Control, without a large staff to exercise it.

Who this is

One person is the offer, not a caveat. The person who listens is the person who designs, builds, and answers when something breaks. Nothing is lost between a salesman, an architect and a team.

None of the ideas is exotic. Every school has a roster. The usual way to get one built is a department: a team, a budget and a list of deliverables. It is the shape of the great house of a century ago, which kept its own butcher, its own brewer and its own laundry in lifelong service, each under a protocol, and it worked for a very long time. A house that keeps that staff today keeps it out of habit; the house looking ahead buys from a supplier and keeps the protocol. What is bought here is the roster, built and running. No department is needed to have it.

Behind it are ten years as a technology professional and thirty as chief operating officer in investment management, responsible for every part of what keeps a business standing, from legal, compliance and accounting to technology and operations. Two ventures seen through from launch to end. Health and retirement plans set up. Companies formed in several jurisdictions.

The aim each time was the same, and it is the aim here. We do not carry the water; we dig the canal. That costs more at the start than hiring people with buckets, who spill some and deliver less. Then the water goes on flowing long after the digging is forgotten. The rules are carried by the machinery, not remembered by staff, so there is less to supervise.

The principal decides what is to be done. We work out how, and do it. We are not a second opinion on where the business should go, and we do not sit on the committee that sets out to design a horse and ends up with a donkey.

This site carries no testimonials. We work for the principal, and whoever made the introduction is the reference.

Ploutos Services LLC is built as a partnership, on the model of a law firm: one name over the door, and partners each with clients of their own. A client belongs to a partner, not to the firm; it arrives with that partner and leaves with them. What the partners share with each other is expertise, as the partners of a consulting, law or accounting firm do; the tools are open to everyone. Today the firm has one partner, and one partner can work with fewer than five ventures at a time. That is the limit here, and it is what the shared time above comes to. It is the first step of a long road, not the design.

Who it suits

Some businesses live on consistency: the same burger in every town. The right questions for them are about bench depth, certification and process. Others live on the new: the catch of the day, cooked to order. For them the question is whether someone can think of what has not been done, and make it work. Both kinds survive. We are useful to the second.

A venture cutting across to higher ground, not one following a beaten path. Most organizations keep their files on Google Drive, Dropbox or OneDrive and build their website on Wix. That road costs ten dollars a month and is open the same afternoon, and for most of them it is the right choice, and we will say so. What is described here is a different vehicle, not a better one: a comfortable all-terrain vehicle, built for one owner over months, theirs from the first day. It is for an organization that is not content to keep its records on someone else's disks and to send sensitive documents by email, and that wants the advantage it builds to stay its own. We are the ones to take when the way lies across the wild.

This is the more expensive door. For a nail that needs hammering, the one next door is faster and costs less, and we say so as we say it of the paved road. On paper the two can do the same things. What differs is what each is looking for, and that is decided by what each is paid for: the one paid by the visit looks for the nail, and will explain why he must be asked back; the one paid for the house not needing him looks for where the nail came from. The old warning that a man with only a hammer sees every problem as a nail was first written, in 1868, of a boy given a hammer and a chisel, who hacked at the doorposts until he was taught a better use for them and where the activity belonged. The tools were never the difference.

An owner with a working operation who wants it run as it is can find better managers than us. Building a church was once a trade of its own. The builder might paint a wall while he was there, and sometimes took that job too, but he was sent for because he could raise the building; the people of the town could keep it, and change it, so long as nothing structural moved. The distinction is the same here. We build: a new operation for a new enterprise, or an old one rebuilt while its people go on using it. The builder runs it for a time, until less expensive people can take it over, and the drawings stay with the owner. Other towns have their builders, and going with them is a good choice. We are not the only one; the aim is to be one of the few. The mandate is to build or to rebuild, not to patch, and only the owner can give it.

That is why we do not take a post under a chief operating officer, or under anyone else on the principal's staff. It is no judgment on the post: we held it for thirty years. A mandate to build or rebuild comes from the owner, and the work answers there. A chief operating officer who wants something from these pages is welcome to it. The first two ways below are open to anyone.

A venture willing to invest more to climb higher needs help that is capable, not only trained: help that meets a situation nobody planned for without saying it was not in the training. A captain fitting out an expedition to an unknown coast does not choose the crew for how well they work on the shore.

What the expedition needs is a short list, and none of it is what a shop on the coast needs. Each item is answered on in detail.

• A boat whose engine does not burn on the waves. Machines built from declarations and rebuilt the same way — the machinery.
• Planning. Nothing is built without its manifest — how we build.
• Provisioning: salt, not fish. Carry what keeps, not the catch: the written estate, the declarations, the method — ownership and continuity.
• Seeing the storm, and the iceberg, from a distance. More than half of everything automatic exists to watch the rest, and a copy may never answer as current — the machinery.
• Manoeuvrability. Nothing dials a machine, and every layer can be replaced — the machinery.
• Shooting. An identity that refuses by name, and bad data refused rather than processed — identity, platforms.

Three ways to work with us

The first way: the tools are shared. Anyone may take all of it, use it, and share the stories. It is under the Apache 2.0 licence, at no cost: anyone may take the ideas and the code, change them and sell what they build with them, and we keep no claim on any of it. The code is not yet in a public repository. Putting it there is a planned project, and until then it is shared with anyone who asks. The documentation is shared the same way, written for someone who was not there when it was built. Once it is public we become a user of our own published code like anyone else: the library is one thing, and what is built with it for a client is another.

The structure should be the owner's. Most business software is built for a mass audience and for a sales force to sell. It does many things for many customers, and a business that uses it lives inside someone else's structure. These tools are for businesses that need their own. Whoever builds with them owns what is built.

The second way: a defined piece of work, for a fee. Someone who wants one of these tools put in place, and not only handed over, can have that done as a piece of work with a beginning and an end. It is priced as a piece of work, not as hours. It is an engagement, not a post: we do the work and hand it over.

The third way: a partner to build it, and that partner need not be us. The tools stand on their own, and anyone competent with them can do the work. A partnership is made with the owner and with nobody else. When it is us, we make money when the client makes money: a share of the profit, never a line in its costs. It is how a film can pay its lead: not a fixed fee, but a share, paid when the studio is paid. That share is how the work is paid for, and it is never a claim on the software. There is no rate per window cleaned, no rented hours and no subscription. We are paid for the work. Tools come and go.

The share comes from the venture. The household, the family office and the home around the same principal are part of the same relationship, and nothing separate is charged for them. It is one suite of work with one aim: to free the principal's time from every task that needs no judgment, at work and at home. The school on these pages is work done for a non-profit, without charge.

Hired help comes, is paid and goes. A partner is still there when the task is done, and parting with one costs more than ending a contract. That is the point of the arrangement, and it is worth knowing before it starts. When it does end, the client keeps everything: the machinery, the records, and the people who know how to run it. Parting makes sense at one point only, when the business has stopped climbing and settled into a steady state. By then there is little left for us to add to its profit, and it has no further need of us. We are the ones who lose by it, which is how it should be.

It starts as a conversation, then one small thing built and running, then the owner's decision about whether there should be a second.

Start with a conversation