Practice · Government & ecosystem advisory
Most ecosystem strategies treat symptoms, not structure.
We work with governments, development agencies and public bodies to engineer the conditions under which enterprise emerges. Named methodologies, measured outcomes, retained engagements.
We are practitioners, not consultants. We have started dozens of companies, invested in hundreds of startups, sat on their boards, and helped governments write the policy that lets them exist in the first place.
The practice, in numbers
Conversion
7/10
Diagnostics that convert into a retained implementation engagement.
Duration
8–12wks
Typical diagnostic, delivered by the principal from first meeting to written report.
Reach
4continents
Ireland, Portugal, Estonia, the Gulf, East Africa and Southeast Asia.
Typical sponsors — national development agencies, city and regional economic-development offices, sovereign investment vehicles, and enterprise ministries.
Grants, accelerators, innovation strategies, and glossy launch events are not the same as a working founder economy. In most jurisdictions we enter, activity is high and outcomes are low.
The failure mode is consistent: interventions are stacked on top of each other without a shared model of what actually produces enterprise. Money is disbursed. Announcements are made. But five years later the same number of serious companies exist as before.
We start by naming what is structurally missing — capital, talent, sequence, story, or belief — and where the leverage actually sits. That diagnosis is the entry product.
Entry product
The Ecosystem Diagnostic.
Packaged engagement
A structured read of your startup economy — what works, what does not, and where a small number of interventions would matter most.
Delivered in eight to twelve weeks by the principal, with a written diagnostic, an on-the-ground presentation to the sponsoring department, and a costed intervention plan. In roughly seven cases out of ten, the diagnostic converts into a longer implementation retainer.
Enquire about a diagnosticDuration
8–12 weeks
Sponsor
Department or agency lead
Deliverable
Written diagnostic, presentation, costed plan
Pricing
Fixed scope, on enquiry
Methodology
Diagnostic in three passes.
01
Structural read
Capital, talent, demand, policy, and belief mapped against the specific companies you are trying to produce — not against a generic ecosystem template.
02
Field interviews
Twenty to forty conversations with founders, investors, operators and officials. On the record where useful. Off the record where honest.
03
Intervention plan
A short, opinionated document that names the three to five things worth doing, sequenced, costed and assigned. Not a wishlist.
Implementation retainer.
Where a diagnostic identifies work worth doing, the principal is available on a retained basis to help design, staff and stress-test the interventions themselves. Typical retainers run twelve to twenty-four months and include board-adjacent involvement in the delivery units created.
We do not run programmes on your behalf. We help you build the teams that will.
How this differs
Not a management consultancy. Not a think tank.
Typical consultancy or agency engagement
- Staffed by generalists rotating across sectors.
- Large teams; principal absent after kickoff.
- Deliverable is a deck. Implementation is out of scope.
- Priced on time; incentive is to extend scope.
- Studies the ecosystem from the outside.
Cantillon
- Delivered by an operator who has built, funded and sat on the boards of the kind of companies you are trying to produce.
- Small team; principal on every page.
- Deliverable is a costed intervention plan and, where retained, the teams that will run it.
- Priced on scope; incentive is to name the smallest number of things that would actually move the needle.
- Has been inside the ecosystem — as founder, investor and board director — for two decades.
The diagnostic named, in one page, the thing our own team had been trying to say for three years.�� Head of enterprise policy, national development agency
Convening
The Entrepreneurial Economy Forum.
A closed, sponsor-funded convening of government economic development officials and enterprise policy leads. One day, no press, deliberate agenda. Held annually in Dublin.
Request an invitationFormat
Closed, one day
Audience
Government economic development leads
Next edition
Spring 2027, Dublin
If your programmes are working harder than your outcomes, call us.
Thirty minutes with the principal. No pitch deck. No consulting theatre.
Book a conversation