Why Kipsis exists
A short note on the work we want to do, the clients we want to do it with, and the bar we're setting for ourselves.
If you're reading this, you're probably one of two people. Either you've stumbled onto the site because someone forwarded you a link, or you're a friend who's heard the words "Kipsis LLC" enough times over the last few months to be a little curious about what's actually behind them. Either way — welcome. This is the first issue of the Kipsis Letter, and the most useful thing it can do is be honest about what we're trying to build.
The work we want to do
There's a particular flavor of consulting work that we keep coming back to: small teams, real stakes, and a question that hasn't been written down yet. The team has the data, mostly. They have the smart people, mostly. What they don't have is a quiet moment to step back and ask whether they're solving the right problem.
That gap — between activity and progress — is where Kipsis lives. Our job, on a good engagement, is to compress weeks of "we should really sit down and figure this out" into a focused, written read of what's actually going on. Then to help the team act on it without making things worse.
The goal isn't a smarter slide deck. It's a team that's noticeably better at making decisions a quarter from now.
The clients we want to do it with
We've made a deliberate choice to stay small, and that means being deliberate about who we say yes to. The engagements that work best for us tend to share three traits:
The decision-maker is in the room. If we have to navigate four layers of approvals to test an idea, the engagement will quietly stall. We're at our best when we're working directly with the person whose name is on the outcome.
The team is open to being wrong. Not in a performative "tell us hard truths" way — in a real way. The teams who get the most out of working with us are the ones willing to look at their own assumptions and ask, sincerely, whether the assumption is still earning its keep.
The problem is bounded. We're not the right partner for "rebuild the entire go-to-market." We are the right partner for "we think pricing is leaving money on the table — help us find out and decide what to do about it."
The bar we're setting for ourselves
A few commitments, written down so we can be held to them:
Every engagement leaves something behind. A memo, a dashboard, a playbook, a written framework — something the team can use without us in the room. If the only thing left at the end of an engagement is a feeling that things went well, we did it wrong.
We say no often. The math of staying small only works if we're honest about the engagements we shouldn't take. If we're not the right fit, we'll tell you, and where we can, we'll point you toward someone who is.
We write more than we slide. Slides hide reasoning; writing exposes it. Our default deliverable is a written memo, because writing forces us to think clearly — and gives you something durable to come back to.
What's next
This letter goes out every other Tuesday. The format will settle into something close to: one idea worth considering, one tool worth trying, one question worth sitting with. Some issues will be longer; some will be three paragraphs. The rule is that every issue has to earn its place in your inbox.
If you'd rather not get the rest of them, no offense taken — there's an unsubscribe link at the bottom of every issue, and we'd rather have a small list of people who actually want to be on it than a big list of people who don't.
Thanks for being here at the start. We'll see you in two weeks.
— The Kipsis team