 26 board deck, Aug 31): a real sales-leadership bandwidth gap. No CRO (hire on hold since the CEO exit), and the CSO has now also absorbed the departed CEO's executive-relationship-building duties on top of the NA sales-scaling problem already flagged. Whoever takes this seat may be walking into more of a leadership vacuum than the "one open NA seat" framing suggested.
A real governance flag: the prior CEO was removed in January for misrepresenting his background, including a hidden SAP termination. Worth understanding the cultural fallout directly with the board.
Concentrated platform risk: tied entirely to SAP's own migration/roadmap pace (S/4HANA, RISE, cloud), which caps the ceiling regardless of GTM execution, and is now a live relationship risk on top of a market one.
Still early: two calls plus a board-deck review done, next up is Mark Haidet and Lizzie Henry, no live comp negotiation yet, and reportedly other candidates still in the process. Same CoreStory departure-cost consideration applies to any external move.

Bottom line so far: the strongest structural fit to a playbook I've already run (OutSystems), on a genuinely differentiated, now board-confirmed profitable product, with a materially more candid picture after the Dave Keil call, the Q2 26 board deck, a substantive Seth Green call, and now the full Q2 26 board pack, Customer Office deep dive and GSI strategy deck than the spec alone suggested. The retention story is largely resolved (three sources now agree, and actually improved to 95% Q2 gross retention, with a known-churn explanation for the softer 2026 growth figure); headcount is fully resolved at ~73-75; the Bernd Engist record is corrected (still employed, IC role, never CEO, and now directly corroborated on the Nestlé deal team); and capital allocation is well understood (3x MOIC hurdle, transaction debt with PNC/Saratoga, tuck-in M&A active, hold period 3-7 years). The channel/GSI motion, previously the single biggest open question in the mandate, is now shown to have real substance: a numbered strategy, named Tier 1 partners, executive sponsors, and a $13M near-term ARR opportunity, though still unproven in closed revenue. Against that, NA sales leadership reads worse than before (2 director losses in Q2, not 1; 25% NA bookings attainment) and a new, real account-level fire has surfaced (Swisscom, a live RFP and detractor NPS score). The SAP relationship stays unresolved internally but now sits against a favorable market tailwind (the EU's binding SAP maintenance-model ruling). What's left before this can move from promising to a real offer conversation: closing the NA sales-leadership gap, and the retention gross/net, January CEO removal detail, process/timeline, and comp questions from the Aug 26 Mark Haidet call, still open and still needing a direct follow-up.