Polish Strategy · AdvisorySan Francisco · Est. MMXXVI

For the moments that don’t fit anywhere else.

We’re a small advisory firm in San Francisco. Founders and executives bring us decisions that sit between strategy, negotiation, and counsel: the ones too consequential to delegate down, too unusual to send to any single specialist.

Talk to a partner 
Practice
  1. Growth strategy

    Go-to-market, pricing, positioning, and expansion choices when the answer is contested and the timing matters. Typical work includes pricing and packaging redesign, sales-motion architecture, new-market entry, and the structural decisions around a first VP of Sales or VP of Marketing.

  2. Board & governance

    Board composition and refresh, board-pack design, independent director search, and the committee structures that fit a company at its real scale. Pre-board coaching for founder-CEOs on contentious agenda items. Board offsite design and facilitation.

  3. Negotiation & deal advisory

    Term sheets, partnership deals, executive transitions, key-customer renewals, and the commercial moments where preparation determines outcome. Structured preparation before the room, real-time coaching during it, and co-founder mediation when the conversation is internal.

  4. Legal-adjacent strategy

    The questions that sit between counsel and the operator. Partnership and joint-venture structure, commercial contract strategy, regulatory positioning, IP positioning at the business level, deal architecture for early M&A approaches. The strategy the legal work then implements.

Who we work with

Venture-backed technology companies, Series A through Series C.

B2B SaaS, B2B AI, fintech infrastructure, developer tools, vertical SaaS. Typically Bay Area headquartered, with travel to Los Angeles, New York, and Seattle when the work supports it.

The buyer is the CEO, the founder, or the senior executive whose name is on the decision. The engagements that suit us are the ones a board would expect them to handle personally.

How we engage
Partner-led.
The senior person you talk to first is the senior person who does the work. No analyst layer, no handoff.
Bounded.
Defined scope, defined deliverables, defined close. Each engagement anchors to a single primary outcome: a board cycle, a fundraise, a deal closing, a product launch.
Confidential.
Most of our work never appears on a website. This one included. We don't publish client names or run case studies; references are available privately.
What we don’t do
Talk to a partner

Tell us what’s in front of you.

julia@polishstrategy.com 

Replies within one business day. Conversations are confidential by default, and remain so whether or not we work together.

About the practice