24 February 2026

Continuous Advisory as a Service (CAaaS)

With Continuous Advisory as a Service (CAaaS), scalum is establishing a new advisory model for ambitious startups and scale-ups that anchors entrepreneurial sparring not as a one-off event, but as a permanently effective component of decision-making.

CAaaS is designed for founders, managing directors, and management teams who regularly face key business decisions—and are not looking for a traditional management consultant, but rather a confidential sparring partner on equal footing.

Not as a project.
Not as a reporting.
Not as a one-time impulse.

Rather, it is a continuous space for clear thoughts, well-founded decisions, genuine entrepreneurial reflection, and further development.

The focus is on founder-to-founder sparring with experienced entrepreneurs and investors from the scalum network – pragmatic, direct, and without a predefined agenda.

„Many founders don't need more consultants and presentations, but rather an honest sparring partner on equal footing. Continuous Advisory as a Service creates precisely this kind of ongoing exchange—with a counterpart who understands the entrepreneurial context and is available at crucial moments to answer the truly relevant questions.“

Michael Scholz

Founder & Managing Director – scalum GmbH

Why many startups do not need traditional consulting services

Startups and scale-ups operate in an environment characterized by:

rapid decision-making
growing organizational complexity
increasing management responsibility
constant pressure to secure financing and achieve growth

What is often lacking is not technical expertise, but rather:

business experience
an independent perspective
an honest, entrepreneurial counterpart

This is precisely where Continuous Advisory as a Service comes in.

Focus on decisions – not on deliverables

Unlike traditional consulting models, CAaaS deliberately avoids:

long-term project logic
standardized deliverables
comprehensive reporting structures

This is not about presentations or methods, but about entrepreneurial experience, critical questioning, and honest perspectives from real-world practice.

The focus is on the quality of business decisions, for example in:

strategic decisions
growth and scaling issues
organizational and management decisions
financing rounds
exit preparations

Continuous Advisory is therefore not an implementation model, but rather a framework for clarity, focus, and corporate responsibility.

Continuity as genuine added value

A key advantage of Continuous Advisory as a Service is the ongoing support provided over a longer period of time.

Regular collaboration fosters a deep understanding of:

business model
market environment
organization and decision-making logic
strengths, weaknesses, and dynamics within the management team

This accumulated contextual knowledge enables significantly more effective sparring than a one-off, ad hoc consultation—without the effort otherwise required for re-familiarization, briefings, and context building.

With each interaction, the perspective becomes more precise, the discussion more focused, and the quality of decisions higher.

Continuous Advisory therefore means not only recurring exchange, but also a learning curve on both sides that translates directly into business progress.

This offers a decisive advantage, especially for startups and scale-ups that are in rapid development phases: a sparring partner who doesn't start from scratch every time, but grows with the company, understands the crucial connections, and is there at exactly the right moment when landmark decisions need to be made.

The CAaaS logic: flexible, confidential, scalable

CAaaS was developed consistently from the perspective of modern founders and is based on the following key features:

entrepreneurial sparring
confidentiality as a basic requirement
monthly retainer with inclusive hours
additional services on demand at defined hourly rates
flexible terms with minimal commitment
no equity component

This means that the company retains complete entrepreneurial independence.

Advisory in the as-a-service model

With productization as a service, scalum is responding to a clear need in the startup ecosystem:

Today, support must be:

tailored to needs
flexible
quickly available
scalable

CAaaS can be used precisely when it is truly relevant and external perspectives make a difference — in decision-making situations, not in project phases.