When investors need to understand what they're buying into—or what's going wrong with a portfolio company—they call Philipps & Byrne. Tom Sherrington and his team have done over 600 technical assessments and guided more than €16 billion in funding decisions. They've seen enough to know what a healthy engineering organization looks like and what warning signs to watch for.

We work with P&B on due diligence engagements where our combination of skills is useful: their structured assessment methodology plus our hands-on CTO experience and strategic background. They bring rigor and pattern recognition from hundreds of assessments; we bring depth on specific technical domains and the ability to translate findings into strategic implications.

Their tagline is "No Bullshit," and they mean it. Assessments are direct: here's what's working, here's what's not, here's what it means for the investment thesis. No hedging, no burying bad news in appendices.

Technology transformations fail when they ignore the human side. You can redesign the architecture and update the tech stack, but if the organizational culture, leadership dynamics, and change management aren't addressed, the new systems will develop the same problems as the old ones.

Lena Reinhard brings expertise in exactly that territory: organizational psychology, leadership development, inclusive cultures, and sustainable change. Her background spans advising executive teams through transformations, coaching individual leaders, and building the organizational conditions where technical excellence becomes possible.

We work together on engagements where both technical and organizational change are needed—which, honestly, is most of them. The combination lets us address the whole picture: the systems and the people who build and maintain them. Our coaching practice is a joint effort, combining her organizational psychology expertise with hands-on technical leadership experience.