Most advisors on the move upmarket have worked one side of the problem. Tom Delaporte has worked three: AI product, enterprise consulting, and operator-side transformation, with commercial accountability throughout. Advise is the operator counsel that comes out of that combination.
I built and ran an enterprise customer practice, so I have sat where your prospects sit: evaluating AI products, running procurement, and deciding whether a pilot becomes a renewal. Advise brings that buyer-side view to founders who have only seen the deal from the seller’s side.
The counsel comes from someone who built a customer practice from a standing start into an eight-figure ARR business at an enterprise AI company, on consulting foundations from a global firm. The motion I coach is the one I ran at scale: first logos, procurement, pilot-to-renewal.
Conversations end with specific moves you can make this quarter, each with a named owner. Recommendations carry their sources and their reasoning. The standard is the one that applied when the work was being done from the inside, with a P&L attached.
Programs run operator-side in five of them, including Country HR head and executive committee member in Vietnam at 27. French and English bilingual, working Spanish.
Workforce and AI programs for state labor departments and the Department of Defense’s innovation arm.
On site as executive sponsor for Carnival in Miami, Meijer in Grand Rapids, Domino’s in Ann Arbor, and Sanofi in Boston, with Bay Area accounts across pharma, biotech, industrial, and high tech.
All delivery in prior roles.
Tom Delaporte founded TDcatalyst to bring that combined vantage into a single advisory practice.
The typical Advise client is a startup founder moving an AI product upmarket into enterprise accounts: winning the first Fortune 100 logos, surviving procurement, and converting pilots into renewals. The engagement is a retainer or an advisory-board seat.
Leading an AI transformation means working the seams between AI product, change consulting, and HR operations.
I led Talent Transformation, Talent Intelligence Platform, and Agentic Scale programs at an enterprise AI company, where I built a customer practice from a standing start into an eight-figure ARR business across Fortune 100 and public sector clients.
Before that, as an Engagement Manager at a global consulting firm in San Francisco, I led organizational design, change, and M&A integration engagements for global companies. And before consulting, I ran HR and transformation programs on the operator side, across France, Vietnam, the Philippines, China, and India.
I’m bilingual in French and English with a working knowledge of Spanish, and have lived and worked on most continents. The ability to work well with people across cultures is how impact and outcomes materialize.
TDcatalyst is an independent advisory practice operated by Tom Delaporte in a personal capacity. Not affiliated with any previous employer.