In your corner.
We're operators, not advisers. We've built, scaled and exited, and we've made most of the early mistakes ourselves. We don't watch from the sidelines. We get in the ring, test your systems, apply pressure, and transfer skill.
One method. Two front doors, by stage.
Sparring Ventures works with founders before the product exists and while the MVP is being built. Common Thread Partners, the same team, picks up once something is working and growth needs to become repeatable. Both run on one operating method and share one front door, the Growth Diagnostic. A founder is routed by stage and never served by both. If you already have customers, start there.
Two operators. One method behind them.
James Howard
James builds the organisation that can deliver what the founder has promised. An engineer by training (Imperial) with an Oxford MBA, he spent 17 years at StatPro taking a quantitative product from first code to $25m revenue and an acquisition, then co-founded ProgressTeaching and ran everything but sales from zero to $1m revenue and 300 schools, through to exit. He looks at roles, process, rhythm and systems, in that order.
Steve Needham
Steve builds the route to revenue: the customer worth winning, the claim competitors cannot make, and the pipeline that proves it. [Years, the companies, and one number: revenue built, team led, or deals closed.] He makes sure what the business promises is something it can sell more than once.
Sophie Adams
Sophie's marketing method is the logic inside the Growth Diagnostic: customer first, then problem, positioning, messaging and channel, each level earning the right to the next. She teaches it to the Venture Community cohorts and reviews every Growth Constraint Review before it is sent.
Three rules we don't bend.
Challenge without ego.
We'll tell you the hard thing kindly and once. We care more about your outcome than your comfort.
People, then process, then systems.
In that order. A system bought before the role exists is a cost.
Preparation, not performance.
The work is the 90 days between the meetings, not the meetings.
Home ground is Sheffield.
We teach the MVP-stage cohorts at Venture Community in Sheffield, and we work with founders from them. It is where the method gets tested on real companies every quarter, and where most of our founders come from. If you are in a cohort, the Growth Diagnostic is where your session with us starts.
A book on the method is coming.