Perspective. Alignment. Advantage.
Perspective creates advantage.
23.5 Strategies advises leaders, owners, and investors at the intersection of strategy, capital, operations, and transformation.
Corporate Strategy · M&A Advisory · Transformation · Operator Partnership
The 23.5 Thesis
The right angle changes the outcome.
23.5° is the Earth's axial tilt — the reason for seasons, cycles, and perspective. For businesses, small changes in angle can alter capital allocation, market position, operating performance, and enterprise value. 23.5 Strategies exists to help leaders find that angle and act with discipline.
Why we exist
The Work, In Motion
The decisions, capital, and operating reality that shape consequential industries — read through an operator-investor lens.
When Leaders Call 23.5
The firm engages when the decision matters and senior judgment is the work itself.
Advisory
Five lanes of concentrated judgment.
The 23.5 Method
How we work.
Strategy fails in execution, not in design. The 23.5 Method is a discipline for translating consequential decisions into operating reality.
- 01
Diagnose the system
Map where value is created, captured, and lost across the business — commercial, capital, and operating.
- 02
Identify the value levers
Concentrate on the moves that actually move enterprise value, not the ones that look productive.
- 03
Build the operating model
Design the operating model and cadence that converts strategic intent into compounding execution.
- 04
Align leadership and stakeholders
Get the board, the team, and capital partners aligned behind a single coherent path.
- 05
Execute with cadence
Install a leadership rhythm — quarterly, monthly, weekly — that surfaces decisions, not status.
Where We Work
Three disciplines. Applied across core markets.
Capital Markets, Commercialization, and Transformation & Optimization are the cross-cutting disciplines the firm brings to every engagement — applied across the firm's core markets.
Core Disciplines
Core Markets
Selected Work
Engagements where the firm’s judgment shaped the outcome.
Value Acceleration Blueprint
Global Renewable Fuels & Refining Operator (Anonymized) · Multi-Region Platform
A global renewable fuels and refining operator carrying compounding pressure: reliability variability, cost escalation, concentrated product-market exposure, scenario planning that hadn't been operationalized, and external credibility eroding at exactly the moment guidance discipline mattered most.
JV Growth Operating Model
Major U.S. Refiner-Marketer + Best-in-Class Convenience Retail Operator (Anonymized)
A growth plan built to win in a structurally challenged, highly competitive metro market — fragmented assets, inconsistent site quality, accelerating consolidation, and margin compression driven by high-volume entrants. The response was a joint venture designed to re-scale advantage through a clear division of strengths.
High-Stakes Stakeholder Engagement & Digital Grassroots Blueprint
Multi-State Energy Infrastructure Sponsor (Anonymized) · Corridor Repurpose + Expansion
A permit-critical multi-state corridor project facing converging regulatory, community, and political pressure on a tight schedule — heightened public attention on safety and environmental risk, NGO advocacy and social media dynamics, and stakeholder fragmentation across federal, state, local, and tribal layers.
Latest from The Point Taken
Long-form essays from the firm’s working desk.
Long-form essays from 23.5 Strategies — market commentary, operator writing, and capital-allocation argument from the firm's working desk.
July 14, 2026 The Point Taken
The Pattern Is Not the Point
Capital is rarely destroyed by a bad forecast. It is destroyed by an assumption nobody went back to check.
July 7, 2026 The Point Taken
The Manufacture of Certainty
Why belief hardens out of repetition, what that costs in markets and boardrooms, and how the disciplined operator plans in scenarios instead of predictions.
June 30, 2026 The Point Taken
From Gas Molecule to Grocery Bill
How an energy chokepoint becomes fertilizer pressure, farm economics, and eventually food inflation.
Founder
Bryan Kaus
Founder and Principal, Twenty Three Point Five Strategies
Bryan Kaus is the founder of Twenty Three Point Five Strategies, advising companies, investors, and leadership teams at the intersection of strategy, capital, operations, commercial performance, and executive decision-making.
Engagements
When the market turns, perspective matters.
The firm engages selectively. If your situation warrants senior counsel, we will respond personally.