The strategist behind the strategy
I’m DANIELA NAVAES, an Innovation & Venture advisor who works like a founder.
I help organisations solve the problems that have resisted the usual fixes, by understanding them deeply, testing new solutions cheaply, and scaling only what the evidence backs. And I work with a small number of selected founders on founder-side strategy across the whole venture lifecycle.
Two audiences, and one reason I can serve both: I’ve spent time on both sides of the table.
Almost two decades in the messy middle
For the past 17 years, I’ve lived in the intersection of design, UX, research, business and innovation.
I’ve worked inside design consultancies, alongside scrappy startups, with small businesses across multiple industries, and inside large organisations trying to change how they work. And I’ve run ventures of my own.
I’ve sat on the founder side of the table. I know what it feels like to pour time, money, and conviction into an idea and discover the world doesn’t yet care as much as you do. I know why founders move fast, what evidence they’re desperate for, and where they cut corners.
And I’ve sat on the organisation side: where budgets need defending, procurement is slow for good reasons, and a failed pilot costs someone their political capital, not just their money.
Most advisors speak one of those languages. I translate between them — which is exactly what it takes to bring startup-grade discipline inside an organisation, or an outside venture into a live team, and have it actually stick.
What I do now
Inside organisations
I take the problem that’s been silently costing you for years, articulate it properly, and test innovative solutions against it, including, when it fits, finding an ambitious startup to solve it in a pilot I design, measure, and manage end to end.
My method is currently running inside a major UK public-service charity, and has been commissioned again across three public-sector organisations. I also wrote the 2026 industry report on why corporate innovation fails.
For selected tech startup founders
Strategy across the whole venture lifecycle, at the moments that matter most: building (sharpening the product, evidence, and commercial story that makes a venture fundable and sellable), raising (investment-readiness with strategic partners, covering the narrative, the deck, the evidence pack, and the founder in the room), selling (strategic preparation 12–36 months ahead of a possible sale, alongside selected M&A advisors who run the transaction itself).
I also host From Inventor to Investable, the show for senior industry experts weighing up whether to found a startup, and built Lumni Play, the idea-to-exit simulator.