Startup Structures

This is for founders of early-stage engineering, hardware and advanced-manufacturing businesses who are about to raise money, about to win a customer who will audit them, or about to hire past the point where everything can run through the founders. The job is putting in the governance and controls that investors and primes expect, at a weight the business can actually carry.

Two failure modes are common, and both are expensive. One is leaving it too late, so a funding round or a first customer audit exposes records that cannot answer basic questions. The other is overcorrecting — importing a corporate framework into a twelve-person company and smothering it in process. The useful answer sits between the two.

What investors and primes actually ask for

Due diligence at seed and Series A is not mysterious, and neither is a prime's supplier approval. The questions are largely predictable, which means they can be prepared for:

• Clean corporate records — share register, option arrangements, board minutes, and IP properly assigned to the company rather than to founders, contractors or a former employer
• Financial controls — who can commit money, who approves what, how payments are authorised, and management accounts that reconcile
• A reporting pack the board can use — a small set of numbers reported consistently each month, rather than a bespoke deck assembled under pressure
• Decision rights — what the board decides, what the founders decide, and what is reserved for shareholders
• Quality and traceability — the beginnings of a quality management system and document control, which in aerospace and defence supply chains is what gets you through the door at all

Getting these in place early is cheap. Reconstructing them during diligence is not, and it is usually what delays a round.

Controls sized for the stage you are at

The test we apply is whether a control earns its keep. Each one should reduce a real risk, satisfy a requirement you will be held to, or make a decision faster. Anything else is overhead that founders will route around within a month.

In practice that means a short approvals matrix rather than a procedure manual, a single monthly reporting pack rather than parallel reporting lines, and a quality system built around the processes you actually have — scaled so it can grow into AS9100 or BS EN 9100 later without being rebuilt. Anna Lavender-Moore, a BS EN 9100 Lead Auditor and Aerospace Experienced Auditor, leads that side, so the foundations are laid by someone who has audited against the standard rather than only read it.

Building in the room to grow

The point of doing this early is that it holds as you scale. A reporting pack designed at twelve people should still be recognisable at eighty, an approvals matrix should accommodate a finance hire without being rewritten, and a quality system should absorb certification rather than be replaced by it.

Doug Allen brings hands-on P&L and financial modelling, plus a network across corporate finance, banking, accountancy and law — useful both for building a model investors will engage with and for knowing which specialist to involve when. Where formal legal, tax or audit work is needed, we say so and bring in the right people rather than improvising.

Engagements are scoped to results, not retainers.

Frequently asked questions

We are pre-revenue. Is this premature?

The cheapest time to do the corporate and IP housekeeping is before there is anything complicated to untangle, and it takes little effort at that stage. The heavier financial controls and reporting can wait until money is moving, and we would say so rather than sell you work you do not yet need.

Will this slow us down?

It should not, and if it does the design is wrong. Clear decision rights usually speed a business up, because people stop waiting for a founder to confirm things they were already entitled to decide.

Can you help with the fundraise itself?

We can help you build the financial model and get the business into a state where diligence goes smoothly, and we can introduce you to the right corporate finance and legal specialists. We are not a substitute for regulated financial advice, and will be clear about where that line sits.