Winning starts with a solid business strategy that builds a sustainable competitive advantage. We help provide clarity on your overall direction so you can accomplish your winning aspiration.
In complex B2B, you need a thoughtful growth strategy that unlocks customer value. We help define your target market, refine the value proposition, and align commercial activities for maximum customer impact.
As an entrepreneur, you must excel as a leader and as a manager. To deliver results, you must create a mission, define a strategy, and lead a team. Most importantly, you must build trust with your team and collaborators.
Holistic Approach to Business Growth
Sustainable venture creation and scaling require a holistic approach. Your mission, growth aspirations, strategy, tactics, people, systems, and leadership must be in alignment to realize your vision. This means you have to embrace both strategy formulation AND strategy implementation -- they both carry equal weight.
You are the true expert in your market space and business. We will work together to augment your domain knowledge with our lessons learned over decades in high-tech B2B environments to discover how each element of your strategy and business model fits into the big picture.
We partner with founders and leadership teams to provide insight and support along your entrepreneurial journey -- from Mission to Measures.
Big-picture Strategy
Strategy is about choice. A successful strategy ensures that your chosen customer segments, value propositions, core capabilities, enabling systems, and leadership approach are in sync and add up to a competitive advantage. We strive to co-develop strategies that are simple, coherent, and actionable.
We can help evaluate your current strategy and craft new ones by using proven frameworks and tools that align with your situation and lifecycle stage. The aim is to uncover a valuable position in the intersection of your mission, capabilities, and opportunities. We think the Playing to Win framework by Roger Martin is a great way to think about and develop strategy.
Our mission is not just to help formulate a strategy for your company; it is to make sure you build internal strategic capability for sustainable success over time.
We can help with:​
- Business Diagnosis & Strategy Review
- Business Strategy Formulation & Implementation
- Business Model Assessment & Improvement
- Internal Strategy Capability & Process Development
Simple - Coherent - Actionable
Focused Growth
Focused - Aligned - Thoughtful
In complex B2B, you need to focus your growth initiatives on what matters most to your customers and end users and solve for customer value at multiple levels.
Your marketing and bizdev activities must be appropriate for your growth phase and type of market -- introducing an improved product to existing customers is radically different from launching a new product in a new market. Growth is more than GTM Motions and SaaS. We like to take a broad approach to growth, exploring all four quadrants of the Ansoff Growth Matrix to align thoughtful growth with your business model, organizational capabilities, and external opportunities.
We will partner with you to formulate and implement winning growth and GTM strategies that align with your overall big-picture goals.
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We can help with:​
- Early Stage Customer Development
- Market Segmentation, Value Proposition Design, Value Innovation
- GTM and Growth Strategy
- New Market Development & US Market Entry
Entrepreneurial Leadership
Company strategy can't be disconnected from leadership. Why? Because business is conducted by people -- and leadership is the ability to guide and influence a group of people towards achieving a common goal.
Leadership is about setting a vision, motivating team members, making decisions, and fostering collaboration. Leading people effectively is needed for creating and implementing your strategy and growth initiatives. To grow your business, you need first to grow yourself, then grow your team.
The foundation for successful leadership is TRUST. We have been there ourselves and are happy to advise, support, and encourage you in 1:1 coaching and team engagements to grow both you and your venture.
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We can help with:
- 1:1 Coaching & Mentoring: Trust, Leadership & Management
- Strategic Thinking, Fractional Leadership Roles
- Founder Toolbox: Fundraising & Running Your Company
- Start-up Journey: Search -- Build -- Growth Phase Transitions
Growth - Learning - Trust
Based in Seattle, WA, I spent my early career in the automotive industry (SAAB) and consulting, followed by sales & marketing, operations, and general management positions in VR/AR, Medical Simulation, and Medical Robotics. Over the years, I have developed a strong passion for hands-on entrepreneurship, strategy, business models, commercial operations, and partnership building in B2B domains. My sweetspot is bringing together hardware, software, and services to create and deliver value for partners and end users.
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I enjoy working in mission-driven, entrepreneurial, diverse, and collaborative environments. Rauk Strategy was formed to help bring big-picture strategic thinking combined with effective leadership to small and growing companies here in the PNW.
I have a M.Sc. in Industrial Design Engineering from Luleå Technical University in Sweden, an MBA (Technology Management) from the UW Foster School of Business, and a Certificate in Business Strategy from UVA Darden School of Business.
Background
Experience
At Surgical Science, I led day-to-day operations at the industry-leading medical simulation company's $50M, 50+ people US subsidiary. As a trusted business development executive, I partnered with companies like Johnson & Johnson, Verb Surgical (Google/Ethicon owned), Medtronic, and Kawasaki Robotics on joint development of customized simulation and training solutions.
At Rauk Strategy, I advised LN Robotics, an early-stage vascular robotics company based in South Korea. While consulting in Sweden, I worked with early-stage companies in encryption platforms, medical simulation, and autonomous drones for mapping of underground mines.
Entrepreneurial Journey
After working for one of the biggest companies in the world (GM/SAAB) and as a consultant in government growth policy, I have spent most of my career in start-ups and growth-stage companies. At EON Reality, we created one of the first commercial VR platforms, and at ReachIn Technologies, we pioneered a co-located haptic and graphic "workbench" that I sold to early adopters, including NASA and Chevron.
At Mimic Technologies, as employee #4, I conceptualized and helped bring to market the first robotic surgery skills simulator, the dV Trainer, creating a new category in medical simulation. I forged partnerships with medical universities, hospitals, global distributors, and medical device companies to bring this innovation to market. We partnered with Intuitive Surgical to ideate and develop the da Vinci Skills Simulator, now the worldwide standard for training in robot-assisted surgery.
We grew Mimic to 40+ people and $10M+ in revenue. I was responsible for setting up our distributors in Europe, Asia, and Latin America, then transitioning into operations and finance as COO. Mimic was acquired by Surgical Science in 2021.
How we work together
Strategy, in our view, is about collaborative problem-solving and value creation using an assertive inquiry approach, not endless debate and argumentation. We believe most of the "data" already exists within your management team, and more rigorous analysis should only be conducted to test your strategy hypotheses, mainly around customer value, willingness to pay, cost structure, and internal capabilities. We don’t try to sell you on a new strategy system or marketing framework. We utilize proven frameworks and tools that are well-documented, allowing you to develop your own strategic and marketing capabilities along the way.
We believe that strategy and execution must be considered together for a positive impact. We offer a flexible engagement model that includes shorter and longer-term projects, retainers, and fractional services (CEO, COO, CMO, CSO) tailored to your specific needs.
A great way to get started is with a short-duration gap analysis to uncover addressable problems and opportunities to decrease the gap between where you are today and where you want to be in the future -- your winning aspiration.
Let's chat!
Contact us today to explore how we can work together on your big-picture start-up, growth-phase, or SMB business challenge!
- Holistic Strategy & Implementation
- Focused Growth & Marketing
- Entrepreneurial Leadership & Coaching
Please send an email to jan[at]raukstrategy[dot]com, connect on LinkedIn, or use the form below. Let's collaborate!