Operating partner to private capital · Partner, Unearth-d · NZ / AU
Finding the constraint.
Building the capability.
Creating lasting value.
Operating-partner mandates for sponsors and their portfolio companies — where a business is cash-tight, growth has stalled, or an exit is approaching. Lenders and boards where the same problem is on the table.
Sponsors bring me in when the cost of getting it wrong is the equity or the exit. I go in on the ground, find the real constraint, and drive a measurable EBITDA and exit-readiness plan. Implementation, not a report.
01 — The premise
Cash pressure is rarely a cash problem. A people problem is rarely a people problem.
Most interventions fail because they treat symptoms. Revenue is down, so leadership pushes sales. Delivery slips, so they add headcount. The real constraint — the broken operating rhythm, the report nobody trusts, the decision with no owner — stays untouched, and the business snaps back the moment the pressure comes off.
Most of what a stalled business loses, it loses quietly — in working capital that never comes back, decisions that sit waiting, margin that erodes a point at a time. None of it arrives as a line item, which is why it can run for years without anyone calling it a crisis.
I work the other way: diagnose the system, find the binding constraint, fix that first. The outcome is not a strategy document. It is a stronger business.
02 — Who I work with
Sponsors & investors
Private equity, family offices, search funds and independent sponsors. Portfolio-level support to assess opportunities, accelerate value-creation initiatives and strengthen management execution — through to permanent portfolio-company leadership where the fit is right.
Lenders & capital providers
Hands-on intervention where cash pressure, weak reporting or operational underperformance needs an independent operating view and a credible recovery plan.
Boards & owners
Interim or advisory operating capacity, reducing founder dependency and building the reporting infrastructure that shows up in diligence.
The five stages a sponsor already runs — and the three things I do across them.
Diligence through mid-hold is where a mandate pays back fastest. Earlier is cheaper still — an operational read before the money moves costs a fraction of a turnaround afterwards.
For sponsors — the way in
Send me the one company in the portfolio you’re least sure about. Inside a fortnight you get a written read: the constraint most likely to be limiting it, what resolving it is worth, and whether a mandate is warranted. If it isn’t, it’s cost you one conversation.
- Pre-dealAn operational read before the money moves. Is the thesis real, and what breaks at scale.
- Day one to mid-holdStabilise, install the operating truth, deliver the plan.
- Pre-exitThe same seven criteria scored again. Earnings quality that survives a buyer’s advisor.
03 — Mandates
Portfolio Value Creation
Finding and delivering the initiatives most likely to move earnings, cash and enterprise value. Across several companies the same diagnostic produces comparable findings — one operating view of the portfolio rather than five unrelated reports.
Turnaround & Stabilisation
Hands-on leadership when cash, delivery or visibility is failing: protect cash, find the constraint, build the recovery bridge.
Leadership Where the Gap Is Real
Interim CEO or COO cover where a capability gap opens mid-mandate — holding the seat until the permanent hire is made, not instead of it. Shaped around the mandate, not a consulting package.
AI-Led Operating Transformation
AI embedded as permanent infrastructure across reporting, strategy and operations — so boards get real-time visibility, decisions get stress-tested in hours, and the business scales without adding headcount.
- 2–3 weeks
Where it starts: the Constraint Diagnostic
The lowest-commitment way in: on the ground in one company, mapping how work, decisions, information and cash actually move. You get a board-ready brief — the top three constraints, the one that binds, and what resolving each is worth. It either earns a mandate or it doesn’t; the brief is yours either way. Scoping takes one conversation and I can be on the ground inside a fortnight of it.
- Months 1–3
Phase 1: Stabilise & Diagnose
Immediate risk contained, the system mapped, and the plan built as a hypothesis — tested against the operation, not the boardroom.
- Then
Phase 2: Execute & Embed
Ownership installed, visible performance, the EBITDA bridge delivered. Every initiative has an owner, a measure and a commercial rationale.
Working with management, cadence and fees
With management. I work alongside the CEO, not around them. The plan becomes theirs, the measures are theirs to report, and the operating rhythm runs without me before I leave. You get the independent read; they keep the business.
Shape and cadence. Typically two to four days a month at portfolio level, or two to three days a week inside a single company. Sponsors and boards get a written monthly read — what moved, what’s stuck, what it’s worth — and I sit in the governance meeting where that helps.
Fees. Every engagement is scoped as a mandate against a defined outcome rather than billed by the hour: a base fee with performance- and transaction-linked upside, and open to equity or co-invest where alignment matters. Portfolio-level oversight can run on a standing retainer; delivery is always mandated separately.
04 — The Systems Reset
Applied identically on manufacturing floors and across multi-country operating networks. The sector changes; the method doesn’t.
Find the constraint.
- Map the system — how work, decisions, information and cash actually move.
- Find the constraint — test the obvious symptom rather than accept it.
Build the capability.
- Redesign the operating model — roles, processes, information flows, decision rights.
- Install visible performance — measures boards and investors can steer by.
- Transfer ownership to management, so improvement continues without me.
Create lasting value.
- Scale or exit — execution quality converted into earnings quality and exit readiness.
05 — Track record
Outcomes from engagements led end-to-end, as CEO or as operator. Sector, scale and references in a confidential conversation.
06 — The right fit
X-Altus is most relevant where:
- EBITDA or cash performance is below plan
- the business has outgrown its operating systems
- reporting doesn’t give the board confidence
- sales activity isn’t converting into reliable revenue
- the company depends too heavily on its founder or CEO
- AI consists of disconnected pilots rather than operating capability
- an investment, refinancing or exit event is approaching
Mid-market and larger businesses across NZ/AU — private-equity, family-office, search-fund, independent-sponsor or lender-backed, and owner-led businesses heading toward one of those. MSP/tech, manufacturing, services, consumer/retail.
07 — About
Stephen McCurdy
Operating partner to private capital · Partner, Unearth-d · Turnaround CEO
I take underperforming and stalled businesses and make them profitable, sale-ready and no longer dependent on any one person. I read an organisation as a system, find the real constraint behind the numbers, and rebuild the operating model around it — hands-on, on the ground, measured by outcomes rather than reports. I’ve been reading businesses as systems for 20 years — the first one I owned myself.
What makes me different from most operators: I’ve embedded AI as permanent infrastructure across reporting, strategy and operations — so boards get real-time visibility, decisions get stress-tested in hours, and businesses scale without adding headcount.
I’m a partner at Unearth-d, an operating-partner practice to Australian private capital. Where a mandate needs more than one pair of hands, that bench scales to it. X-Altus stays the practice and the contracting entity.
Including me. That’s the point.
The AI claim, specifically
- I ship AI product, not slideware — founder of QualIntel OS, a SaaS platform for defensible AI-assisted research: product strategy, pricing architecture and subscription economics, built and shipped personally.
- Embedded as infrastructure in a live organisation — AI across reporting, planning and funder relations for a multi-country network: real-time board visibility replacing six-week-old reporting, ~150% productivity uplift.
- In diligence — the Constraint Audit: the operating read a sponsor gets before the money moves, scored the same way again at day one and before exit.
- The thinking behind it — MBA thesis on executive decision-making under noise (the Executive Signal Management framework).
MBA, University of Waikato (graduating 2026) · Founder, QualIntel OS · Dual NZ/US citizen · Hamilton, New Zealand — on the ground across NZ and Australia, with mandates in the Middle East and the US; remote worldwide.