Inside PeakRatio.
I'm Brian Valentine. PeakRatio is the business I built to help other SME owners find their right gear.
Who I am
I'm Brian Valentine. I founded PeakRatio to do the work I kept finding myself doing inside bigger businesses: walking into something that wasn't quite running right, understanding it properly, and putting it into the right gear.
I'm based in Glasgow. I work with owner-led businesses across Scotland and the wider UK who have built something real and now need a partner who can sit inside the business with them, not hand them a report and leave.
I'm also dyslexic. I read slower than most people. I see patterns faster than most people. It means I spend less time on the surface of a business and more time on the thing nobody is quite saying out loud.
What I bring?
Fifteen years across engineering, operations, business development, continuous improvement, and finance. Some of it in global businesses, some of it in small ones that were fighting for survival.
The common thread: every business I've worked inside has a gap between what the owner or leadership team believes is happening and what's actually happening on the ground. My job is to close that gap, then help the business run better because of it.
I've raised and managed investor capital. I've run property through finance stress tests most people would rather not repeat. I've built BD frameworks, rebuilt customer propositions, written market entry strategies for sectors worth tens of billions, and audited operating systems end to end. I've also sat across the table from founders who just needed someone to tell them the truth.
PeakRatio is where all of that lives now.
How I got here
I started as a design and project engineer at FMC Technologies (now TechnipFMC), working on subsea actuator qualification and helping build an in-house test facility.
From there I did the Saltire Fellowship with Entrepreneurial Scotland. Three months at Babson College in Boston, then San Francisco, then Shanghai. That is where I learned how to think about businesses as systems rather than products.
After Saltire I spent close to three years consulting across engineering businesses, some in good shape, most not. EWS in waste brokerage. McKellars Sub-Sea in Grantown-on-Spey. RED Engineering in Hexham.
I then spent six and a half years at Doosan Babcock, later Altrad Babcock. I moved through project management, continuous improvement, and information management.
Alongside all of that I have built BLV Properties with my wife Laura, a Scottish property portfolio we have run for five years. I advise BioTwin, an early stage low-carbon construction materials company. And I am the founder of PeakRatio.
The gearbox
I'm a car guy. I always have been. That's where the PeakRatio name comes from.
A good gearbox doesn't just have power. It has the right ratio for the moment. First gear gets you moving. Sixth gear lets you cruise. The wrong gear at the wrong time burns fuel, burns the engine, or stalls the car entirely.
Businesses are the same. Most of the pain I see in SMEs is not a lack of effort. It is the wrong gear for the stage. Growing when they should be consolidating. Consolidating when they should be pushing. Running on intuition when they need instruments. Running on instruments when they need instinct.
PeakRatio is the work of finding the right ratio.
Beyond the work
I'm a husband and a dad. That is the real reason PeakRatio exists. I'm building something that lets me do serious work with serious clients, and still be present at home. That shapes how I run this business and it shapes what I help my clients build.
I care about doing work that lasts. I care about leaving clients stronger than I found them. And I care about being the kind of partner I would have wanted at half the points in my own career where I was flying blind.
Ready to talk?
The first call is free. No pitch, no pressure. Just a conversation.