A craft in building lasting companies.
Patina is an operating and advisory house. It owns and backs companies, and works beside the CEOs who run them.
A patina forms slowly. What forms slowly lasts.
Every craft works the same way. You take a thing down to its raw ingredients, build it back up, and refine it for years. Do that long enough and the work takes on a patina.
I’ve been at the bench of three questions for most of my working life. What makes a business worth backing? Once you’re in it, how do you make it remarkable? And what makes a great CEO, the person at the helm? I’m not done answering any of them. Patina is the house where that work lives.
Built on decades at the bench.
Patina was founded by Chase Murdock. He has started, acquired, and backed 20+ companies. Most were built to keep. The ones that sold taught him why.
The work
Patina works two ways: as a partner in the business, and beside the CEO who runs it.
A stake in the business.
Capital matters, and so does who it comes from. Patina invests its own, with no fund and no clock. It takes a stake, a board seat, or a standing role, and stays for the long run. A good partner brings more than a check: judgment, structure, and patience measured in years.
In the BusinessBeside the person running it.
Every business has a ceiling. It’s usually the person in the seat. When the CEO grows, the company follows. And the growth goes better with someone beside you who has sat in that seat.
Beside the CEOYou know there’s another gear. The Seat is where you find it.
A six-month Patina program, one to one, built on decades of owning companies, backing them, and sitting beside dozens of CEOs. You work through what separates good CEOs from great ones, on your own business, and you leave with the instruments to run it.
See The Seat
Essays on the practice of company building.
Written from the seat: years of founding, running, and acquiring companies, and counseling the CEOs who run them.
Read the essays