White paper
The Operator's Read
What people who have run companies see in a late-stage private company, and why long-term capital needs that reading.
Read it on this pageThe CrossWork Advisory Board
Operating judgment. Patient capital. One table.
Through its advisory board, CrossWork has access to exceptional late-stage opportunities. Members who have run public companies, laboratories and national institutions bring CrossWork deal flow in the fields they know, and the due diligence to read each company before CrossWork forms a view.
To keep the standard of the board, membership is by invitation or referral from a current member.
Sources
Among the members
The premise
The market reads what it can see. Operators read what it cannot.
A late-stage private company is usually judged on what is visible from outside: the last round, the names on the cap table, the growth chart.
People who have run companies judge it on what is not. Whether revenue repeats without heroics from the founders. Whether customers would miss the product within a week. Whether there is a credible route to a listing, a tender or a sale.
Long-term capital benefits from that second reading. The board exists to supply it.
Operating knowledge
Members of the board
- Diligence from inside the function
- Introductions founders trust
- Governance learned in public companies
The decision
Which companies deserve to scale
Long-term capital
Institutions
- Patience measured in decades
- Scale that changes a company's path
- A governance standard companies grow into
Sources
Case study
A leading AI inference chip manufacturer. How the bench reads a company.
One company, read the way members read every company: from the first signal to the questions that decide it.
The signal
An engineering leader on the bench kept seeing wafer-scale systems win inference benchmarks.
Three seats, three questions
Former finance chief
Is the revenue concentrated in a few buyers, and how does that change as inference demand broadens?
Former engineering leader
Wafer-scale is a systems bet, not a chip bet. The question is the software stack that keeps customers from porting away.
Go-to-market operator
Who signs the purchase order: a lab, a cloud or an enterprise? Each buys for different reasons.
Asked first
- Does revenue repeat without heroics from the founders?
- Would customers miss the product within a week if it disappeared?
- Is there a credible route to a listing, a tender or a sale?
Set aside
- Which well-known funds are already on the cap table?
- How fast is headcount growing?
- What will the shares do on the first day of trading?
Illustrative: how members read a company like this one.
Sources
The bench
Who sits on the board. Named, with the roles they held.
The bench combines former Fortune 500 chief executives and finance chiefs with operators inside today's pre-IPO companies.
| Member | Experience | Field |
|---|---|---|
| 18th U.S. Surgeon General | Public health |
| Former CEO, STERIS | Medical devices |
| Former COO, Peabody Energy | Energy |
| Former CFO, Weight Watchers | Consumer health |
 | Former Chief Medical Officer, American Cancer Society | Healthcare |
| Co-developer, Lipitor | Pharmaceuticals |
| VP, AI Inference, Cerebras | AI hardware and chips |
 | Former Head of Data Engineering, Stripe | Payments infrastructure |
 | Co-founder, WordPress | Internet software |
 | Former Director, Catalyst Biosciences | Life sciences |
 | Clinical Instructor, Harvard Medical School | Life sciences |
 | Former Shark on Shark Tank | Consumer media |
Selected members. Full roster under NDA.
Sources
The work
What members look at together. Category leaders, late in their private life.
Exceptional late-stage opportunities: large private companies with real revenue and a visible route to a listing, a tender or a sale, in four categories.
AI model and platform
The small set of labs and platforms whose models others build on.
IPO or tender path
AI infrastructure and data
Compute, networking, storage and the data layers agents depend on.
Strategic-acquirer or IPO path
Agentic vertical software
Agents that do the work in legal, finance and healthcare.
Pre-IPO or late-round path
Identity and trust for agents
Infrastructure that says who an agent is, who it acts for and what it may do.
Late-round leaders; strategic-acquirer path
Representative categories, not commitments.
Companies held in CrossWork vehicles
| Company | Area | Status | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| AuditBoard | Risk software | Exited | Acquired by Hg, 2024. |
| DataStax | Data | Exited | Acquired by IBM, 2025. |
| Reltio | Data | Exited | Acquired by SAP, 2026. |
| SingleStore | Data | Exited | Growth buyout led by Vector Capital, 2025. |
| Salsify | Commerce software | Announced | Agreed to be acquired by Cinven, 2026 (pending). |
| Cerebras | AI compute | Partially realized | IPO, May 2026. |
| Scale AI | AI data | Partially realized | Meta's 2025 investment in Scale AI. |
| Perplexity | AI search | Held | An answer engine for the open web. |
| Stripe | Payments | Held | Financial infrastructure for the internet. |
| Neo4j | Data | Held | The graph database. |
| SambaNova | AI compute | Held | Enterprise AI systems. |
| DataRobot | AI platform | Held | Enterprise machine learning. |
Holdings vary by vehicle; verified investors see the full list in the portal.
Sources
- 4. Business Wire, May 23, 2024: AuditBoard agrees to be acquired by Hg.
- 5. Database Trends and Applications, May 2025: IBM officially closes acquisition of DataStax.
- 7. SAP News Center, May 2026: SAP completes acquisition of Reltio.
- 8. SingleStore, October 16, 2025: SingleStore and Vector Capital close growth buyout to accelerate Enterprise AI Innovation.
- 2. Salsify, July 22, 2026: Cinven to acquire Salsify, Inc. (press release).
- 3. Cinven, July 22, 2026: Cinven to acquire Salsify.
- 1. CNBC, May 13, 2026: Cerebras prices IPO above expected range.
- 6. Bloomberg, June 13, 2025: Meta finalizes $14.3 billion Scale investment, hires its CEO.
Interactive
Take the seat. Read a company the way the bench does.
Five steps, one company, the way the bench works a deal. Pick a company that is already public and play a board seat.
Step 1 of 5
Where did the signal come from?
Pick a companyInteractive: pick a company to start the simulation
Illustrative simulation. Company facts are cited; board dialogue is written by CrossWork.
Sources
Board research
Board research. What we have written about boards.
Papers on how boards are built, how they read companies, and how directors are chosen.
White paper
Boards of Directors in Private Equity and Venture Capital
Who sits on the boards of private equity- and venture-backed companies, what those boards do, and how independent directors are chosen.
Read the paperWhite paper
Paths to the Board of Directors
How senior executives reach the board of a major company, and what boards look for when they choose a director.
Read the paperSources
The paper
The Operator's Read. Written for both sides of the table.
Where long-term capital is going, what outside-in signals miss, the questions people who have run companies ask first, and one company read end to end.
Inside
- Capital is moving to where it is hardest to see
- What the market reads, and what it misses
- Three seats at the table
- Case study: a leading AI inference chip manufacturer
- Questions for any late-stage manager
- The CrossWork Advisory Board
Sources
Membership
What membership brings. Consequence, and the company of peers.
First-hand work on exceptional late-stage companies
The late-stage companies the board brings to CrossWork: category leaders in AI compute, data and models, and in the businesses AI is changing, with their founders and management teams met in the course of real work.
Peers of your standing
Former chief executives and finance chiefs, a former U.S. Surgeon General, physicians, scientists and founders. The bench above is the room.
Judgment, asked for early
Your read on a company is sought before CrossWork forms a view, as one of the inputs it weighs.
Relationships across the bench
Introductions to fellow members and to the management teams of companies held in CrossWork vehicles.
Sources
Member profiles
Who sits on the board.
Former chief executives
They have run large companies and know how a category leader is built, and how one stalls.
Finance chiefs
They read a business the way its eventual buyers will, from the numbers up.
Founders with exits
They have built and sold companies, and know what a durable one looks like from the inside.
Long-time public-market investors
They watched growth move from the public markets into private rounds, and prefer to be where it happens.
Beyond institutions and family offices, CrossWork admits a small number of individuals, by introduction only.
Sources
The commitment
A few focused hours. On terms you set.
What we ask
- Your judgment, in the field you know best.
- Candour, including when the answer is no.
- Introductions, only when they make sense to you.
What we never ask
- An engagement you have not agreed in advance.
- Time on a company or a question you did not choose.
Illustrative assignments
Space-technology finance advisor
- Review the company's materials
- Introduce potential strategic partners
- Give a strategic view
Physician advisor
- Review company information
- Give a medical view on products and services
- Introduce other healthcare professionals
AI-infrastructure advisor
- Assess claims about inference chips and compute
- Compare cost per token with peers
- Introduce enterprise buyers and partners
Illustrative. Each assignment is agreed with the member before it starts.
Sources
For institutions
For long-term capital. Deal flow, read by operators.
For pension funds, endowments and other long-term institutions, the board is how CrossWork finds exceptional late-stage opportunities and reads each one before it forms a view.
Deal flow
Members bring CrossWork late-stage companies from the industries they have led, alongside the investment team's own work.
Operator diligence
Former finance chiefs, engineering leaders and scientists test a company's claims in the areas they once ran.
Governance perspective
People who have run regulated, public and large private businesses bring a view on governance and risk.
Conversations with members
Calls with the investment team and members of the advisory board, as part of your own diligence.
Sources
Contact
Get in touch with the board.
A question or a company. Every message is read by a member of the team.