The Problem We Couldn’t Ignore | Bruce Haymes, Stage 18

What we talked about.

Sunny Ray sits down with Bruce Haymes, co-founder of Stage 18, a strategic and transaction advisory firm for tech companies, their investors and their lenders. Haymes traces the firm's origin to a pattern he saw at a satellite services company, Nielsen and Time Warner: growth plans built only around building more and hiring more, with no optionality. He explains the Tour de France inspiration behind the name and how clients, not a grand plan, turned early advisory gigs into a company. Haymes shares two examples of results, including a data joint venture that generated more than 100 million dollars of incremental revenue within two years and an ad tech client that sold at a premium based on an M&A and partnership plan alone. He also discusses helping tech companies that are not AI-native carve out business units to fund AI strategies, how his team uses AI notebooks for market mapping, and how to choose between build, partner or buy when growth stalls. He closes with practical advice on partnering with startups to stay capital efficient.

Bruce Haymes of Stage 18 explains why stalled growth is really an optionality problem, and how partnerships, JVs and carve-outs create new paths forward.

The questions, and the answers.

What was the problem you couldn't ignore, and when did you realize you had to act?

At a satellite services company, I saw our growth was capped by how many satellites we could watch, and every plan was just build more and hire more. There was no optionality. I saw the same pattern at Nielsen and Time Warner. The answer was creating options through partnerships, joint ventures, M&A and other levers, which became our focus at Stage 18.

What is Stage 18 and where does the name come from?

Stage 18 is a strategic and transaction advisory firm for tech companies, their investors and their lenders. The name comes from the Tour de France, where stage 18 is the penultimate stage and the racer ahead usually wins. We help clients climb the mountains, tackle problems against competitors, and position themselves to coast to the finish line.

What was the moment a customer told you it worked?

Clients rarely tell you it worked, so validation comes from results. One data company had a single-use asset that plateaued. We found another company's complementary data, and a non-competing joint venture between them generated more than a hundred million dollars of incremental revenue within two years. That told me far more than any compliment would.

Can you describe the ad tech client example?

The client was growing fast, but growth had slid from 35 percent toward the low teens. Their instinct was more engineers and new offices. Instead we mapped adjacencies and built an M&A and partnership plan with their product and sales teams. The company sold at a premium on the plan alone, without executing a single transaction.

Who is Stage 18 for, and how do clients find you?

Our sweet spot is mid-cap tech companies, roughly 30 million to 300 million dollars in revenue, especially former high flyers that have plateaued. We work with their investors, lenders or C-suite. We do very little marketing. Almost every client has come through the network that my co-founder and I built over long careers.

How are you helping clients who are not AI-native get funding?

Capital is flowing heavily toward AI, so tech-enabled companies outside it struggle to raise money. We have three mandates likely to close in the next 90 days. We help clients carve out high-performing business units that do not fit an AI strategy, then reinvest the sale proceeds into funding AI development.

When growth stalls, how do you decide whether to build, partner or buy?

Usually build has already been evaluated, and the company lacks funding or in-house ideas. That leaves partner, JV or buy, depending on whether you have stock currency, cash or access to capital. If not, I recommend lightweight JVs, especially with startups. They need your market access and customers, you need their technology, and it is more capital efficient.

What makes a business unit worth selling rather than keeping?

The biggest question is whether it fits your core strategy. Larger companies sprawl into unrelated units. One client did market research for consumer packaged goods, and a small pharma unit did nothing with it. Investors wanted pharma data, so we packaged and marketed that unit, and the interest more than covered their capital needs for reinvesting in the core.