Chapter 01
The company.
ImpactOS is the accounting system for non-financial data. Everything that sits outside your P&L but still shapes your business, whether that is regulatory frameworks, investor relations, public sector bids or ISO compliance, gets a proper ledger. One place to record, account for, manage and measure the criteria that matter, in a single pane of glass.
Twelve months in, the full product is built and Evexia already counts globally listed firms among its users.
Chapter 02
The situation.
Evexia earns around half its revenue from US customers, and a US angel had come on board keen to find a place in the US market for what Evexia was doing. With that came a bigger question: what would additional US investment actually mean for the company, and for the people already backing it?
James did what most founders do first. He turned to the large language models to figure it out. What he found was a familiar problem.
You very quickly realise there’s a whole load of information out there, but no knowledge and wisdom.
The questions had too much nuance and context to answer with those tools, and no way to know whether the answers could be trusted. What would US investment do to Evexia’s current investors? What would it do to their holdings in different scenarios? When, if ever, was the right moment to move into a topco or a Delaware flip? The list was long, and the stakes were personal.
I think it’s important that you look after the people that back you, and you can only do that if you’ve got the right information in place.
Chapter 03
What felt difficult.
James could not underwrite the information he was finding online. He could not do it quickly, and there were too many variables to give his backers a clear answer on whether US investment was a good or a bad thing for them.
For a founder whose starting principle is transparency with the people who trust you, that is an uncomfortable place to sit.
Stress always arrives when your expectations and reality don’t meet. My expectation, to give to people who were potentially going to invest in us 100% clear transparency of what would happen to their funding, we couldn’t do that.
The alternative was layers of added stress, and time and energy spent on work Evexia didn’t have the expertise to do and shouldn’t have been doing at all.
Chapter 04
Why not the usual accountant.
James was clear that day-to-day accountants are good for understanding what is going on in the business. This was a different kind of problem, and it came down to two things: price point and expertise.
An early-stage company needs a price point it can actually reach to get the information it needs before committing to a next step. And it needs someone who has genuinely done this before, who understands where the UK and US filings, rulings and processes converge: where you form the company, how you form it, what the steps are now, and what it all means later.
That future gazing was really interesting and something that really brought everything to life, not only for us, but also for potential investors.
Chapter 05
What built the confidence to proceed.
The process itself did the work. Before any commitment to deliver, NorthArc wanted to understand the company: the current shareholding, how it had been set up, what had been taken on board, how long it had been formed.
There was a real clear process of due diligence, which brought out the context of our situation versus just saying yes. That was really valuable in building a layer of trust, that you knew what we were talking about, and our problem wasn’t everybody’s problem, but you’d seen stuff similar enough before that you could help us.
Chapter 06
The delivery.
The engagement ran about ten days from question to output, efficient, fast, and well within every deadline. James’s expectations weren’t just met.
I was expecting, yes, this is good for you, here’s a couple of ideas. We literally had everything scenario mapped, a hugely detailed piece of work.
The moment it landed was a single page. Every scenario mapped, in plain English, with percentages across a range of outcomes, showing exactly the wins and losses for an investor in each case, backed by a full appendix of references.
That was the real aha moment of, this looks way more positive than I thought. One page snapshot of why this is good or bad, loads of references you can then look at in your appendix.
Just as important, the deliverables flexed to the audience. A broad picture for the founder who wants the headline first and can dig into the detail later; the high-specification document for the analytical reader who wants every point. Not one size fits all.
You can pick and present different outputs to different people in different ways. That’s where the magic is.
Chapter 07
The recommendation.
The headline came in three parts.
First, everything done so far was sound. Evexia was in a good position and should not change anything now. Second, Evexia was already investable in the US, and the gap between its current position and spending real money on flips was minimal at this stage. Third, the company was well set up to unlock further options later, making it even more investable for institutional capital in time, provided it hits its growth targets.
The recommendation ran counter to what James had assumed going in.
The preconceptions were that the US wouldn’t touch us with a barge pole based on where we were. It was the flip of that.
He put the difference down to approach.
Having that human-led but tech-enabled approach gave us speed, efficiency, transparency, and like and trust. A perfect marriage: getting the best out of technology, but still having the most important thing in the room, which is expertise, skills and trust.
Chapter 08
The result.
The clearest proof came the day before the interview. Evexia’s prospective US advisor, a successful SaaS entrepreneur who would be the company’s growth engine in the US, had not been aligned on whether the US was a goer at all.
He came on the call and you know when you can see on somebody’s face all the pressure’s lifted. His words were, I am now laser focused on getting you guys fundraising in the US through the angels.
The work gave Evexia something it could put in front of people with confidence: a position that would stand up if an investor went away and did their own diligence on it.
For an early-stage company, James was blunt about why that matters.
Anybody who’s been involved in startups knows it’s about two things, cash and clients. Staying alive long enough to be successful is absolutely critical in startup land. The ability to do that comes from telling amazing stories, and those stories have to be backed up by fact. You allowed us to tell a really compelling story.
NorthArc has given us the capability and capacity to enter into one of the two biggest markets in the world with confidence, clarity and an investor base based out there. Early-stage network trumps everything, and that enables you to create proof.
Chapter 09
His advice to other founders.
If you’re even thinking about it, go and get assessed. The knowledge removes so much doubt or inactivity, because you understand exactly where you need to go. Clarity brings action, action brings results.
And on whether he would recommend NorthArc:
I absolutely would. If the US is part of your growth plan, get in touch ASAP.