When the commercial function empties, rebuild it end to end.
The Rocket Auto move, for a portfolio company: re-engineer the sales and service function on business-as-code, keep licensed humans at the gates, and repeat it across holdings.
Nobody left defending the old process.
A commercial function cannot be redesigned while the people who run it are still running it. Every step has a defender.
At Rocket Auto, agents staffed sales, BDC, and desking for about a year; the dealer license, titling, DMV processing, and F&I compliance stayed with Rocket’s licensed humans. staffing exhibit · gated
In a portfolio company the window opens on purpose: a carve-out or a reduction already decided. The rebuild runs alongside the rundown, function by function, and the gated steps (approve, title, F&I, sign) are never unstaffed. do.enterprises rebuilds the function as typed functions, agent-staffed where the work is commercial, human where the law or the counterparty requires a person.
Two conditions kill a rebuilt function regardless of how well it runs: regulated supply the company does not own, and demand that rests on a single counterparty. Both are on the decline list below.
The rebuild is run by do.enterprises’ engineers with the company’s licensed staff at the gates. Management’s work is the census at Intake and the gate list at Thesis.
What changes on the ledger.
The rebuilt function carries a software cost curve on its commercial work and a headcount curve only on the gates. The rebuilt function meters its own work, never per seat. What the company pays do.enterprises is set in the engagement letter. thesis · margins unposted
For a portfolio company this is a value-creation item, not an IT project: the commercial function’s cost moves from headcount to metered software, and the unit carries that cost structure into the next sale of the business. No margin figure is posted on this site, and none will be quoted until an engagement posts one.
Same playbook, every holding.
The rebuild is a playbook, not a bespoke project: the same function types, the same gate list, the same surfaces, the same way of standing up the regulated edge. The second portfolio company starts where the first one ended.
Two shapes. In place, the default for a portfolio company: the commercial function is rebuilt inside the company, which keeps its licenses, its earnings, and its exit. Shared NewCo: when the same function is to be rebuilt across several holdings, it can ship as one separate company serving each of them by contract, with the sponsor’s holdings as its first customers. That shape is the repeatable one, and the one a later buyer can acquire on its own. engagement shapes · pending ruling
We decline these at Thesis.
Thesis is our phase 1, before any build.
- A commercial function that is still fully staffed and defended. The window is not open.
- A rebuild that would borrow the regulated edge of another company. Licenses don’t move.
- A unit with nothing meterable at its core: no transaction, no work product, nothing to re-meter.
- Demand that exists only because the parent allocates it.