By Michael Tessler, Scott Hoffpauir, and Jim Tholen, Managing Partners

We are celebrating! We just hit our one year anniversary since starting True North Advisory.

What a journey it has been! We’ve had a great time, and worked with some remarkable entrepreneurs and companies. We’ve tackled some really intriguing product and strategy challenges, working closely with our clients. We didn’t really know what this would look like when we started — and have loved the adventure. Now, we have honed how we work and (we think) improved on a more structured approach with our clients.

We also really appreciate the enthusiasm our clients have to work with us. They are impressed with our passion, industry knowledge and drive, and hopefully we have helped them as they continue to create lots of value.

And as we mentioned in our previous blog, we had our first exit and our first client — our friends at Datalogue were acquired by Nike.

We also have been mightily shaped in our first year starting and growing a company completely virtually — successfully managing our firm remotely in three different locations: Maryland, Virginia, and Texas. This hasn’t slowed us down.

So much has happened in the last twelve months. We left Cisco and the pandemic hit us. At the same time we were still crazy enough to start True North Advisory.

“It’s been a truly remarkable year, and teaming up with Scott and Jim has been so much fun. When the three of us engage with a client, it’s great to see how we collaborate seamlessly,” said Mike Tessler.

He added, “From my observations, the fundamentals to scaling businesses transcends the exact business area. The alignment of product and market strategy is critical to its success. Often entrepreneurs focus on the product and forget the elements of getting customers to understand their story. A focused strategy, alignment, and clear differentiation are the cornerstones of success.”

“I’ve loved the opportunity to work closely with Scott and Mike again. We really have treasured our engagement with great entrepreneurs and companies — and I think added value along the way,” said Jim.

“We understand the challenges of scaling a business. It’s easy to provide advice, but we’re firm believers that we need to be part of our client’s team, working with them side by side on solving problems and scaling their business. Working with Mike and Jim, there’s a level of trust and camaraderie that’s rare to find. We’re not only partners in the business but friends,” said Scott.

We continue into the year to have fun and learn new things as we work with existing and new clients. At True North Advisory, we look forward to winning together and continuing our path to growth. Thanks for all of your support as we enter our second year.