We started PresumeNothing because we kept seeing the same problem: smart business owners getting advice from people who had never run anything.
PresumeNothing was founded in 2009 by a team of executives who had spent their careers inside businesses — not advising from the outside. Former CEOs, CFOs, CTOs, and general counsels who had built companies from early stage to exit, navigated recessions and restructurings, managed hundreds of employees, and made the hard calls that keep a business alive.
We built this firm because we believed there was a better way to help small and mid-size businesses. Not through frameworks inherited from large consulting firms that were never designed for companies of this scale, and not through advisors whose only experience is giving advice. We wanted to bring genuine operating experience directly into the businesses that needed it most — and stay there until the work was done.
Every member of the PresumeNothing team has carried real P&L responsibility. We have made payroll, managed boards, closed acquisitions, and rebuilt teams under pressure. When we sit across from a client, we have been in that seat.
We are a small firm on purpose. We take on fewer clients so we can go deeper on each one. Every engagement gets senior attention — not a junior team with a senior name attached.
We have run engagements across four continents. Our team brings international operating experience and an understanding of how business works differently across markets, cultures, and regulatory environments.
The name comes from Sherlock Holmes — specifically his response when asked how he deduced something remarkable: "I presume nothing." Every conclusion followed from observation and evidence, not assumption.
That is exactly how we work. We do not arrive at a client's business with a pre-packaged solution looking for a problem to fit it to. Every engagement starts with interviews, financial review, and time spent understanding the actual situation — not the situation as it was described in a brief. We ask uncomfortable questions. We challenge the assumptions the business has been operating on. And we only recommend what the evidence supports.
In over fifteen years of engagements, the fastest way we have found to destroy value is to presume you already know the answer. We do not.
A 30-minute call is usually enough to tell whether we are the right fit. We will be direct about what we can do and what we cannot.
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