You're a partner at a venture firm. One of your founders just emailed: "I think we need a Head of Operations."
You probably already know what you're going to write back.
But there's a different option — the one Pear VC has been running across 9 portfolio companies. Connect the founder with Of All Trades.
Here's what happens next, in the form of an interactive case study.
The Fork
The founder emailed. You have to respond. Here's how each path actually plays out over the next eight weeks.
Choose the path to see what happens next:
What follows is the pattern across their portfolio — what happened when a founder got connected with an Of All Trades operator instead of a recruiter.
Pear has run this play 9 times. The outcomes aren't identical, but the shape of what happens is. Here's the pattern across the portfolio.
Portfolio Impact
Across seed and Series A companies in the Pear portfolio, the same sequence played out every time.
Scaling ad ops without burning out the founder.
Orchestration layer live. 60% time reclaimed.
Launch on hold. SOC 2 in limbo.
Compliance track running. Launch back on.
Growth flatlining without GTM muscle.
GTM ops rebuilt. Pipeline moving.
Ops team drowning in manual reconciliation.
Workflows automated. Ops back above water.
Founders doing the work, not leading it.
Senior operator embedded. Founders back to building.
Pilot launching without a launch plan.
Go-to-market shipped. First customers onboarded.
Customer onboarding duct-taped together.
Onboarding flow mapped. NPS rising.
Revenue growing, processes buckling.
Ops rebuilt for scale. Revenue growth preserved.
Engineering-heavy team, no ops leadership.
Orchestration layer live. Engineering stays on tools.
9 teams engaged. 65% converted to ongoing engagements. 55% extended beyond the first.
Stats are abstract. So here's one company in particular — an adtech startup that was growing fast and burning out faster. Their operator didn't hire anyone. They built a machine.
Case Study 2 — Adtech
A fast-growing adtech startup. Rising demand. Fixed headcount. Mounting burnout.
Watch what changes.
Five workstreams. All roads lead to one person.
Every decision. Every approval. Every unblock. The founder.
This is the bottleneck in every Series A.
An operator joins. Not as headcount. As the routing layer.
They didn't hire. They built an operating model that assumed no new headcount.
"Our generalist operator is fantastic, and has become an essential member of our team. Usually when I describe him to other people I usually say he's thinking for me at this point."
Founder — Adtech Startup
How it happened — Adtech Case Study
01 — Orchestration
Rather than designing an org chart the company couldn't hire into, the oAT operator created an operating model that assumed no new headcount. They set up an orchestration layer that treated scaling as a workflow problem — not a staffing problem.
02 — AI Workflows
The operator took recurring production work and broke it into discrete skills, steps, and decision points that could be documented and repeated. That structure made tasks AI-executable and easier for the existing team to supervise — turning messy knowledge execution into a consistent quality system.
03 — Control System
With workflows in place, the operator became the control layer — routing work, maintaining context, and ensuring quality. They handled the judgment calls AI shouldn't make, reviewed outputs, managed client relationships, and used feedback from real delivery to improve the system continuously.
The same model worked in a completely different domain. Here's what happened when a fast-growing health tech startup — one already working with three of the top 10 pharmas — brought in a single oAT operator instead of building a team.
Case Study 1 — HealthTech
A fast-growing health tech startup working with three of the top 10 pharmas. Instead of hiring five specialists, one oAT operator covered cross-functional execution typically spread across multiple specialized hires.
"We launched eight months ago and we're already working with three of the top 10 pharmas, in no small part thanks to Sarah, our oAT generalist. Early on she effectively handled all of our stock-to-compliance which was critical, and also set up all our onboarding and HubSpot flow which has given us a lot more confidence in the sales cycle. Everything feels very clear and we had a lot of messiness before. Without Sarah we would not have been able to achieve this level of scale as quickly."
Founder — HealthTech Startup
What one operator covered
Value over time
Two case studies. Two different sectors. Same underlying logic. Here are the six reasons VCs at Pear keep using this play — and why it compounds across a portfolio rather than just solving one company's problem at a time.
Why VCs and Founders Leverage Our Model
Six reasons this model works for funds that think portfolio-wide.
If you have a portfolio company stalling on an ops hire — or a founder who keeps saying "we need help but we don't know exactly what yet" — that's the exact window this model was built for.
Pear VC x oAT
Embed operators that move companies forward. VCs who partner with oAT give their portfolio experienced operational leaders — exactly when and where they're needed, without overhiring or locking in premature org structures.
The result: smarter capital deployment, more resilient teams, and companies that get further faster — with less organizational drag.
TALK TO BRITT