Oxalyst was formed with the sole purpose of supporting early stage and growth businesses to ensure they achieve their full potential.
Oxalyst partners have a rich background of working with businesses ranging from pre-revenue through to large corporates for well over 20 years.
Our style is professional yet relaxed, hard-working yet light-hearted. We take a truly partnerial approach to not only make a success of the business, but also make a success of the people involved.
We are scrupulous in the selection of businesses that we work with – taking time to really understand the business and its needs, and also ensuring that we can really add value.
EARLY Stage Businesses
We help in three key areas: Funding, Management and Business Support and Market Access. Oxalyst also works with an Independent Coach who focusses on early stage businesses, and can assist with one-off advisory engagements, building plans and strategies for success.
Funding
We work with partners to arrange funding for the right businesses – from seed funding through to Series A.
We have a particular focus on investments for growth prior to Series A. Businesses at this stage often require investment in the range of £500k-£2m to start to break out of start-up and into scale-up, and yet this level of funding is so difficult to achieve in the market. We help to address this challenge.
Management and Business Support
Running a growing business is exciting and challenging in equal measure. Setting goals that are ambitious but achievable (just). Making the hard decisions about where to focus and sticking to them. Delivering concrete progress with limited resources and building up to an unstoppable momentum.
Our pragmatic approach provides the right support for a business depending on its specific needs and where it is in its lifecycle. Our work encompasses:
Management support and coaching
Strategy and direction
Proposition and go to market approach
Operating model design and refinement
Sales and Channels
Building the right team
Financial Planning and support
Technology
Risk management
Interim roles
Market Access
The greatest ideas can only succeed when they connect with their markets. Through our extensive networks and access to senior people and businesses, we:
Connect businesses for mutual benefit and exploitation of synergies
Connect people
Open up partnership and channel opportunities
Provide access to larger organisations
Extend access to talent
COACHING
Managing the early stages of a company’s development nearly always represents a very significant personal investment, often in a role or circumstance that is new or unfamiliar. As such it carries high levels of risk. For success, it is essential to ensure that you and your team maximise performance and make the very best decisions.
The aim of Business Coaching is to empower individuals to find their own solutions to the challenges or issues they face. This can include:
Improving personal or team performance and priority setting
Support with a transition to a new role
Building personal or team confidence
Improving communications
Conflict resolution
Sessions can either be one-to-one or team based. For more information please complete the contact form below.
Our Commercial Model
We’re in this for the long run. Success is a growing, thriving business. Our typical commercial model reflects this by combining:
A percentage fee for successful fund-raising
A small monthly management charge
A share in the growth in value of the business that we help to achieve
Established Businesses
In today's dynamic market established businesses, whether market leaders or ambitious companies with significant unlocked potential, face a dual challenge: optimising current performance while building the future. At Oxalyst, we partner with organisations like yours to navigate complexity, capitalise on disruption, and systematically unlock new sources of value. Our consulting offerings are designed to translate your ambition into executable strategies and lasting commercial success.
We move beyond theoretical reports. Our approach is hands-on, leveraging our extensive experience to embed innovation, drive strategic clarity, and deliver measurable results across your organisation.
Strategic Innovation & New Ventures
New Venture Incubation: We help you identify, test, and launch internal start-ups and corporate spin-offs. This includes defining the business model, securing funding, and developing initial operational capabilities to create genuinely disruptive revenue streams.
Innovation Strategy: Establishing a repeatable, systematic process for innovation, ensuring it aligns with core corporate strategy, moves beyond incremental improvements, and avoids organisational rejection.
Digital Transformation & Future-Proofing: Assessing technology trends and market shifts to develop strategies that safeguard your business against future threats and leverage new platforms for competitive advantage.
Commercial Excellence and Go-to-Market
Go-to-Market (GTM) Strategy: Developing robust and efficient strategies for launching new products, entering new geographies, or targeting new customer segments. We define the optimal channel mix, pricing, and sales enablement models.
Proposition Development & Value Definition: Refining your core offerings to ensure maximum market resonance. We help you articulate a compelling value proposition that solves critical customer pain points and commands premium pricing.
Commercial Model Optimisation: Reviewing and restructuring your sales, marketing, and channel partnership models to maximise efficiency and revenue per customer.
Corporate Strategy and M&A
Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) Strategy: Guiding you through the full M&A lifecycle, from target identification and strategic rationale development to deal structuring and commercial due diligence.
Post-Merger Integration (PMI): Crucially, we design and implement effective PMI plans, ensuring the smooth integration of operations, people, and systems to fully realise the projected value from the acquisition.
Strategic Growth Planning: Defining clear, ambitious, and achievable long-term corporate strategies (3-5 years) that allocate resources effectively across business units and drive sustainable growth.
Business Portfolio Review: Evaluating the health and strategic fit of your current business units, recommending divestitures, consolidation, or focused investment to optimise capital deployment and risk.
Our Team
Two founding partners and a collection of specialists in those areas where growing businesses most often need help.
David Kirby
David spent 16 years with Capgemini where he sat on the UK board and the European Management team. Heading up the Technology Division, he also drove the business in Public Sector, Insurance and Retail and Distribution. He spent a number of years with Shell as part of the global IT executive team with responsibility for global Programme Management and Delivery, and was MD of a VC-backed ERP/consultancy business.
He has been working with growth businesses since 2009, taking a number of companies through the journey from concept to revenue, expansion and then exit.
Mark Fishleigh
An engineer by training, Mark has worked with technology-enabled businesses of all shapes and sizes for over 25 years. He has worked in a range of sectors including insurance, retail banking, telecoms, retail, consumer goods, natural resources and utilities. Based in the UK, he has also worked in the US, Australia and across Europe. He has established and grown new businesses, turned around stalled business, and is equally at home in both new start-ups and large blue chip companies.
He is collaborative, pragmatic and creatively analytical. He aims to cut through the noise and bring clarity to propositions, messaging and the underlying business models.
Tim Dowling
Tim leads Oxalyst’s investor relations. Most recently, Tim has been running an online retail trading platform across the UK/Europe and Investing in start-ups. Prior to that Tim worked for Chatham Financial building relationships with C-level executives across the global Private Equity and Corporate market whilst providing them with key risk management advice.
Prior to that Tim spent 20 years working for various Fixed Income Brokers across Asia. 3 years in Sydney, 4 years in Hong Kong and 15 years in Singapore. His network reaches across the globe.
Matt Dunn
Matt has over 20 years experience in business consulting and prior to working with Oxalyst was a COO in PwC and Capita. He’s outcome focused and has built and led numerous businesses successfully. He works with a variety of organisations across the world from start–ups to FTSE 50, advising and driving change and supporting restructuring, integration and turnaround.
Matt’s core focus areas are helping businesses to grow profitability through increased income generation and delivering cost efficiencies. Matt has also led numerous large scale commercial negotiations with investors, suppliers and public sector, often involving complex commercial models.
Together with the collective talents of specialists in: corporate finance, tax, financial management and accounting, legal advice and services, technology strategy and development, recruitment and team effectiveness, marketing, and sales and account management.
LEt’s Talk
Use the form below to contact us about your business. To help us to give you a constructive response, we recommend that you first describe your current situation and any key challenges before telling us what you want to achieve. You can also email or call us to make an appointment.
For job opportunities, please email us with a copy of your CV. We’re always looking for new and exceptional talent to broaden our ability to help our portfolio companies to fly.