What We Do

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What We Do

Tryline Advisors works with founders and CEOs of early-stage companies to accelerate growth and navigate the challenges of building a business.

There is no single roadmap for an early-stage company. For most founders, running a business brings on-the-job training – with no manual and no coach. Each new stage of growth creates new challenges. Entrepreneurs make hundreds of decisions -- any combination of which will determine whether their company will reach its true potential.

With 20+ years of experience, Tryline provides direction and focus to entrepreneurs and assists them in areas of strategy, financial management, resource allocation, capital raising, sales & marketing, and organizational structure. Our advisory process is built on deep partnership and trust with our clients.

Our Services

[STRATEGY] [FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT] [RESOURCE ALLOCATION] [CAPITAL RAISING] [SALES] [MARKETING] [ORGANIZATION] [CORPORATE]

Strategy

To win you need a plan. The plan is often the most important determining factor of success for early-stage companies. We work with our founders and CEOs to evaluate competitive landscapes and market opportunities, and to develop the strategic direction for their business. We help clarify the vision and build the tactical plan to achieve the day-to-day objectives. The right partnerships, joint ventures, and acquisitions can also be make-or-break decisions. We help identify, evaluate, and negotiate these opportunities.

Financial Management

Why do most early-stage companies go out of business? They simply run out of money. There is a graveyard of good products, services, and teams that didn’t have a long enough cash runway to reach their full potential. It is never too early to optimize your financial management tools and processes – monthly flash reports, updated forecasts, cash flow analyses, KPIs. We build this infrastructure and provide review and financial management of the business.

Capital Raising

One of the most important decisions entrepreneurs make is how to finance their business. When to raise capital? How much? Through what vehicle? At what valuation? With what terms? With what positioning and narrative? We advise and directly support outreach to potential financing partners (e.g. angels, VCs, banks). We also make select investments in angel rounds.

Resource Allocation

By definition, start-ups are resource constrained. They have limited budgets, time, and people. Effectively allocating those scarce resources is one of the CEO’s toughest jobs. We work with management to build budgets and set revenue and profit targets. As businesses evolve, so does spending. We provide ongoing advice on regular adjustments to the overall budgets, as well as the allocations of those budgets across departments.

Organizational Structure

Growth places new demands on an organization’s people and structure. We help prioritize human capital needs, including critical decisions on when and how to increase staffing levels, when to hire or outsource, and how best to improve retention. We focus on creating effective internal review processes, performance assessments and compensation plans that are all critical to the health of the organization. We’ll often serve as recruiter and interviewer, leveraging our network to help identify and assess candidates.

Sales

Products and services rarely sell themselves, particularly at early-stage companies. Revenue generation requires effective strategies, structures, and processes underpinning sales teams. Pricing and positioning products, staffing, onboarding, and training sales teams, creating “playbooks” and putting in place well-aligned incentive and commission plans are all critical to ramp and drive revenue growth. We advise across all of these aspects of sales effectiveness.

Marketing

Brand identity, manifesto, tagline. Awareness, acquisition, retention. Paid marketing, funnel conversion, influencer marketing. There are many pieces to the marketing puzzle. We work with management to create the marketing plan, prioritize initiatives and execute tactics across all of these areas. Public relations can be another important channel to be navigated thoughtfully - when, how much, to what end - and requires experience to get it right.

Corporate

As start-ups grow up, so do corporate responsibilities. Managing various constituents - shareholders, boards, partners, vendors - who have different and at times conflicting interests, requires time and attention from CEOs. Effective communication becomes increasingly important, as do decisions on corporate structure, employee equity pools, selection and use of legal counsel, among other unanticipated demands.

Who We Are

Tryline Advisors is a New York City-based advisory firm founded by Jim Kaufman. Jim has advised numerous companies at different stages of growth and across varied industries, leveraging his wide range of experiences as a start-up CEO, corporate executive, board member, and investor. Jim is also a Partner at Tadmor, a developer, producer and financier of film and television properties.

Jim built and ran RISE, a leading high school sports media company, before selling it to ESPN. As CEO, Jim led RISE through multiple rounds of equity and debt financing, eight consecutive years of revenue and profit growth, and a successful exit. At RISE, Jim launched multiple media properties including Risemag.com, Rise Magazine, Girl Magazine, and Boost Mobile Elite 24. He also created the SchoolSports Foundation.

After selling RISE, Jim joined ESPN, where he served as co-head of Content Development, the incubation unit that created television and digital properties across all of ESPN’s platforms. He also oversaw ESPN Home Entertainment and ESPN Books.

Jim’s other previous experiences includes business development and strategic planning roles at Loews Cineplex, Fox, and ESPN. Jim received a BA in Economics from Williams College and an MBA from the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University. He was also captain of the Williams and Kellogg rugby teams.

Our Clients

Contact

Contact Us

info@trylineadvisors.com