Advisory Services

Five service lines.
One principal. Every engagement.

No junior staff. No hand-offs. No briefing a new person each quarter. Cynthia Thyfault leads every engagement — which is why the practice maintains a focused portfolio of 3–6 active clients at any time. Depth over breadth is a structural commitment, not a talking point.

Free
Capital Terrain Map
→
Entry Point
Strategic Diagnostic Sprint
→
Ongoing
Board Advisory Retainer
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Concurrent
Capital Strategy & Documents
→
Top of Ladder
Board Director Role

The Engagement Pathway

Every step is voluntary. Every step earns the next.

The pathway is intentional: start where you are, prove value at each stage, go deeper when it makes sense. Most long-term client relationships begin with the free resource or the Sprint.

Free
Capital Terrain Map

A 12-question self-assessment that benchmarks your company's investability across four domains. The starting point for most client relationships — and the fastest way to understand where the gaps are.

Get the map →
Entry Point
Strategic Diagnostic Sprint

A 30–60 day engagement that produces a specific, written diagnosis of what is preventing your company from becoming investable or bankable — and a prioritized action plan to close the gaps.

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Core Ongoing
Board Advisory & Fractional Executive

A sustained advisory relationship for every capital, governance, and market-entry decision that matters. Available as Independent Board Advisor, Fractional CSO, or Fractional Chief Sustainability Officer.

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Concurrent
Project Financing & Capital Strategy

Strategic navigation of the full capital landscape for first commercial facilities and major capital raises — federal, state, international, and private structures sequenced for your stage.

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Concurrent
Funding & Compliance Documents

Investor pitch decks, feasibility studies, government program applications, ESG reports, and business plans — written for the evaluator who reads them. Available standalone or within any engagement.

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Board Level
Independent Board Director

Formal independent director appointments with governance participation, voting rights, and fiduciary responsibility. The natural evolution of a sustained advisory relationship where trust and impact are established.

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Free Resource — Start Here

Capital Terrain Map

Most founders who are stuck in the Valley of Death aren't sure exactly why they're stuck. The Capital Terrain Map is a 12-question self-assessment that benchmarks your company's current investability across the four domains that sophisticated investors and government program evaluators actually use to assess readiness.

Ten minutes. No charge. Most founders are surprised by what surfaces.

This is the first step — not because it's required, but because arriving at a Sprint or a discovery call with self-knowledge is more valuable than arriving from scratch. The Capital Terrain Map is designed to surface the questions that you haven't been able to articulate yet.

  • Benchmark your company across Technology & IP Readiness
  • Assess Commercial Traction & Market Validation status
  • Evaluate Capital & Government Program Readiness
  • Identify Governance & Operations gaps
  • Surface the domain where your exposure is highest
Download the Capital Terrain Map — Free
QuantaVision Capital Terrain Map — 12-Question Capital Readiness Self-Assessment
Format PDF self-assessment (12 questions)
Time Required ~10 minutes
Who It's For Any innovation founder at any stage — whether capital is moving or stalled, most founders discover at least one blind spot they didn't see coming
Next Step Strategic Diagnostic Sprint
Paid Entry Point

Strategic Diagnostic Sprint

Your technology is proven. The capital is available. Something between them is blocking the route. The Strategic Diagnostic Sprint finds it — names it precisely — and produces a specific, prioritized plan through it in 30 to 60 days.

This is not a general strategy review or a paid discovery call. It is a defined engagement with a defined deliverable: the Strategic Priorities Report. A specific answer to the question every founder in the Valley of Death is really asking — what is actually blocking my capital raise, and what do I do about it first?

A founder comes in talking about a fundraising challenge. What surfaces is a commercialization story that doesn't hold under scrutiny, a governance structure sophisticated capital won't touch, and a risk profile that hasn't been honestly named. The Sprint is scoped to where you are most exposed.

Sprint Focus Areas

  • Capital & Investor Readiness
    Is the company structured to receive the capital it's seeking? What do your target investors or lenders actually need to see — and what's missing?
  • Go-to-Market & Commercialization Path
    Is the commercialization narrative credible? Where does the story break down under investor scrutiny?
  • Governance & Board Readiness
    What changes to board composition, reporting, or decision-making would have the highest capital impact?
  • Risk Identification & Mitigation
    What risks are you treating as future problems that are actually present risks? What will your capital provider find before you do?
  • Strategic Priorities Report
    A written, prioritized action plan that is yours to keep and execute — with or without a continuing advisory relationship.
Duration 30–60 days
Deliverable Strategic Priorities Report — written, specific, prioritized
Capacity 2–3 Sprints per quarter
Role in Pathway Entry point — designed to convert to advisory retainer
Who It's For Late seed through Series B; project finance preparation; founders with a major capital event in the next 6 months

The cost isn't the fee. It's the window.

The founders who get through don't have better technology or stronger conviction than the ones who don't. They found the right guidance before the window closed.

Before the next board meeting where a question didn't have a good answer. Before another program cycle passed without a submission. Before the team started asking about the timeline and there was nothing certain to say. The technology is real. The mission matters. The Sprint exists to make sure both of those things count — with a specific diagnosis of what's blocking the capital, in the timeframe where it can still change the outcome.

Two climbers ascending a mountain together — navigating the terrain side by side

Three More Deliverables. No Extra Charge.

Three deliverables included at no additional charge — each one designed to make the Sprint more effective before it begins and more actionable after it ends.

Investor Narrative Red-Line ($1,250 value)
A written assessment of your current executive summary or investor deck before the Sprint begins — specific notes on what institutional capital and program reviewers will question, dismiss, or push back on, before you walk into the rooms that matter.
Premortem Analysis ($2,500 value)
Our most powerful diagnostic tool. A structured forward-looking risk assessment: if this capital raise were to fail, what would have caused it? Surfaces hidden deal-killers, structural blind spots, and risks that don't appear in the standard due diligence process — before they surface in investor conversations.
30-Day Implementation Check-In ($1,000 value)
A 45-minute call one month after the Strategic Priorities Report is delivered — addressing the questions that only surface once execution begins.
The Clarity Guarantee
"In a market where investors are watching and waiting, the most expensive thing a founder can do is move in the wrong direction. The Sprint guarantees a specific diagnosis of what's within your control, what's not, and where to focus the next 90 days. If that isn't specific and actionable, you pay nothing."
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Core Ongoing Advisory

Board Advisory & Fractional Executive

A sustained advisory relationship with someone who has been on this exact trail before — in your corner for every capital, governance, and market-entry decision that determines whether your innovation reaches commercial scale.

Available in three roles, depending on what your company needs:

  • Independent Board Advisor
    Formal advisory board role with structured meeting cadence, strategic input, and relationship-building with the full board. Compensation: monthly stipend plus equity.
  • Fractional Chief Strategy Officer
    Embedded strategic leadership for companies between strategic hires or needing senior commercial and market strategy support on a part-time basis.
  • Fractional Chief Sustainability Officer
    Sustainability strategy, reporting alignment, and green and blended finance readiness — delivered as a part-time executive role with genuine depth.

The core value of the retainer is not deliverables — it is judgment. Every investor conversation, every governance decision, every government program application has consequences that compound over time. The advisory relationship provides the thought partnership and the specific relationship capital — agency contacts, investor network, sector peers — that changes outcomes.

First-30-Days Included

30-Day Capital Position Audit ($2,500 value)
A written assessment of exactly what needs to change before the next investor conversation — specific gaps, prioritized, owned by you.
Custom Capital Terrain Map ($3,000 value)
A map of every federal, state, and international capital instrument applicable to your specific project and sector — built for your stage as of engagement start.
Advisory Guarantee
"If the first 90 days don't produce a clear capital and governance roadmap with specific, actionable recommendations — the engagement extends at no charge until we get there."
Schedule a Discovery Call →
Minimum Commitment 3 months initial
Exit Terms 30-day notice after initial period
Capacity 3–6 active clients at any time
Who It's For Any founder at a pivotal stage — a major capital raise, first commercial facility, governance build-out, or a capital repositioning that has to succeed. For the founder who knows what needs to happen and needs a senior thought partner who stays in the work — not one who delivers a report and disappears.

What navigating alone actually costs

The Valley of Death does not announce when it closes.

By the time a raise has stalled for 12 months, the investors who were "very interested" have moved on, the team is waiting for answers that aren't there, and the market window that looked like 18 months is now much shorter. The cost of the retainer is not measured against the fee. It is measured against the year you don't get back — the timing that mattered, the relationships that went cold, and the technology that was real but couldn't find its route.

Two climbers on a mountain — one reaching down to help the other up
Project & Capital Specific

Project Financing & Capital Strategy

You did everything right. You built the technology and you proved it works. You assembled a team, validated the market, and applied to the programs you were told to apply to. And the capital still hasn't closed. That is not a failure of your company. It is what happens when the terrain moves underneath a map that was drawn for a different year.

Capital terrain navigation is the work upstream of any application — knowing which routes are actually open right now, in what order they have to be climbed, and what it takes to make a project financeable across the full landscape of federal, state, international, and private capital. Anyone can fill out a form. A sherpa knows the mountain.

The application that makes it through is rarely the strongest one on paper. It is the one submitted by someone who knows the program from the inside — who has talked with the people reviewing it, knows what they are weighing at each stage, and has structured deals that closed at scale. That layer is not built during an application cycle. It is built over decades. Mine took thirty years.

Here is the honest version of 2026. The federal channel most founders were told to build around has narrowed — programs restructured, delayed, or quietly held. If your capital stack assumed those programs would move at the pace you were promised, the stack you are holding today has a gap in it. That gap is not your fault. But the landscape did not contract; only one part of it did. As federal channels narrowed, state green banks, international development finance, and blended private structures widened. The founders closing capital right now are the ones working from the current map — not the one from 2021.

Federal, state, international development finance, corporate, and private — five layers of capital, sequenced to your project rather than chased one at a time.

Note: QuantaVision improves positioning and navigation — not approval outcomes. Application decisions are made by agencies, not advisors.

Schedule a Discovery Call →
Structure Project-based or concurrent with advisory retainer
Who It's For Innovation companies building a first commercial facility, raising major development capital, or rebuilding a stack that broke when the programs shifted. Complexity — not size — determines fit.
Common Entry Point Often begins after or concurrent with a Sprint; can stand alone for capital-specific engagements

One route is not a strategy

An advisor who only knows one channel cannot help you the day that channel closes.

You were handed a map drawn for a different year, and you have been navigating by it ever since. QuantaVision works from the current one — across every layer of capital, with relationships built over thirty years inside the programs. That is what gets capital to close in this environment.

A climber standing on a summit, arms raised — the founder who reached the top of the climb

What the Climb Actually Involves

Five parts to the work — from mapping the full landscape, to the order the instruments get stacked, to the agency relationships that decide whether an application converts.

Full Capital Landscape Mapping
Every applicable instrument across federal, state, international, and private channels — identified, sequenced, and matched to your project's specific stage, sector, and structure.
Capital Stack Architecture
The right instruments in the right order. Sequencing matters as much as selection — a stack built in the wrong order can disqualify you from the programs that matter most.
Program Relationship Navigation
Direct relationships with USDA, DOE, EPA, DOC, and DOW program offices, built over thirty years of active engagement. The relationship layer often determines whether applications convert — not just the quality of the submission.
International Development Finance
For qualifying projects, DFC, IFC, and EBRD represent significant capital that most domestic advisors are not navigating. As federal channels have contracted, international development finance has become a strategic alternative for the right deals.
Midstream Capital Stack Rebuilding
For companies whose original capital plans broke when federal programs changed — not starting over, but repositioning what's already built around what's currently open.
Documentation

Funding & Compliance Documents

You have rewritten the executive summary a dozen times. The technology is right. The market is right. And still the people across the table do not read it the way you meant it. A document is not judged on its format. It is read by a specific person — a program officer, a loan officer, an investment committee — weighing it against criteria most founders never get to see.

That is the work here. Your investor deck, executive summary, feasibility study, government application, and sustainability reporting — built for the evaluator who reads them, not the template that requires them. I know what the DOE loan officer is actually looking for on page twelve of a feasibility study, because I have spent thirty years in the rooms where these documents get decided.

Here is what wears you down. You are fluent in your technology, and somewhere along the way you had to become passably fluent in four other languages at once. An investor, a lender, a government program officer, a vendor sizing up a partnership — they do not want the same things, and they do not even ask for them the same way. What reassures a lender can spook an investor. What a program officer has to see, a partner doesn't care about. You have been translating yourself in every room, in a language that isn't yours. That part is not your job. It is mine.

Important: Documents without strategy produce expensive, unusable paper. Where strategic clarity is absent, a Sprint is the right first step.

Schedule a Discovery Call →
Common Entry Sprint surfaces the documentation gap; standalone for approaching a hard application deadline
Timeline Government packages require 8–10 weeks minimum; investor materials require 3–4 weeks before first meetings

The deadline isn't where timing happens

By the time a program window opens, the founders who make it through have been in the conversation for months.

Building the package takes eight to ten weeks, and that is the visible part. The part that moves the outcome happens earlier and quieter — in the positioning and the program-office conversations that predate the announcement. And it is rarely one window. As one channel narrows, another opens, so I track them across federal, state, and international programs — and your timeline does not ride on a single date you do not control. The work is not to race a deadline. It is to already be standing at the door when it opens.

A lone climber on a mountain face — the founder navigating the route ahead

What the Work Produces

Three ways to engage, scoped to the capital event in front of you. Every package includes a Program Intelligence Brief on the programs and capital in play; government and full-event packages add an Evaluator Lens Review before anything is submitted.

Investor Materials Package
Pitch deck, executive summary, and investor memo — calibrated for a Series A/B, project finance, or first commercial facility raise, and written for the investment committee that actually reads them.
Government Application Package
Feasibility study, business plan, and regulatory positioning for USDA, DOE, and EPA program applications — built to the criteria the program office evaluates against, with an Evaluator Lens Review before submission.
Full Capital Event Package
Investor materials, government credentialing, and ESG and sustainability reporting (GRI, TCFD, SASB, ISSB aligned) — the complete documentation set for a major capital event.
Board Level

Independent Board Director

Formal independent director appointments — governance participation, voting rights, fiduciary responsibility, and board-level strategic leadership. The highest-tenure, highest-equity engagement form. The natural evolution of a sustained advisory relationship where trust and impact are already established.

QuantaVision targets 1–2 formal independent director appointments with high-impact companies at commercial-scale maturity. These are not advisory roles — they are formal fiduciary positions with the governance participation that comes with independent board membership.

Board director appointments are available selectively — for companies where Cynthia has high conviction in both the technology and the founding team, and where a proven relationship already exists. They are not an entry point; they are where a long-term relationship earns its fullest expression.

For companies with compelling technology and strong founding teams, equity or success fee structures are also available — compensation tied to company milestones rather than time.

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Term Typically 1–3 years per appointment
Target Portfolio 1–2 formal independent director roles
Entry Requirement Emerges from sustained retainer relationships where trust and impact are already established
Who It's For Companies at commercial-scale maturity building a formal board appropriate for that stage
A mountain capital-terrain landscape — the long view from the board seat

What the Appointment Involves

Five parts of the role — from the formal seat and the board vote to the strategic leadership it brings inside the boardroom.

Formal Appointment
A named independent director seat — a fiduciary position with the standing that comes with it, not a chair at the edge of the room.
Governance & the Board Vote
Full participation in board deliberations, and a vote on the major decisions that set the company's direction.
Fiduciary Responsibility
A legal duty to the company and its shareholders — the accountability that separates a director from an advisor.
Board-Level Strategic Leadership
Capital strategy, commercialization, and governance discipline, brought to the table where the consequential decisions actually get made.
A Long-Term Relationship
Built on a proven advisory track record — years of working together before the seat, not a director brought in cold.

The first step costs nothing

Not sure where to start?
Start with the free resource.

The Capital Terrain Map benchmarks where your company actually stands. Ten minutes. Most founders learn something they didn't expect. And if you'd rather talk it through directly — a discovery call is available.

Download the Capital Terrain Map — Free Schedule a Discovery Call