What SKE is
A firm that backs builders and builds with them: patient capital that doesn't strip-mine you to earn its return, counsel from someone who has sat in the rooms you're about to walk into, and my own time, talent, and treasure at risk next to yours. It starts close to home and opens to the builders worth betting on.
The path is real, and it is gated
A sprout, earned: bring the idea, and if there is a fit, the first small check funds finding out whether it is real. Then the first gates, earned by what you build: a one-page plan, the first outside signal, the first revenue, in steps to $50K. Past $50K, capital moves on approval, at a real valuation, on standard instruments, and every lever is known before you pull it. Everything here is gated; nothing is promised, and nothing is asked of you until there is a fit.
They cut a check and wait. We build.
Private equity calls it value creation when the money happens to show up. SKE engineers it from the beginning, with two named methods: FORGE builds the company and earns each gate; PAVE engineers the value, people first, measured until it lands. And the firm runs on a product it built for itself, the Chief of Staff: the operating system for a small private equity firm with the agent inside it. This site is its live instance. When you sign in, you are standing in it.
One person, a firm
One person can build a firm, a company, and a product with their wits and AI. SKE is that claim being proven, in the open, by a thirty-year operator. The point of proving it is that you can do it too.