A Chat with Stefano Maifreni, Founder at Business Strategy Management Consulting Firm: Eggcelerate

Eggcelerate activates the strategy of Tech B2B Small Businesses.

I founded Eggcelerate in 2014 to help the CEO and Founders of small businesses interconnect thoughts and actions while adopting a down-to-earth approach that leaves bandwidth for learning and adaptation.

Our objective is to bring operational discipline to Small Businesses while avoiding large corporates’ bureaucracy; to make available the MBA frameworks, theories and practice, with a strong focus on achieving tangible results fast.
Our ambition is to bridge a cultural and knowledge gap that, at times, looks insurmountable.

As we position ourselves as experts not consultants, we will only work with clients where we feel we can offer value, our aim isn’t to extract money from small businesses but instead work with them to expand their revenue.
 
 

 

How did you come up with the idea for the company?

 
Running an SME or a Start-Up brings unique challenges. Your world moves fast, and resources such as time, skills and people are always scarce. A butterfly flaps its wings in sales, and a tornado sweeps your operations.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Simple changes can save you from the pain of running a business.

I think, on the one hand, small businesses often feel neglected and are poorly served by large corporates and consultants. On the other, they might feel they can’t ask or afford more and perceive large corporates as pure bureaucracies.

The MBA frameworks often used by the traditional consultants look fluffy, expensive and not focussed on results.

They are caught in the day-by-day, cash-in/cash-out process, and don’t have time or headspace to focus on the bigger picture. Then on top of that, they are being bombarded by all of the new buzzwords, ranging from Digital Transformation to Artificial Intelligence – and including SEO, PPC and other TLAs: these require specialist skills and knowledge, and it’s easy to feel overwhelmed.

This is why I created Eggcelerate to enable those small businesses to truly thrive by getting the expertise and tools to apply to their own business framework that actually makes sense to them.
 

 

How has the company evolved during the pandemic?

 
During the pandemic, we followed the advice we gave to our Customers:

1. Focus relentlessly on cash-generating activities: keep the cash flowing as much as you can, consider your options in terms of State support; BUT

2. Don’t stop your thinking process: review your strategy and proposition – is there a way to differentiate? Who are your buyer personae, are you talking to them all along their journey as buyers?

3. Focus on your current relationships and build a strong ecosystem with Clients, Suppliers and your staff: talk to your clients about getting paid on time, pay your suppliers on time – it’s a chain that could grind to a halt if we stop paying each other, try to furlough the least (once you have ensured the cash-generating activities and the right amount of thinking)?

One sure thing NOT to do is to stand still. Do you know the story of the Buridan’s donkey? The scene goes like this … a donkey is equally hungry and thirsty but finds itself precisely midway between a stack of hay and a bucket of water. The paradox suggests the animal will die of hunger and thirst because it cannot make a rational decision to choose one over the other.

If I had only one statement to how we evolved is that our business became even more human.
 

What can we hope to see from Eggcelerate in the future?

 
We have worked very closely with growing companies and start-ups in technology-intensive and innovative industries, such as IT, Technology Manufacturing, Drones, IoT and Insure/FinTech, immersive theatre.

We see an opportunity to add value to SMEs and Start-ups in the Creative, FinTech and Manufacturing industries in the UK.

We’ll focus our efforts on two types of services.

If you are a CEO of a small B2B business experiencing flat-lined results, Eggcelerate’s “FlexCOO” will help you achieve focus and sustainable growth and bring your business back on track.

Eggcelerate’s “FlexCCO” helps the Founders of ambitious B2B start-ups gain a position in the market and deliver upon investors’ expectations from post-seed to Series-A.

We are SME Specialists, trusted partners and enthusiastic companions on our Customers’ journey, working with them to build customer-centric scalable operations, allowing them to achieve sustainable, measurable business growth and expansion.

We produce results in two quarters while avoiding our Customers the costs of a traditional consulting approach or interim management.