Dimensional Growth: A Nature-Aligned Capital Strategy

Capital is an instrument.

Most founders treat fundraising like the bottleneck and chase it before they’ve proven value. I design growth the opposite way: build revenue power first, then structure capital to amplify what’s working, without unnecessary dilution and without breaking the system you’re trying to heal.

At the core is Dimensional Growth: health of revenue, margin, liquidity, time horizon, and ecology, designed to move in rhythm. If any one dimension is off, the system pays for it somewhere else.

Four Stakeholders

Note: design around all four or you’ll pay later

Founder & Executive Team — Decision quality, focus, cadence.
Commercial Partners — Proof of usefulness, distribution, and price integrity.
Investors — Risk, yield, and clear line of sight to liquidity.
Earth — Tthe substrate that makes all the others possible.

Growth compounds when these stakeholders are aligned to the same end state. Start by defining the lifecycle and exit logic, then map predictable crisis points you’ll hit on the way there. Adjust with disciplined micro-pivots as market signal comes in.

Order of Operations: Revenue → Then Capital

Raise revenue first to earn leverage. Investors pay a premium for demonstrated pull.

Step 1: Gross Margin First

Volume without margin is theater. Interrogate:

Can COGS improve meaningfully in the next 90 days?
Are we under-pricing the outcome we deliver?
What does win-loss data say about willingness to pay?
Who buys repeatedly and why? What extends LTV?
Where is the repeatable motion (channel, ICP, offer)?

Step 2: Strategic Revenue Expansion

ICP clarity → fewer, higher-conversion conversations.
Journey mapping → remove friction at each touchpoint.
Emotional drivers → speak to the moment decisions are made.
Three-horizon pipeline → now / next / new.
Qualification discipline → protect focus and CAC.
Product prism (dimensionalization) → repackage for more value per customer.

Step 3: Survive the Messy Middle

Everyone wants the shortcut. The brain prefers dopamine now (raise money, feel safe) over capability later (real sales learning). Donuts over nutrition. Skip the glaze. Do the work. Precision beats burn.

The Four Levers of Return

This is not my design – this is the expectation of the financial markets and what investors expect. We design capital around four levers that work together, and my only add is to expand the generational clause to 100+ years.

Current Yield: Target steady performance with room to reinvest. Use revenue share or structured distributions tied to profit thresholds. Manage EBIT and tax with intention. Treat “waste” as product and create second-stream revenue wherever possible.
Liquidity & De-Risking: Combine redeemable/capped equity, revenue-based financing, and non-dilutive public/philanthropic capital to lower cost of capital and provide optionality. Broad-based ESOPs stabilize teams and align incentives.
Additional Investment & Revenue-Share Incentives: Evergreen pools and participation rights for aligned investors. Link part of return to impact metrics (e.g., carbon, water, health outcomes) when the business model genuinely drives them.
Long-Term Incentives: Design for 10-year, 66-year (three-generation), and 100-year horizons. Stage capital releases over time; prefer compounding cash flows to one-shot exits. Learn from long-duration stewards (trusts, perpetual funds, long leases) and adapt for modern private markets. Note: Guiness has a 900 year lease. They were planning ahead.

Capital Stack Design (beyond plain equity)

Use the right instrument for the job:

Revenue-based financing for working capital and scalable delivery.
Redeemable/capped equity to price risk without endless dilution.
Evergreen structures for compounding assets.
Public/philanthropic dollars to de-risk private capital where the market underprices externalities.
Tax and exit planning that siphons earlier, don’t wait for a binary event if distributions can compound now.

Governance is part of the instrument. Incentives become behavior. Design both.

Nature-Based Finance (NbF): Treat Living Systems as Core Infrastructure

Nature is not an offset; it’s the operating system. Finance should reflect that.

Principles

Ecology as foundation. Fund soil, water, forests, fungi, and seeds as productive infrastructure.
Place-based capital. Keep value cycling in bioregions via cooperatives and trusts.
Intergenerational view. Steward for centuries, not quarters.
Community co-creation. Agency to land stewards; capital serves sovereignty.
Measure regeneration. Track biocultural indicators, not just extraction.

Practices

Regenerative agriculture (cover crops, perennials, managed grazing).
Watershed cooperatives and nitrate/clean-water credits.
Food forests and mycology-based remediation.
Seed & soil banks; bioregional supply chains without extractive middlemen.

Properly structured, this system is resilient cash flow with real assets underneath.

Case Snapshots (how this thinking shows up)

Long-duration stewardship: Guinness’ ultra-long lease mindset vs. quarter-to-quarter tactics—duration itself is an edge.
Land-based stacks: Layer forestry + mycology + indigenous plant medicine + estuary protection with federal incentives, research grants, and product revenue.
Coastal resilience: Blend water-quality rebates with commercial shellfish operations to de-risk private investment and restore ecosystems.

Why Dimensional Growth Works

Neuroscience: systems that reward only short-term wins wire teams for impulsivity. Cadence, clear signals, and distributed rewards reduce cortisol noise and improve decision quality.
Economics: margin + liquidity + duration beat vanity growth.
Ecology: diversified, symbiotic flows buffer shocks better than single-line bets.
Human reality: purpose, ownership, and belonging increase retention and performance, less churn, lower CAC/LTV volatility.

What I’m Optimizing For

Builders who want profit with spine.
Investors who can think in cash yields and compounding, not only marks.
Partners who understand that Earth is a stakeholder, not a photo in the deck.

If you’re ready to structure capital that respects biology, time, and truth, let’s design the stack, and the revenue engine, to match.

Regeneration: An Operating Rule

Regeneration means the system gets stronger as it grows. If growth depletes soil, people, cash, or trust, it’s extraction—no matter the story. I design businesses so every cycle (sales, hiring, production, cash) returns more capacity than it takes.

Core test:

Regeneration Ratio (RR) = restorative investment / extracted cost.
RR > 1 over rolling 12–24 months or you’re stealing from the future.

Pattern Intelligence: Five Universal Patterns → Five Business Instruments

Nature runs on repeatable patterns. So do durable companies. I use five patterns to tune both operations and capital:

Branching (distribution networks)
- Business: multi-channel routes that split risk (direct, partner, bioregional).
- Capital: tranche branching—match risk pools to specific routes (e.g., working capital RBF for wholesale, redeemable equity for new markets).
Cycles (cadence & seasonality)
- Business: 28/90/365 rhythm (sprint, quarter, year) for production, demand, and maintenance.
- Capital: payment and liquidity windows aligned to operating seasonality; no amortization that fights cash season.
Feedback (sensing & correction)
- Business: leading telemetry (win-rate by ICP, margin by SKU, NRR by cohort) with decision SLAs.
- Capital: performance triggers that lower cost of capital when signals improve (not just punitive covenants).
Renewal (repair & surplus creation)
- Business: budget for maintenance, soil/asset rebuilding, and team recovery before discretionary growth.
- Capital: carve-out “Renewal Reserve” with board/LP consent; tie variable returns to renewal milestones (e.g., defect rate ↓, soil carbon ↑).
Memory (retention & compounding)
- Business: institutional memory: docs, playbooks, data taxonomy, contracts, brand trust.
- Capital: long-duration instruments (evergreen, trusts) that preserve the compounding engine; vesting on knowledge transfer, not just time.

Anti-patterns to avoid: monoculture revenue, quarter-only planning, dopamine finance (headline marks over cash yield), brittle supply chains.

Neuroscience Meets Operations

Brains predict by pattern. Teams with clear, repeated rhythms show lower cortisol noise and higher decision quality. Translate that into company habit loops:

Cue → Routine → Reward for the org:
- Cue: Tuesday pipeline review (same time, same dashboard).
- Routine: kill or double-down decisions within 24h.
- Reward: visible progress + small variable comp tied to lagging and leading indicators.
Protect deep work blocks (ultradian 90-min cycles).
Stabilize sleep cadence for revenue teams during launches; jittery teams make expensive mistakes.

Pattern KPIs (use a small set, track weekly)

Cycle Balance Index: % of plans delivered in 28/90/365 cadence. Target >80%.
Feedback Lag: time from signal → decision → action. Target <7 days for GTM, <24h for production defects.
Renewal Coverage: Renewal Reserve / next 12 months’ maintenance needs. Target ≥1.0x.
Diversity Index (HHI inverse): revenue concentration by customer/channel. Target <0.25 HHI.
Memory Half-Life: % of processes with current playbooks and owners. Target >85%.

Regenerative Capital: Pattern-Aligned Term Sheet Ideas

RR Covenant: if Regeneration Ratio >1.2 for 2 quarters, automatic step-down in investor take-rate.
Seasonal Liquidity Windows: redemptions allowed only in post-harvest/post-peak cash months.
Waste-to-Revenue Rider: investor participates in new byproduct lines with capped, declining share as margins mature.
Bioregional Revenue Share: small % earmarked to local stewardship trust—protects the substrate that protects the yield.
Knowledge Escrow: part of founder/investor carry vests on documented playbooks/data, not just time or IRR.

Portfolio Construction by Pattern (for investors and founders)

Spread bets across different patterns (e.g., fast-cycle cash businesses + long-cycle asset builds).
Hold redundancy (two suppliers, two channels) and modularity (swapable components) to absorb shocks.
Duration-match: long biological cycles ↔ long capital; short attention cycles ↔ short instruments.

Practical Checklist (quarterly)

Margin audit by SKU/channel; kill low-RR lines.
Update 28/90/365 plan; schedule maintenance before growth spend.
Rebalance revenue concentration; add one branching route.
Tighten feedback loop SLA; publish decisions within 7 days.
Fund Renewal Reserve; tie a variable return step-down to hitting it.
Ship one memory artifact (playbook, data model) per team.

Dimensional Growth is pattern-literate and regeneration-positive. It aligns biology, operations, and capital so the system gains strength with use. Do that, and yield, resilience, and trust compound together—quarter by quarter, generation by generation.