Usman Sheikh

High Output Ventures

High Output Ventures partners with domain experts to create remote first businesses. We provide companies the ability to validate their business models, provide operational support and eventually scale their services through our early stage fund. We are head quartered in Singapore; however we are fully remote company with people all across the world.

Managing Director

Starseekr

Starseekr provides your business with the perfect Fillipino VA. Our talent pool is pre-vetted and trained.

Co-Founder

ScaleForge

At ScaleForge, our mission is to forge the future of ambitious software organizations by providing expert scalability solutions that empower expansion, magnifying their impact, and propelling them towards the next level of success

Investor

Identifi

Identifi helps remote businesses build inclusive cultures by providing them with a platform to: 

- Check-in every day with how they are doing
- Share what they are working on 
- Manage time-off requests
- Submit weekly reviews

The goal is to enable remote companies to be more connected with one another.

Founder

Her Vietnam

Fastest growing beauty and wellness brand for 20 somethings in Vietnam. Learn more at: https://www.instagram.com/thisishervn/

GrowthDeputy

We help businesses of all sizes achieve their next level of growth by leveraging our remote marketing team. Every Deputy is carefully selected and handles those manual and time-consuming marketing tasks so you can focus on growing your business.

Synthesis

Show your child they can learn anything. Synthesis Tutor is the educational AI that actually works.

Peeba (YC W23)

Transforming the way local retailers in Asia buy for their stores.

Commsor 🦕

We believe your network is your most valuable asset. That's why we build tools to help you unlock the value in building a strong and engaged network. Meet Bronto and Matcha.

AI Camp

AI Camp educates future leaders on AI, coding, and the process of crafting remarkable AI products, all while providing opportunities for tech internships.

Scaled a 150+ Person Remote Team | Follow for Expertise on Building High-Performance Remote Teams

I never wanted to be an entrepreneur.

Getting fired within 2 weeks of my internship at one of the largest investment banks in the world changed the trajectory of my life. I started my first business with my college roommate in 2003. 

21 years later, having started, scaled and sold multiple companies I thank my first manager for firing me everyday. 

Today I manage a portfolio of businesses and investments under my personal holding company called High Output Ventures based out of Singapore. 

I have a very simple thesis of who I am looking to partner and work with:

‣ Is frustrated at their job or a business they are running
‣ Has developed a key skillset and has deep expertise in a specific domain
‣ Wants to start their own business but wants to partner instead of going solo
‣ Has identified an opportunity in the market which fits their skillset and experience
‣ Can pick up the phone and get 10 potential prospects on the phone
‣ Lastly, wants to build the company fully remote

If the above criteria sounds like you, I hope you will send me a DM!

For everyone else, I write and share about my journey and am always looking to connect with individuals who share a passion for entrepreneurship and those who have become world class at their craft.

Everyone claims they are "transforming" with AI.

To cut through the noise, I have started to track Technology Leverage Ratio (TLR): percentage change in revenue divided by percentage change in headcount. 

TLR above 1.0 - rotating toward tech leverage. 
Below 1.0 - labor intensity is increasing. 
At 1.0 - you are stuck.

Most professional services firms claim they're transforming. Yet, markets have stopped believing them because when you track TLR, you see three distinct structures at work, and only one actually rotates from human to tech leverage.

Three companies tell the story: Infosys (down 21%), Accenture (down 31.5%), Palantir (up 163%). 

Same AI wave, opposite outcomes.
The difference isn't strategy. It's structure.

Structure Type 1: The Arbitrage Trap (wage differential narrows, only option is cuts)

Structure Type 2: The Billable Hour Pyramid (amnesia as a service stops working)

Structure Type 3: The Infrastructure Escape (patterns compound, humans orchestrate)

In today's newsletter, I break down all three structures with financial data, explain why most firms can't transform despite spending billions, and show you how to spot real infrastructure building from AI theater.

Sending full analysis to newsletter subscribers in 30 minutes.

(Sign up available on my profile, archives launching next month)

Talks about #career, #remote, and #entrepreneurship

Investing in remote-first businesses & agencies | 12 businesses, 2 exits. | Founder of HOV

Patrick van Abbema, MBA, PMP, CBAP, CSP

Partner promotions at the Big Four dropped 35% over three years. Deloitte cut from 124 to 60. EY from 74 to 34. PwC nearly halved.

Meanwhile, partner profits hit record highs. KPMG: £816,000. Deloitte: £1 million+. For long time followers we started tracking this trend a year ago and it appears to be accelerating.

The conventional read: firms protecting dying models through access restriction.

But this interpretation misses the bigger implication.

Promotion ceilings aren't gatekeeping. They are boundary signals, revealing which work firms believe they can defend and which has become contested territory.

Professional services work falls into three categories:
→ Deterministic Work: Binary outcomes, becomes infrastructure

→ Non-Deterministic Work: No ground truth, MBB territory

→ The Gray Zone: Billed as strategic, actually pattern-matching

The gray zone is where value capture is starting to fail. And it's compressing from both directions.

In today's newsletter, I explain why automation threatens partners not because AI replaces them, but because it eliminates the leverage structure underneath them. 

I cover the three forces compressing the gray zone, why Big Four can't capture value from their own efficiency gains, and where NewCo finds its opening.

Sending the full analysis to newsletter subscribers in 30 minutes.

(Sign up available on my profile, archives launching next month)

The posts mapping mechanics got reactions. The posts naming what it feels like got responses.

After 277 posts, that’s what I learned.

A year ago I wrote about EY cutting 150 senior roles and the compression on the horizon for Big Consulting. 

It reached 2 million people.

This week, the Financial Times published what that post anticipated: starting salaries frozen, graduate hiring down 50%, partners citing AI as the reason for reshaping the pyramid.

The hypothesis is slowly becoming consensus.

But that's not what 277 posts taught me.

The framework posts - Control Planes, Operating Rails, NewCo vs LegacyCo - sparked conversations with operators.

Two posts got something different:
→ The Masks We Can't Remove
→ Stateless

The difference? They named what spreadsheets miss: the gap between who you were and who you need to become.

This isn't about consulting anymore. It's about how work itself is transforming. The pyramid is just where the fault lines showed first.

In this week's newsletter:
→ The Labor vs Infrastructure frame that cuts across industries
→ Why identity posts outperformed framework posts
→ A prediction for next year 
→ What I'm building next with Frame Break

Full post going out to subscribers in 30 minutes. Access to archives becoming available next week for subscribers.

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