Operations · Governance · Compliance

Your operating partner.
For founder-led businesses
ready to scale.

I embed with leadership teams to build the operations, governance and compliance foundations that turn ambition into a business that runs, endures, and - when the time comes - sells.

See how we can work together
25 Years inside founder-led scale-ups
2 Successful sell-side exits
1 Way of working - in the trenches
How I work

Three principles
that shape every engagement.

01 / Embed

I embed.
I don't just advise.

In your meetings, in your data, in conversation with your people. I work alongside your leadership team, not from outside it. That's where the real problems show up, and where the real fixes get made.
02 / Transfer

By the end,
the work is yours.

I build the operating discipline into your business, then hand it over. The cadences, the controls, the conversations - they keep running after I leave because your team owns them. No dependency. No retainer-by-stealth.
03 / Outcome

The work
has to hold up.

I'm judged on outcomes. The discipline has to hold, the business has to be ready for what's next, the numbers have to move. That's the standard, every time - and the reason every engagement is the only one that counts.
How we can work together

Three productised workstreams,
each with a defined scope and shape.

Sprint · 12–20 weeks

Operating Rhythm Sprint

The operating system for a business that's outgrown its current one. Cadences, KPIs, decision rights, the rhythm of how the business runs.
By the end - the founder is freed from operational firefighting, and the leadership team runs the business with clarity, focus and a steady, confident pace.
Read more
Sprint · 12–20 weeks

Governance Foundations Sprint

The structural scaffolding for a company growing up. Board readiness, HR maturity, financial controls, risk and culture turned into discipline.
By the end - the business is legible to a board, defensible under scrutiny, and held together by discipline rather than the founder's nervous system.
Read more
Diagnostic · 4–6 weeks

Exit Readiness Diagnostic

A buyer's-eye view of the business across operations, finance, governance and compliance - before scrutiny starts, not during.
By the end - a board-readable findings document, prioritised remediation plan, and the option to extend into a Sprint that closes the gaps.
Read more
Proof

Twenty-five years
of operator proof.

Built and led from inside the business - not advised from outside it.

01 · Tenure
25+
Years in operations, finance and governance leadership.
02 · Exits
2×
Successful sell-side M&A exits - as a shareholder, both times.
03 · Scale
10→100
Employees scaled inside a single founder-led business.
04 · Compliance
360°
Full-spectrum compliance coverage across people, process and governance.
Where the operator came from

Two founder-led businesses. Both built from the ground up. Both successfully exited.

The first - co-founded and built with my co-shareholders, then led to a successful exit alongside them. The second - joined at ten people as a shareholder and senior officer, scaled over twelve years into a globally distributed business with a US subsidiary, a 600K-licence monthly subscription base, and a fully audited compliance posture across ISO, GDPR, HIPAA, NHS and other international frameworks. Sell-side M&A concluded successfully; post-integration handover completed.

Across both: building the operating system, the governance scaffolding, and the compliance discipline that took small founder-led teams into mature, international, exit-ready businesses. Building the financial structures that supported scale. Building the HR foundations that turned ad-hoc hiring into a culture. Building, twice, from the inside - and walking the team through what it takes to come out the other side of a real transaction.

That experience is the foundation of what HudsonRoux now offers - condensed, productised, and delivered as defined for businesses ready to take the same journey.

About

About
Francois Roux.

I'm a senior operator who's spent twenty-five years inside founder-led, PE-backed and international scale-ups - building the operations, governance and compliance disciplines that turn ambition into businesses that run, endure, and exit well. Twenty-five of those years have been at COO and CFO level, which means the finance function is built into how I think - not bolted on at the end. HudsonRoux is the firm I built to bring that work to other founders, in defined rather than full-time roles.

The work has taken me across the UK, the US and beyond - running a US subsidiary from Arizona, navigating cross-jurisdictional compliance regimes, and building leadership teams that work across timezones as easily as across the corridor.

Read more about the Operator
If any of this sounds like your business

Let's talk.

Most engagements start with a thirty-minute conversation. No deck, no pitch, no pressure. Just an honest read on whether the work is right for you, and whether I'm the right operator to do it.

Start a conversation