PortLev is a fractional AI Operating Partner for PE-backed and mid-market companies. A practising 3x CHRO with a JD who ships the systems himself and owns adoption, measured in a number your CFO recognises.
The mandate, by the numbers
The gap between the board deck and the P&L is an adoption problem before it is a technology problem. That is the seat PortLev fills.
Pilot purgatory
Sponsors have told 98% of portfolio CFOs to prioritise AI. Fewer than one in three has meaningfully implemented it, and 68% say they do not know where to begin. Accordion, 2025
Six ways portfolio AI stalls before it reaches the P&L
Seats are paid for. Nobody can show usage or output that maps to a dollar.
There is an AI strategy deck. Months later, nothing has shipped from it.
Pilots demo well and die before production. Real data and real workflows never got involved.
The team completed AI training. Day-to-day output did not change.
The AI lives inside a tool the company does not own. The leverage and the IP sit outside the portco.
No single owner, no incentives and no change plan for getting the workforce to actually use it.
The seat
More than 80% of AI programs still fail, usually on use-case alignment, user adoption and unclear success measures, not on the model. AlixPartners. Those are workforce problems. A fractional AI Operating Partner who has run HR three times and ships code is built for exactly that gap.
| What the portco needs | Strategy boutique | Dev shop | Full-time AI operating partner | PortLev, fractional |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ships the working system | No, advises | Yes, then leaves | Sometimes, via vendors | Yes, personally |
| Owns adoption: owner, incentives, training | Recommends | No | Yes | Yes, as a 3x CHRO |
| Workforce and compliance design | Partly | No | Depends on the hire | Yes, JD on the seat |
| Monthly board number | Deck | Demo | Yes | Yes, in the CFO's number |
| Repeats across the portfolio | Per engagement | Per build | Yes, if headcount allows | Yes, playbook per rollout |
| Cost | $50K to $150K per diagnostic | Per project | $400K to $700K all-in; pencils above ~15 portcos | $19,650 per month, about two days a week |
Full-time economics: two-thirds of operating partners already cover five or more portcos, and the AI operating-partner role exists because the bench could not absorb the workload. Not Very Private Equity, 2026
How it runs
Five verbs, one function at a time, one number per function. The same loop runs inside a two-week diagnostic, a 100-day sprint and a standing operating-partner seat.
Map the workflows, the adoption blockers and the loaded labor cost. Rank by impact against ease. Write the don't-automate list.
Name one adoption owner inside the portco. Put the number in their incentives. Baseline it before anything ships.
Build the system into the real system of record with real data. Train the three to five people who will run it. The portco owns the code.
Publish the weekly adoption number. Report monthly to the board in basis points of EBITDA and payback on the fee.
Package the playbook. The second function, and the second portco, cost less than the first.
There is a standard for this
A portfolio company meets it when AI runs inside the system of record, with a named adoption owner, a baselined number in the company's own loaded labor cost, weekly usage measured and a monthly board report in basis points of EBITDA. Coined by PortLev, versioned, updated every six months.
Named adoption owner
Baseline in loaded labor cost
Runs in the system of record
Weekly usage published
Board number in bps of EBITDA
Packaged as a playbook
Three ways in
Every rung credits into the next. Nothing is sold that a board cannot read on one page.
Rung 0 · Free · 3 minutes
Score one portfolio company 0 to 3 on the six failure modes. The total says how close the mandate is to a number and which failure mode to fix first. Emailed with the specific first fix.
Score a portcoRung 1 · $7,500 · 2 weeks · credited
One portfolio company. Workflow and adoption map, EBITDA-impact model in the portco's own loaded labor cost, don't-automate list, named adoption owner, 100-day plan and a board one-pager. The fee credits against a sprint or retainer within 90 days. Portfolio AI Screen for up to five portcos: $25,000.
See the diagnosticRung 3 · $19,650 per month · 6-month minimum
A standing seat, about two days a week. Owns the AI line of the value-creation plan, the adoption plan, governance and the build backlog. Monthly board report in the CFO's number. Between the diagnostic and the seat sits the 100-Day Pilot-to-P&L Sprint, from $45,000.
See the full ladderOwner-operator or professional firm with 5 to 200 people? The AI Org Audit ($997, 7 days) is the version built for you.
Shipped and adopted
Named systems, in production, with the outcome the client measured. The build notes behind each one, including the actual prompts and stack, are public.
PE/VC fund · due diligence
60 hrs → 4
AI due-diligence platform for a fund investing in defense tech, AI and health tech. 40 to 60 analyst hours per deal to under 4; deal-evaluation capacity tripled without added headcount.
Build notesVenture studio · HR operations
3 days → 2 hrs
HR policy engine across a studio's portfolio companies. Ticket resolution from 3 days to under 2 hours; ROI positive within 30 days; became a commercial product.
Build notesPortfolio-wide · HR compliance
Audit-ready
I-9 and work-authorization compliance auditor across a workforce. Turns I-9 compliance into a standing audit-ready posture across every operating company in a portfolio.
Case studyInstitutional web builds
Two institutional fund websites for Ravenbridge Capital, delivered at $5,000 per site against agency quotes of $40,000 to $45,000 per site, in three days. A full redesign for Jade Mountain Partners, an SEC-registered adviser managing about $1.3B.
Read the Ravenbridge case study →Eleven documented builds, each with the stack, the prompts and the decisions behind it. And one page with the seat, the ladder, the proof and the method, refreshed every quarter.
Who holds the seat
Every PortLev engagement is led personally by Yuri Kruman, founder of Portfolio Leverage Company. The rollout is designed by someone who has run the people side of a company three times and ships the system himself.
3x Chief Human Resources Officer
Fortune 500, VC-backed and global organisations. Workforce design, incentives and adoption are the seat's native ground.
JD, Cardozo Law
Compliance and workforce-impact design built into every rollout, not reviewed after it.
AI model trainer for OpenAI, Meta and Microsoft
Contracted in the HR and leadership domains. Knows where the models fail before the portco does.
#6 Global HR Thought Leader, Thinkers360
2025 and 2026. AI curriculum designer for Coursera enterprise workforce programs.
Insights for operating partners
For operating partners · 12 min
The seat the market has named, what it owns, full-time versus fractional economics and the ten questions to ask a candidate.
For portco leadership · 12 min
One function, one owner, one number, one system. Day 0 to 100 with the arithmetic and the board slide.
The scorecard, explained · 11 min
The failure modes behind the Scorecard: tells, cost, the first fix and how to score each 0 to 3.
Straight answers
Bring the board deck and the function you would fix first. You leave with a written point of view within two business days, and no proposal unless there is a fit.
Or write directly: yuri@portlev.com
