DJWB & Co — Turnaround and Growth Advisory

The Firm

DJWB & Co works with founders, boards, investors and management teams at every stage of a company's life, regulated by the ICAEW and following Institute for Turnaround standards, on a single principle: turnaround in its broadest sense.

A company in crisis needs help to be turned toward survival. A healthy company stuck below its potential needs to be turned toward growth, a contract win, a raise, or an exit. The diagnostic discipline is the same in both cases, though every solution has its own shape and its own urgency.

The practice has run under various names since 2014. In its present form it has been growing quickly since David Wallace and David Bailey agreed to build together in April 2026. Within that first quarter it issued proposals and advisory notes across a deep tech pyrolysis venture, an EV charging platform group, a fast growing national security company, a defence grade AI startup, an AI ticketing business, an enterprise visual content company and a leading interim management firm. It also built its own AI lead generation tooling and ran a structured intelligence programme across thirty one of the world's largest systematic and quantitative funds.

The model is deliberately simple. One dedicated point of contact owns each engagement. The right specialists are assembled around it from a trusted network. Clients get senior people doing the actual work, with no leverage pyramid underneath. Every engagement is gated by KYC and AML checks, with no exceptions, and every deliverable stays inside the regulatory perimeter, or names the licensed professional who should take it further.

What We Do

Seven services, one diagnostic discipline

Business Growth Advisory

Diagnosis before prescription, with a free preliminary analysis before anything is committed to.

Every engagement starts with diagnosis before prescription. A half day preliminary analysis, at no cost, establishes the real problem, what has already been tried, what is blocking progress, and what the client personally wants. From there we rank the options by cost, risk and timescale, so the board can make an informed decision before committing to anything long term. Clients pay for this because they get a decision, not a deck. The most common feedback we hear is that we asked the questions nobody inside the company was allowed to ask.

Turnaround

The founding discipline. It applies as much to companies that are stuck as to companies in distress.

This is the founding discipline, and it runs through everything we do. In a true distress situation we stabilise cash, find root causes rather than culprits, build a plan robust enough to survive stakeholder scrutiny, and create credible alternatives that shift negotiating dynamics with lenders and creditors. The same toolkit serves the far larger population of companies that are not in crisis, merely stuck: trading respectably, growing slower than they should, carrying a structural problem everyone has learned to live with. Turnaround is not a service line for the distressed. It is a way of looking at any company and asking what is stopping it from being the company it could be.

Go To Market

A commercial system designed alongside the product, not bolted on once it's built.

Go to market is a system, not a launch event, and it needs to be designed alongside the product rather than added afterward. We work on ideal customer definition, pricing as a strategic instrument rather than an accounting exercise, channel design, positioning, and the shift from lead generation to qualified conversation generation. The most common failure pattern we fix is a strong product with no commercial system underneath it. Clients pay because this work turns technical promise into pipeline, from people who have carried enterprise revenue targets rather than written about them.

Enterprise Sales Enhancement

Tender strategy, bid qualification and the craft of winning large commercial contracts.

Winning large commercial contracts is its own craft: tender strategy, bid qualification, reference building, navigating procurement, and understanding how a major buyer actually reaches a decision. We support clients through live tenders, help them sequence wins so each contract becomes evidence for the next, and treat a signed contract as the most persuasive currency a growth company owns, with investors as much as with customers. A single contract won is worth more than any amount of strategy left on paper, and doors open faster when the person knocking has sat on the buyer's side of the table.

Enabling Technologies

We build and use our own AI tooling, rather than recommending tools we haven't tested ourselves.

We use the tools we recommend. The practice builds its own AI agents and skills: a lead generation and qualification system built and tested for an interim management client, structured intelligence reporting at a scale no two person firm could otherwise attempt, and document production pipelines that keep quality high and overheads low. Underneath the tooling sits a considered body of innovation theory, drawing on ISO 56002, the Bocconi research programme and the Ten Types framework, so our technology advice is grounded in how innovation actually creates value rather than in this month's fashion.

Readiness for Investment

Most fundraises fail in preparation, not in the pitch. We put the story and the evidence in order first.

Most fundraises fail in preparation, not in the pitch. We run the journey audit, measuring where a company stands against what sophisticated investors will test, then get the stage narrative right so the company approaches the market when its story is evidenced rather than merely compelling. We sort corporate hygiene, the data room, SEIS and EIS positioning, financial leadership, and board credibility, and map the warm introduction routes to investors who actually hold the right mandate. We prepare companies for investment. We do not arrange share transactions or advise on the merits of specific securities, and we say so plainly: that boundary is a feature, because it means our advice has nothing pulling against the client's interest.

Response to New Capital

What happens after money lands is where value is most often protected, or destroyed.

What happens after money lands, or after an unexpected approach arrives, is where value is most often protected or destroyed. We help boards respond to inbound acquisition interest, evaluate strategic partnership offers, structure milestone discipline and governance so new investment doesn't break the company that earned it, and prepare the reporting rhythm that keeps investors confident and founders in control. The moment of new capital is the moment of maximum leverage and maximum risk, and very few management teams have lived through it more than once. We have.

The People

Small, senior, and deliberately built around three chairs

A practice this small succeeds by covering, between its three chairs, the axes most advisory firms only cover part of: financial rigour, commercial reach, and authority in AI and government, in the same room, arguing constructively about the same client. Supported, beyond that, by a wider network of trusted, experienced advisors bringing specialist skills wherever an engagement needs them.

David Wallace

Commercial, Go To Market & Global Reach

David Wallace has chaired and led the kind of organisations our clients dream of having as customers, including BT Scotland and senior commercial leadership at Oracle, across a career of enterprise scale go to market, partnerships and board governance. His work has spanned EMEA, APAC, LATAM and North America, engaging C-suite leaders, founders, ministers and senior civil servants, with particular depth in defence, intelligence and public sector markets. When he explains how a global buyer's procurement committee will behave, it is recollection, not speculation. His network reaches into boardrooms that cold outreach never will.

David Bailey FCA IFT

Turnaround & Finance

David Bailey is a chartered accountant, Institute for Turnaround fellow, innovation theorist and serial hands on founder fixer. Oxford educated, he trained at Deloitte in financial services and forensic accounting before more than a decade at board level as CEO and CFO, sitting on the boards of nineteen companies across start-ups, turnarounds, acquisitions, disposals and property deals. He has built the financial models that raised millions, signed the confirmations that boards and lenders rely on, rescued companies through obscure provisions of insolvency law, and written a unified theory of innovation in his spare time. He turns chaos into a plan, and a plan into a spreadsheet that survives diligence.

Dr Laura Gilbert CBE

AI, Data & Government

Dr Laura Gilbert CBE built the UK government's first data science function inside 10 Downing Street, then founded the Incubator for Artificial Intelligence in the Cabinet Office. She leads AI work at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, holds visiting professorships at LSE and Oxford, and sits on the ESRC Council, the GDS Responsible AI Panel and The Pensions Regulator, among other boards. Before government she was a quantitative analyst, and before that took her own medical technology company from startup to acquisition as founder and CTO. She holds a doctorate in particle physics from Oxford, and has represented Great Britain in Savate kickboxing.

The Network

Brought in as the engagement requires

Beyond the three chairs, depth comes from a trusted network of specialists, drawn in only where a client's problem genuinely calls for it, not added to pad out a proposal.

Data & Analytics

Technology & Engineering

AI & Machine Learning

National Security & Defence

Public Policy & Government Affairs

Corporate Finance & Structuring

Other specialisms, as the work requires

Who We Work With

Our Clients

The founder with real technology and an imminent raise

Wants someone to stop them approaching investors two months too early.

Pays for: stage narrative, journey audit, warm introductions

The profitable mid market firm growing faster than its structure

Wants confidence that ambition is matched by evidence before the bank or the buyer asks.

Pays for: contract support, target appraisal, finance readiness

The corporate platform entering new market segments

Wants market entry de-risked before committing serious capital.

Pays for: proof points, introductions, deal discipline

The professional services firm wanting AI leverage

Wants working tools that change daily economics, not transformation theatre.

Pays for: built tools, honest assessment

The deep tech venture needing strategic capital

Wants a premature bet protected against, for everyone at the table.

Pays for: probability analysis, funder mapping, staged commitments

The board facing a fork in the road

Sell, raise, partner, or hold. Wants the truth, delivered warmly but with no anaesthetic.

Pays for: a decision framework, and the numbers behind it

Every good company is one turn away from being a better one.