Trade wishful thinking for clear foresight.

With over 70 years of experience in explosive growth companies, we know that the secret to success is a dual focus on executing today while planning for the future. Clear4Site was founded to provide forward-looking, disciplined operational and financial advisory to companies navigating pivotal stages of growth.

Forward-looking advisory to help our clients excel.

Through our expertise in fundraising strategy, business development, enterprise expansion, and change management, we support executives as an integrated advisor and an extension of their management team, helping them ensure a balance between today’s priorities and tomorrow’s possibilities.

FUNDRAISING & DEAL ADVISORY

Charting the path to favorable, transformative capital events.

  • Preparation for funding (equity, debt, grants)

  • Identification of target capital sources

  • Acquisition and/or exit planning & criteria

  • Due diligence planning & execution

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT

Shoring up the enterprise in preparation for growth.

  • Business plan design & critique

  • Leadership development & accountability

  • Product-market vetting & validation

  • Revenue & financial modeling

BUSINESS EXPANSION

Uncovering and enabling new opportunities for expansion.

  • New market research & identification

  • Go-to-market planning

  • Resource expansion & skill development

  • Evaluation of capital sources & mix

TRANSFORMATION & CHANGE MANAGEMENT

Bridging the gap between present and future states.

  • Strategic planning for business transformation

  • Acquisition integration planning & management

  • Portfolio and/or price model repositioning

  • Resource allocation & retooling

WHERE WE FIT IN

Having dawned multiple CFO, COO, CEO, and President roles, our ability to think like an owner, operator, and investor separates us from fractional COOs and CFOs, and traditional management consultants. Our holistic perspective allows us to support companies in multiple capacities, across the growth continuum.


Emerging Companies

  • Advising founders on a highly targeted fundraising plan

  • Augmenting the business acumen of existing leadership

  • Developing protocols, team, and infrastructure for growth


Established Ventures

  • Overcoming plateaus in both top and bottom line growth

  • Fortifying the business in advance of investment or growth

  • Helping ownership prepare for a favorable strategic exit


Private Equity Firms

  • Mentoring platform companies to become successful acquirers

  • Optimizing costs, debts, and contracts to free up cash flow

  • Supporting primary operators in day-to-day decisions/projects

Where leaders lean on us:

  • It’s common for companies that are on the precipice of growth to warrant an expanded leadership team, and yet be limited by the financial constraints of adding more full-time executives to their payroll. Our model offers “bridge” access to COO and CFO-level acumen to companies whose stage of development demands this caliber of expertise, while alleviating the cashflow burden of a full-time hire until one can be sustained without compromising the growth of the business.

    It’s common for clients to seek additional executive support when:


    • The CEO/Founder is doubling as an operator (e.g. a President & CEO without a COO)

    • The business is preparing to raise capital, sell, or make an acquisition

    • Before, during, or immediately after an acquisition, to help lead the integration process

    • The financial complexity of the business has outgrown its current FP&A function

    • A key leader has left, creating a gap that requires interim support

  • Dealmaking is an art and a science, and we’re well equipped in both. Having analyzed, acquired, integrated and sold dozens of companies over the course of our careers, we are able to help owners and founders see around corners, to ultimately put together the most favorable deal terms possible for all parties involved.

    Through our careers, we’ve had the opportunity to:

    • Sell a logistics software company to a Fortune 14 (Cardinal Health)

    • Orchestrate a company sales process, resulting in (3) LOIs and a highly successful exit

    • Secure a $160 million line of credit syndicated from multiple financial institutions

    • Raise multiple rounds of capital from Menlo Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, and others

    • Secure equity funding at 4x the company’s prior valuation

    • Negotiate away $13+ million of liabilities to only $350,000 in cash & 1.3% equity.

    • Analyze and operationally integrate 10+ acquisitions

  • Having led in companies ranging from 10 to 50,000 employees, secured financing from coastal VCs and Midwest PE firms alike, participated in over a dozen acquisitions, and commercialized solutions ranging from services to software in a broad array of industries – we’ve seen a lot. We’re not special, but we’re seasoned, and our clients appreciate our ability to help them avoid mistakes we learned to circumvent, over several decades of practice.

    Common first-time challenges we’ve supported executives through:

    • Replacing leadership personnel to match the evolving needs of the business

    • Leading through tumultuous macroeconomic or recessionary environments

    • Mitigating and remediating performance and culture issues with key personnel

    • Vetting investors and potential acquisition opportunities to avoid misaligned interests

    • Managing the intricacies of board and investor relationships

    • Restructuring the financial liabilities of the business

  • For executives with wide managerial oversight, the challenge of operating the business today often competes with the need to think about where it is headed tomorrow. Our partnership not only provides forward-looking insight from our consultants, but it cements proactive thinking into the culture of the leadership team. The resources and expertise we provide help to expand executive capacity, creating newfound space for leaders to think critically about the future of their organizations.

    By engaging us, our clients find more time for critical activities like:

    • Thinking about – and defining – the 3, 5, and 10 year vision for their organization

    • Engaging in capacity planning and identifying the need for critical hires or investments

    • Developing and revisiting the growth and exit strategies for the business

    • Stepping out of the minutia to assess Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, & Threats

    • Procuring and nurturing transformative strategic partnerships

    • Nurturing relationships with future customers, investors, and partners

    • Investing in their own professional development and wellness, as leaders

  • Executives are often held responsible for a plethora of initiatives that fall beyond the capacity or competency of their immediate team. More often than not, due to bandwidth constraints, these initiatives perpetually live in a backlog, or in worse cases, make their way off of the backlog only by means of the executive working 60-70 hour weeks. By functioning as an integrated partner, clients value our willingness to work alongside them, in the trenches, to expand their bandwidth by spearheading mission-critical strategic initiatives that would otherwise fall on their plates.

    Special initiatives can vary in size and scope, but some frequent examples include:

    • Developing and implementing acquisition and integration plans

    • Designing and implementing leadership & development programs

    • Conducting market assessments, feasibility studies, and other research

    • Preparing financial projections and pitch decks prior to raising capital or selling the business

    • Developing a targeted list of acquirers and/or investors

    • (Re)designing incentive compensation and/or stock plans

    • Procuring a new technology stack to power the FP&A function

what makes us different

M&A Veterans

Having secured financing from blue chip VC firms and private equity groups alike, and having analyzed, executed, and been a part of integrating over a dozen M&A transactions, we have a firm understanding of what is important to investors and strategic acquirers

Hands-On Support

Having grown headcount and enterprise value by over 10x in prior companies, our clients value our ability to translate theory into action, to manage intricacies of board and investor relationships, and our willingness to work alongside execs as an extension of their teams.

Few First Problems

We bring a combined 70 years of executive experience to the table, spanning sales leadership, strategic finance, and operational ownership. With decades of learned lessons, we help clients swiftly see through obstacles they may be encountering for the first time.

  • "Rob led our company through a targeted funding process that resulted in a successful raise of $5M from a top tier, leading venture capital firm on Sand Hill Road.  He created presentation materials by key executive roles, trained our executive team on how to deliver our message and respond to expected questions/challenges, and he identified nine qualified VCs who sought investments in our type of company. His engagement with each of the firms resulted in seven presentations on Sand Hill Road, two LOIs, and a successful $5M raise – the VC's first in Ohio. Rob is brilliant – extremely credible, professional, personable and in short, the real deal."

    Herb Jones • CEO of Alta Analytics

  • “He's been part of multiple M&A scenarios. He's smart. His EQ is exceptional. Finding a consultant isn't hard. Finding one who can appreciate your unique situation and has the experience to provide practical advice that will really help your business is rare. Having been part of closely-held, PE-backed, and publicly traded organizations, he appreciates the impact these different business models have on a company's strategy and structure. He is the real deal."

    Ed Eppley • Serial Entrepreneur & Author

  • "Rob is a rare leader. He has deep experience running and funding companies at all stages of growth, and in all conditions. His ability to quickly uncover the path to success, and implement it, is unlike any other."

    Greg Moore • Board Member & Consultant

HOW WE ENGAGE

As a fractional firm, our ultimate goal is to lead clients to self-reliance. Whether a consulting project or an ongoing relationship, we aim to maximize our client’s return on fees through the top line opportunities we uncover, the bottom line savings we create, and the financial outcomes of capital events that we help facilitate during the course of our partnership.

MODEL #1

Special Projects

To establish context and trust, we start with one clearly defined problem and work together to solve it in a fixed timeframe, generally ranging from 4-8 weeks, but occasionally lasting as long as six months. An initial engagement often reveals the need for more integrated, ongoing support in a fractional role.

MODEL #2

Fractional Executive

Projects often reveal the need for integrated, ongoing support in a fractional role to spearhead key initiatives and fill a skill gap that is missing from the leadership team. In this capacity, we own the function, filling the day-to-day activities of that particular role in a part-time capacity ranging from 3-10 days per month. 

MODEL #3

Advisory Support

Akin to a deeply engaged board member, we provide support in a low-touch, high-impact capacity. In addition to attending management and board meetings, we assist execs in defining company strategy, crafting operational objectives, enhancing the skills of individual leaders, and engaging in short term projects.

Our Consultants


Rob Doone

CO-FOUNDER & PRINCIPAL CONSULTANT

Rob Doone, a seasoned software and supply chain veteran and the driving force behind Clear4Site, brings nearly four decades of expertise in leading companies through the complete lifecycle of growth.

His career is marked by a series of transformative roles, guiding early-stage software companies in capital raising and market entry, steering established firms through market transitions and successful exits, and helping a Fortune #14 company incubate a 9-figure line of business from scratch. Rob's deep understanding of technology is evident in his ability to help navigate companies the necessity of being technology-driven, whether through direct software sales or as an internal tool to enable more efficient service delivery.

Known for his acumen in deal-making, Rob has been instrumental in orchestrating a wide array of deals, from securing investments from Silicon Valley giants like Menlo Ventures and Kleiner Perkins to leading companies on both sides of the acquisition table. His hands-on approach as a “full stack executive” sets him apart, blending P&L fluency with the operational experience required to understand clients’ businesses and help them drive tangible results for themselves and their capital partners.

Under his leadership, he has integrated over a dozen M&A transactions, helped owners achieve life changing exits – including the sale of HLS MedFreight to Cardinal Health (Fortune #14)  – and has dawned titles ranging from Head of Sales to EVP, CFO, COO, CEO, and Board Member, for companies ranging in size from 10 employees to 48,000. 

As a capstone to his career, Rob cofounded Clear4Sight to create a vehicle to channel his knowledge and expertise into supporting growing companies. More than a consultancy, Clear4Sight is a partner for companies on the brink of greatness, offering the fractional support they need to navigate their most critical phases of growth and change. Clear4Sight stands as a beacon for companies seeking not just advice but actionable wisdom from someone who thinks like an owner, operator, and investor – because he’s been all three.

Kathy Doone, CPA

CO-FOUNDER & CEO

Kathy Doone, Co-Founder & CEO of Clear4Site, embodies the intersection of financial acumen and strategic foresight.

A Certified Public Accountant (CPA) with over three decades of financial experience, Kathy has navigated the complexities of both public accounting at Ernst & Young, and corporate financial leadership within the healthcare sector at OhioHealth and in the manufacturing industry at Plaskolite. Her experience spans not only public accounting and corporate finance, but also extends to advising entrepreneurs and not-for-profits, where her insights have catalyzed growth and operational excellence.

At Plaskolite, a global leader in engineering thermoplastics, Kathy's tenure as Assistant Controller, Assistant Treasurer, and Treasurer over 15 years has been marked by her role in supporting the company through significant financial events. These include Private Equity Leveraged Buyouts with PPC Partners and Charles Bank, managing a $100M line of credit, and the financial integration of over 10 acquisitions. Her hands-on experience in annual financial audits – from both the auditor and client perspectives – underscores her extensive, panoramic understanding of the corporate finance domain.

Kathy's leadership at Clear4Site is driven by a commitment to providing operational and financial expertise to clients navigating critical growth phases. Her background equips her uniquely to offer insights that bridge today's operational needs with tomorrow's growth opportunities, making her an invaluable advisor and partner.

The start of every great partnership is a conversation.

We look forward to getting to know you.


Please complete the form to the right, and a member of our firm will be in touch with you within 1-2 days to schedule a time for an exploratory call. Or if you’d like to get in touch directly, feel free to use the contact information below.

EMAIL
info@clear4site.com

PHONE
614.353.5606