Valley View Partners · Boulder, Colorado
Founder-CEO counsel for companies that are scaling.
Operator-led advisory and board engagements. Forty years as an operator, investor, and builder across twelve sectors, brought to the decisions that decide the next stage.
Founder-owned businesses past roughly $10M in revenue, PE-backed and family-held companies working through growth-stage decisions, and venture-backed companies past Series A. A limited number of engagements at a time.
About
An operator who teaches. A teacher who operates.
W. Bradley Werner has spent forty years operating and investing across twelve sectors, most of it as the person accountable for the decision rather than the person advising on it.
- Founder, WYO Trading, forty years trading his own capital, with a thirty-three-year CME Group membership
- CEO and co-founder, Azumo, display technology, named to Crain's Chicago Business Most Innovative Companies
- Co-founder of a privately held airline, still flying
- Early investor, Take Care Health Systems, acquired by Walgreens
- Former Chief Business Officer, Icarus Quantum, a NIST spinout in quantum photonics funded by Air Force, Space Force, NASA, NIST, and NSF programs
- Capital partner, Auberge Resorts Collection, through his 2018 exit
- Teaching Director, Deming Center for Entrepreneurship, Leeds School of Business, CU Boulder
- Assistant Teaching Professor, Leeds School of Business, CU Boulder
- MBA, University of Chicago. A decade inside Colorado's deep tech and founder community
Valley View Partners brings that operating judgment to founders and CEOs in the growth years. Most of the work is confidential, which is how clients prefer it.
Every engagement runs through the principal. No handoffs, no associates.
Every recommendation comes from someone who has been the CEO making the same call, with the same information, on the same timeline.
Services
Operator advisory for the scaling years.
Six problems that show up together in the growth years, usually about eighteen months before anyone names them.
Scaling Operations
Friction taken out of the path between what you build and what a customer signs.
Operating structure, sales organization build, incentive design, buying process mapping, site and market expansion, execution cadence for multi-location growth.
Exit Readiness & Value Building
A company built to command a premium when the owners choose to sell.
Recurring revenue architecture, valuation modeling, audit readiness, acquisition strategy, intellectual property and licensing position.
Team & Compensation
A leadership team and operating cadence built to scale past the next stage.
Hiring strategy, compensation design, retirement and total-rewards architecture, leadership development, reorganization through growth.
Board & Financial Infrastructure
A board that earns its seats. Reporting that makes owner decisions easier.
Board composition, monthly reporting, financial controls, audit preparation, governance frameworks.
Fundraising Strategy
A round that runs on your timeline, with the narrative and the pipeline built before you start.
Investor narrative, deck architecture, pipeline management, warm introductions.
Non-Dilutive Capital
Federal capital stacked alongside equity rounds without distorting the commercial plan.
SBIR and STTR strategy, agency program selection, Department of Defense and civilian relationships, sequencing.
What this is not
Interim management, recruiting, or a deck you could have bought from a consulting firm.
The work is judgment on consequential decisions, and the deliverable is a decision you can defend to a board. If the problem is execution capacity rather than judgment, the honest answer is that you need a hire, and I will say so on the first call.
Deep technology & defense
A second practice, for companies solving hard physics.
Quantum, photonics, and defense companies carry everything a scaling company carries, plus two things most advisors have never handled: a customer that is often a federal program office, and a capital stack with a non-dilutive half that founders are rarely taught to use. That work has its own page.
How an engagement runs
What the first ninety days look like.
Every engagement opens with a diagnostic, because a recommendation made before the four systems are understood is a guess. Scope and fee are set after the first conversation, against the decision in front of you. Ongoing advisory is retained rather than hourly, with equity participation where it fits.
Days 1–30
Diagnostic
Four systems get audited: how the company operates, how it is organized, how people are paid, and how customers buy.
Output: a written diagnostic, prioritized recommendations, and a ninety-day workplan.
Ongoing
Cadence
- Weekly working session with the CEO
- Standing availability between sessions
- Monthly review with the leadership team
- Quarterly check-in with the board or lead investor
Deliverables
What you get
- The diagnostic and the workplan
- Decision memos on consequential calls
- Investor and board materials
- Direct introductions across the network
- A second set of eyes, on the record
Selected work
What the engagements covered.
Client detail is kept general by preference. What follows is the shape of the work rather than the names attached to it.
Premium vehicle manufacturer, Colorado
Sales organization rebuild, compensation and retirement program design, board reporting rebuilt from scratch, a full systems audit and reorganization to carry scale, and the operating structure for a second location and the beginning of a national footprint.
Quantum photonics company
Commercial strategy and fundraising for a company selling into federal program offices, with the non-dilutive stack sequenced alongside the equity round.
Consumer, climate, and family capital
A national consumer food brand, climate ventures, and family offices placing direct capital into operating companies.
Creative Distillation
Entrepreneurship research, distilled.
A podcast I co-host with Jeff York out of the Deming Center at CU Boulder, where I serve as Teaching Director. Each episode takes a piece of academic entrepreneurship research and works out what a founder can do with it on Monday morning, recorded at a Colorado brewery or distillery rather than in a studio.
More than a hundred episodes across seven seasons. It is the closest thing to a standing record of how I think about building companies, and it is free.
- What the research says about founding teams, autonomy, and who should own what
- Business model innovation, and where the evidence disagrees with the folklore
- Social and environmental ventures, measured rather than asserted
- Gender gaps in founding and funding, with the data attached
Creative Distillation
Deming Center · Leeds School of Business
Co-hosted with Jeff York, the center's Research Director. Seven seasons, past a hundred episodes.
Credentials
Where the experience comes from.
Operator
- Forty years operating and investing across twelve sectors
- CEO and co-founder, Azumo
- Founder, WYO Trading, and a thirty-three-year CME Group member
- Early investor, Take Care Health Systems
- Capital partner, Auberge Resorts Collection, through 2018
- Former Chief Business Officer, Icarus Quantum
- MBA, University of Chicago
Advisory & board
- Advisory board seat, premium vehicle manufacturer
- International commercialization of university and research institute technology
- Board reporting and governance design for founder-owned companies
Teaching
- Assistant Teaching Professor, Leeds School of Business, CU Boulder
- Teaching Director, Deming Center for Entrepreneurship, Leeds School of Business, CU Boulder
- MBA Teaching Excellence Award, Leeds School of Business, 2023
- Faculty Director, New Venture Launch, a structured accelerator funded by the Dobkin Intuitive Foundation
- Co-host, Creative Distillation, a hundred-plus episodes on entrepreneurship research
Get in touch
Let's talk about what you're building.
Valley View Partners works with a limited number of companies at a time. The first conversation costs nothing and usually settles whether there is a fit inside thirty minutes.
linkedin.com/in/wbradleywerner
Boulder, Colorado · Valley View Partners LLC