I help founders find the fragile parts of their operating system before they become expensive.
That may mean preparing for a transaction. It may mean scaling past founder dependency. It may simply mean figuring out why a business that still looks healthy has started to feel harder to run.
ApexOps exists for that moment.
Contact: mike@apexops.co
Most founder-led companies do not struggle because of a lack of effort.
They struggle because too many important decisions still live in the founder's head. Pricing judgment. Customer exceptions. Hiring trade-offs. Forecast assumptions. Vendor risk. Cyber exposure. Margin pressure. Revenue quality. Leadership accountability.
The business works, but too much of it works because the founder is still carrying the operating system personally.
ApexOps runs structured diagnostic engagements that surface those gaps across the company and prioritize what should be fixed first.
The work typically covers financial hygiene, revenue systems, decision rights, founder dependency, and vendor/cyber risk. Most engagements run 60 to 90 days.
Some founders use the work before a transaction. Others use it because they are tired of being the single point of failure. The diagnostic discipline is the same.
My role is not to replace your CPA, attorney, banker, MSP, or leadership team. It is to look across the whole operating system and tell you what is true, what is fragile, what trade-offs matter, and what should be addressed first.
ApexOps is built for founder-led B2B companies facing one of three situations.
Quotes wait on you. Pricing decisions wait on you. Customer escalations route to you. Forecasting lives in your head.
The company runs because you are deeply involved in it. That may have been necessary. It may still be useful. But it is also becoming the ceiling.
You have received inbound interest. You are considering a proactive sale. You are evaluating an acquisition. You are thinking about succession, recapitalization, or a partial exit.
Many transaction problems show up long before the data room. Decision rights are unclear. Revenue quality is messy. Vendor risk is undocumented. Forecasting depends on founder memory. Leadership cannot explain the business without you in the room.
Most of those issues are fixable. They are just expensive to discover late.
The numbers still look fine. The team is still working hard. Customers are still buying.
But the business feels heavier than it should. The same issues keep coming back. Your normal advisors are helpful inside their lanes, but no one is looking across the full operating system.
That is usually where the real problem lives.
I spent 23 years building Apollo Information Systems, a cybersecurity and IT services firm serving enterprise and public-sector clients. I led the company from startup through industry cycles, cybersecurity inflection points, and the daily reality of running a founder-led business at scale.
I retired from day-to-day operations in March 2025 and remain a shareholder.
That experience produced a specific kind of pattern recognition: where founder-led companies quietly break, what gets trapped in the founder's head, and what should be fixed before it becomes the deciding factor in a transaction, leadership change, or growth ceiling.
ApexOps applies that pattern recognition to other founder-led B2B companies.
The first conversation is by email, not a form.
Send a few sentences about your company, the situation, and what is prompting you to look at this now.
I respond personally. If there is a fit, we schedule a 30-minute call. If there is not, I will tell you directly and point you toward someone better suited to the issue.