We connect board-level leaders, senior advisors and fractional executives with growth-stage commerce companies. Our events are one expression of that work.

We host expert sessions, in-person meetups, and small, closed dinners across key global markets. These gatherings are designed to support ongoing conversations, not one-off appearances.

Updates and invitations are shared via Luma.

Andre Abi Awad has worked with founders and leadership teams across more than fifty markets. His operating experience spans full business cycles: early growth, failure, recovery, scale and exit. He has been bankrupt twice and sold a multi‑country business in 2022.

That combination matters. It places his perspective closer to operational reality than to narrative.

This session was not about how to grow faster, raise capital, or prepare a company for sale. It examined a more uncomfortable question: why companies that appear to be progressing often become harder to scale, harder to exit, and more fragile precisely because they look successful.

This tension is not anecdotal. The Financial Times has repeatedly noted in its Lex column that founder-dependent businesses attract valuation discounts in M&A processes due to key-person risk and weak transferability. These discounts tend to surface late in negotiations, when leverage has already shifted.

Andre grounded this risk in a simple but telling example. A founder proudly referenced 13,000 users as evidence of progress. When asked how many were paying, the answer was none. Payments had not yet been integrated.

Usage was real. Validation was not.

He returned several times to a metaphor founders often use without questioning it: calling the company "my baby." Emotional attachment makes every upward signal feel like progress, even when the underlying structure is fragile.

Optionality requires separation. When the founder is the system, there is nothing to transfer.

Andre’s early failures were not framed as character-building stories. They were described as costly operating lessons.

The first bankruptcy followed a bank-funded launch without financial discipline or experienced partners. Capital arrived before operating controls. The result was predictable.

The second failure came from misaligned partnership. Shared ambition without shared values collapsed under pressure.

Andre described bankruptcy not as an abstract low point, but as months of isolation without external support.

Full cycles expose where assumptions break. Founders who have not experienced this often confuse momentum with durability.

The discussion moved deliberately away from exit as an event.

Andre described how founders often overshare fatigue during negotiations. What feels like honesty becomes liability. Silence, he argued, preserves leverage.

He shared an example of a founder who began mentally spending exit proceeds before funds had transferred. The buyer sensed urgency and negotiated a double-digit reduction late in the process.

Earn-outs, governance structures, reporting lines and cultural fit often matter more than headline valuation.

The ability to walk away remains the strongest negotiating position.

Andre emphasised restraint. Silence preserves leverage. Emotional attachment destroys it.

Several participants reinforced this with practical experience. Earn‑outs, governance structures, reporting lines and cultural fit often matter more than headline valuation.

The ability to walk away remains the strongest negotiating position.

Importantly, exit was reframed.

Selling the company is only one form. Others include management buy-outs, generational transfer, appointing external leadership, or stepping back into a governance role.

This distinction is well documented. The OECD’s work on SME succession and ownership transition shows that firms with concentrated decision-making and weak succession planning experience materially higher failure rates during leadership transitions, even when financial performance appears strong prior to the change.

The underlying test discussed in the session was therefore practical rather than aspirational:

Can the founder leave the business for an extended period without deterioration?

If not, the company functions as employment, not as an asset.

A sharp distinction was drawn between advisors and affirmation.

Advisors with credibility have operating exposure and accept responsibility for outcomes. They identify structural weaknesses rather than amplifying ambition.

Comfortable advice preserves ego. Surgical advice creates durability.

Several contributors noted that founders often delay forming advisory or formal boards until pressure forces the issue. By then, options have narrowed.

Andre’s reflections on self‑awareness were practical rather than philosophical.

Mentorship, deliberate periods of disconnection, and structured reflection were presented as operating practices. These created the space where structural decisions became visible.

The point was not balance as lifestyle preference, but clarity as a strategic input.The trust constraint

What sits underneath this session is a structural shift we see repeatedly.

As companies move from growth to transferability, the limiting factor is rarely ambition or capital. It is access to experienced judgement at the right moment.

EVOLVE is being shaped as an operating environment where non-executive directors, board-level operators and senior advisors connect with growth-stage and scaling companies in commerce.

Not episodically.
Not transactionally.
But through ongoing proximity to real operating questions.

The focus is governance, incentives, decision quality and long-term optionality.
The work happens before pressure forces it.

If you are a senior operator, advisor or board-level leader working with growth companies in commerce, or a founder preparing for scale, transition or exit, this environment may be relevant.

Access is considered.
Conversations remain closed.

Andre Abi Awad, Jean Mies, former President of Adyen in Latin America, and Hendrik Laubscher, a global commerce analyst, are all members of the EVOLVE Club.

EVOLVE is not built around speakers, stages or events. It functions as a working environment where senior operators, board members and advisers remain accessible over time.

Conversations like this one do not end with the session.

They continue privately, in smaller settings, and often around live strategic questions.

If you are a CEO navigating transformation, or a senior leader stepping into board or advisory responsibilities, access to people who have operated inside these systems, and understand where incentives, governance and execution fail, is often more valuable than frameworks or reports.

If you’d like to learn more how to partner with us during 2026 please email us at [email protected] or [email protected]

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