The Job Description Is the SOW

There's a marketing requisition open at one of your portfolio companies right now — open 60 to 120 days, the seat still empty, the board update due. Look at the requisition itself, the document, not the search. It's already something the fund pays consultants to produce. THE REQ IS A STATEMENT OF WORK: Responsibilities → the scope Salary band → a pre-approved budget envelope, on-costs loaded Level → the seniority gate, signed off by finance and HR Hiring manager → named, with authority to direct the work Every approval a trial would need is already in place. The requisition is a Statement of Work — written, with a budget the whole chain has already signed. WHY IT MATTERS NOW: In the FTI Private Equity AI Radar, 95% of funds said their portfolio AI met or exceeded the business case. The technology isn't the problem. The #1 constraint, named by 35%, is talent. The roles take a 6-to-9-month ramp even when the seat fills; the fund modeled 90 days. THE TRIAL MECHANIC: Don't fill the req this week. Starting Monday, the JieGou ops team staffs the seat. First two weeks at no cost. The hiring manager judges the work against the JD's own responsibilities. The req stays open the whole time — hire a human anytime, no obligation. Clears the bar at two weeks → converts to the published price ($75K + $50K/yr). Doesn't → back to the pipeline, you've lost nothing. It's the only path that closes the gap between req-open and work-starting: pre-approved band, deliverables that match the JD by construction, an honest two-week evaluation against a rubric the hiring manager wrote. "WE ALREADY WORK WITH KPMG." The Big-4 programme is upstream — it designs the AI operating model across the portfolio. The JieGou trial is the per-portco execution layer the consultants bill the fund to find: it staffs the seat Monday and runs the work against the open req. They complement each other. WHAT TWO WEEKS PRODUCE (a typical req lists 8-14 responsibilities, each a deliverable): the editorial calendar, the weekly content cadence, the CRM lifecycle programme, paid social to an acquisition target, brand voice across locations, funnel reporting, agency management — produced in week one or two, with a named human clearing anything that ships. The req you already have is the only Statement of Work the fund has both written and signed. JieGou is taking two more trials this quarter, run against the open req, no cost for the first two weeks. Pick the portco. Send the JD. The work starts Monday. Operating-partner one-pager: jiegou.ai/downloads/job-description-is-the-sow-v1.pdf DM me "Monday" for the one-pager + the two-week scope on a real open req: linkedin.com/in/smperng Full essay: shyanming.substack.com/p/the-job-description-is-the-sow CHAPTERS 0:00 There's a req open at one of your portcos right now 0:39 The requisition is already a Statement of Work 1:23 The 35% constraint: talent, not the model 2:05 The trial mechanic: don't fill it this week 3:02 Why it's the only structurally fast path 3:31 "We already work with KPMG" 4:27 What the first two weeks produce 5:10 The only SOW you've written and signed — JieGou is the per-portco AI Operations Partner for PE-backed mid-market roll-ups — managed marketing operations, governed, against the requisition you already have. #PrivateEquity #ValueCreation #OperatingPartner #PortfolioOps #AIStrategy #CMO