Business law & consulting
Business consulting
Pro formas for a raise, investor-ready materials, operations support and help scaling — from an attorney who built companies before he advised them.
Most founders do not need a management consultant and a lawyer running on separate tracks, briefing each other badly.
Mr. Sheehan read finance before he read law, worked at Merrill Lynch and a private capital group, and has spent most of his career building and advising companies across the United States. That is an unusual combination, and it is the reason the consulting work and the legal work sit in one place here.
The practical effect is that the plan and the paper are built by the same person. When a model assumes a particular equity split, the operating agreement reflects it. When a raise needs a clean cap table, the cleanup and the materials are the same engagement rather than two.
Engaged separately
Consulting engagements are documented separately from legal representation. Where part of the work turns out to need a lawyer, that part is handled under its own engagement, so the two never blur.
What the engagement covers
Pro formas for a raise
A three-statement model built to be defended line by line rather than admired: revenue build, cost structure, headcount and cash, with the assumptions visible instead of buried. Scenario sets so a downside case exists before an investor constructs one. Unit economics that reconcile to the statements, and a use of proceeds that follows from the plan rather than being written to fit the ask.
Investor-friendly materials
The deck, the model and the data room prepared as one set, saying the same thing. Most diligence problems are not bad numbers; they are a deck that claims one growth rate, a model that assumes another, and corporate records that support neither. The work is reconciling those before a term sheet exists, when the gaps are still cheap to close.
Operations support
Pricing and packaging, channel economics, the reporting cadence a board will actually expect, and the twelve-month plan with named owners against each line. Practical work on how the business runs week to week, informed by having run companies rather than only advised them.
Assistance with scale
What breaks when volume goes up: the entity that suited one state and now needs several, the contract that was fine at ten customers and is not at a thousand, the equity promises made informally that a new investor will ask about. Scaling exposes structural decisions made early, and this is where they get revisited before they become expensive.
Exit preparation
Getting a company ready to be bought or to raise a round that changes control: corporate records in order, the cap table reconciled, customer and vendor agreements assignable, and a clear account of what a buyer is actually acquiring. Started early, this is preparation. Started late, it is a discount.
Where it usually starts
Often with a raise on the horizon and a sense that the numbers will not survive contact with a real investor. Sometimes with an operating problem — margin going the wrong way, a channel that stopped working, a team structure that has outgrown itself. Occasionally with an offer already on the table and no clean answer to what the company is actually worth.
All three are the same engagement at different points on the same line.
How it is scoped
A first conversation to establish what is actually being decided, then a written scope with what is included, what is not, and what it costs. Consulting work is quoted rather than billed by the hour wherever the shape of the work allows it.