How engagements work
You are reserving executive capacity, not buying hours.
Companies usually know what they need to get done well before they have an organization that can do it. An engagement with us reserves a defined share of executive capacity each month to close that gap, and it scales with how much of the problem you want us to own.
Engagements begin at $6,000 per month, with a three-month minimum.
Key takeaways
- Engagements with Eleven 186 reserve a defined share of executive capacity each month rather than billing hours, and begin at $6,000 per month with a three-month minimum.
- There are four levels, differing in how much of the execution the firm takes responsibility for: Strategic Advisory, Market Entry and Execution, Fractional US Leadership, and Interim US Leadership.
- At the higher levels Eleven 186 takes real executive responsibility for a US operation, up to acting as interim US leadership while the permanent organization is built.
- Cash compensation is always required. In selected engagements the firm may elect to take part of its fee as equity or an equity-linked interest, but equity never replaces cash and there is no standard percentage.
- Outside professionals, travel, and unusually concentrated special projects are scoped and paid separately from the monthly fee.
- At the end of the first ninety days there is an explicit decision: continue, expand, move to fractional leadership, transition the work internally, or stop.
Four levels
Strategic Advisory
About one eighth of executive capacity
Advise us.
You get judgment, not hands. In a normal month that's strategic guidance, market entry planning, working through the decisions you're currently holding, and introductions where they genuinely fit. Your people still run the work and own the calendar; we're the ones you call before you commit to something.
Right when you already have capable people and what's missing is someone with operating experience to think it through with. Move up when you find you're asking us to go do the thing rather than advise on it.
Market Entry and Execution
About one quarter of executive capacity
Help us enter.
Everything in Strategic Advisory, and then we actually do some of it. Relationship and customer development, capital readiness work, designing the organization, coordinating recruiting and the outside professionals, and representing you externally where that's been agreed. You still make the decisions and your headquarters still runs the company.
This is the most common engagement, and usually the right one if you've committed to the United States but don't have anyone here yet. Move up when the US operation needs someone accountable for it rather than someone driving pieces of it.
Fractional US Leadership
About one half of executive capacity
Help us build it and run it.
We take real executive responsibility for the US operation: the plan, the team, the customers, the partners, the professional bench, and the operating cadence, reporting into your headquarters the way one of your own executives would. What stays yours is the mandate, the budget, and the final call on anything that binds the company.
Right when the US operation needs an executive in it and hiring a permanent one first would either be premature or slower than the market allows. Six months or more usually fits better than three. Move down once your own leadership is in place, which is the point.
Interim US Leadership
Full executive capacity, custom scope
Be our US leadership while we build the permanent organization.
A launch office. We act as the US leadership capability outright, and we can bring additional personnel and specialists into the engagement under a scope that's written down. Headquarters sets the mandate and the investment; we run what happens here against it.
Right for a substantial US commitment on a compressed timeline. Priced to the scope, and never an open-ended promise of unlimited people. It ends when your permanent organization can carry it.
Engagements begin at $6,000 per month, with a three-month minimum. Each level reserves a larger share of capacity than the one before it and is priced accordingly. The right level is usually much clearer after one conversation than it is from a page, so we would rather work it out with you than have you guess.
Designed to end
Eleven 186 carries the whole of the work at the start and none of it at the end. Where the diagonal meets the bottom edge is the handoff.
- 01The need is named
- 02Advise
- 03Build the function
- 04Run it
- 05Transition to your organization
Cash, and sometimes alignment
In selected engagements Eleven 186 may elect to receive part of its professional fee as equity, options, warrants, or another appropriately structured long-term interest rather than as cash. The framing matters: this is us choosing to invest a portion of our compensation back into a company we believe in, not a discount and not speculative work.
Cash compensation is always required, equity never replaces it entirely, and there is no standard percentage. Any arrangement depends on stage, valuation, capitalization, structure, jurisdiction, scope, expected duration, and legal and tax review, and is documented in separate definitive agreements.
In practice this is a question for later. The first ninety days are a cash engagement, which is also how both sides find out whether a longer alignment makes sense at all.
What sits outside the monthly fee
Special projects
Unusually concentrated work such as a site selection, an acquisition search, a management team build, an intensive recruiting campaign, a major contract pursuit, or a government and incentive campaign can consume an entire engagement on its own. Those are scoped and priced separately rather than quietly absorbing the capacity you reserved.
Outside professionals
Attorneys, accountants, tax advisors, recruiters, bankers, government affairs specialists, engineers, and other specialists are engaged and paid separately. We identify, select, coordinate, and manage them, and integrate their work into the plan.
Travel
Airfare, lodging, ground transportation, and event registrations are reimbursed rather than included. Substantial travel also consumes reserved capacity, so it is agreed in advance. International travel is agreed separately.
Or a defined deliverable
Not every problem needs reserved capacity. Where you already know exactly what you need and it resolves into a piece of work with a beginning and an end, there is a set of fixed-scope, fixed-price deliverables instead.
Questions we are asked first
What is the minimum engagement?
Why reserved capacity instead of hourly billing?
What happens at the end of the first three months?
Will you take equity instead of fees?
Are outside professionals included in the retainer?
How is travel handled?
Can you raise capital, or provide legal or accounting services?
Bring us the complicated problem
Two paragraphs about the situation is enough to start. A person reads them, and you will hear back within one business day with a view on whether we are the right people and which level fits.