We're Raising In The Open — Because We're Betting On Our Own Thesis

We're raising money in the open. That's a bet on the exact thing Plum Solutions Group was built to prove: that decisions made in daylight hold up better than ones made in the dark. It's also the part of the last post I glossed over, and it doesn't hold up to leave it there. Right now we're making the most opaque decision a company ever makes — what it's worth, who gets a seat at the table, on what terms — the kind every company makes behind closed doors. It would have been strange to build a company on the idea that opacity is the enemy of good decisions, then make our biggest one exactly that way.

Here's who I think this is actually for.

If you've never sat in a room watching a leadership team stare at the same dashboard and still talk their way into a decision on gut feel, this probably isn't the post for you yet — and that's fine. But if you have — if you already carry some version of that memory — you don't need me to define Strategic Decision Intelligence before you recognize the problem. You've lived it.

I think of a department head I worked with years ago — we called him the Buddha, because he'd sit back, rub his stomach, and think out loud until a decision arrived, fully formed, from somewhere south of the data. More often than not, we'd talk him down: give us a week, and we'd come back with the numbers to actually support — or kill — the call he was ready to make on feel alone. He wasn't unusual. Most leadership teams still decide this way, not because they don't value data, but because getting to a real answer used to take longer than the decision could wait. That's the gap we built Plum to close: the same rigor the Buddha's team scrambled a week to assemble, available in the room, in the time it takes to ask the question.

So let me name the tradeoff directly, because I think we've been dancing around it. Companies raise quietly for real reasons: it protects competitive intelligence, it preserves negotiating leverage, and it doesn't hand customers or competitors a blog post to read tea leaves from. Those reasons apply to us too. Running this raise in the open costs us some of that leverage — I'm not going to pretend otherwise. But the alternative was making the biggest, highest-stakes decision in Plum's short life the same opaque way we're influencing managers to stop making theirs. That's a trade I'd rather make on purpose, in public, and be able to explain — not make quietly and call it strategy after the fact.

For anyone who wants the short version of what we're building: we call the gap Strategic Decision Intelligence, or SDI — the layer above #BI and decision-intelligence tools that puts rigor, traceability, and human judgment back into how organizations actually decide, built as two products working together, Quarus and Platypus. More on both in a future post. If you already feel this problem in your own leadership meetings, you already understand why we built what we've made, and why we're raising the same way.

Where things actually stand

Since the last post, this stopped being an announcement and started being a process. Individual meetings under the direct-engagement track are already underway — the first conversations with investors who reached out to meet before the main round closes are happening now, at current terms. If you were waiting to see whether this was real before engaging: it's real, and it's already moving.The first Plum Forward: Beyond BI session is set for Wednesday, October 14, at 11:00 AM ET - via video conference. That's the entry point if you want to see the products, meet the team, and ask the hard questions in the room before deciding anything. Registration goes out shortly — if you don't want to wait for that, reach out any time at plumsg.com/contact.

Two ways in, now with dates attached

1. Meet with us directly. That window is open now, not hypothetical — engage and close ahead of the round at current terms, the earliest and most favorable position in this raise.
2. Come to the session on October 14. Take the time you need, see the product and the team, ask the hard questions in the room, and come in at the next round.

Either path is fine. What's not fine, to me, is leaving either one vague. The round has a defined close, and I'll keep naming dates as we hit them — in this post and every one after it — so this stays something you can track, not a pitch you have to take on faith.

The whole thesis of this company is that decisions made in the open, with the reasoning visible, hold up better than decisions made in the dark. This is the first time we've had to actually bet on our own thesis instead of just sell it. So far, it's holding.

Gary Kivenko

CEO, Plum