Verge of Awesome An independent solutions institute

Sheet01 of 01
RevB · Sep 2026
Issued byVerge of Awesome LLC
ThesisWhat we are for

Hard problems, solved on purpose.

Every institution carries problems it has quietly stopped trying to solve — a company's, an industry's, a society's. Verge of Awesome exists to take those problems back up and return something rare: a solution designed to be run, not a report designed to be filed.

We are an independent solutions institute. We combine first-principles research, cross-domain invention, and hard testing against the people who know the field best — then we systemize the result into the documents, incentives, structures, and products that make it real, and explain it in language anyone can act on.

The name is deliberate. The verge is the edge between what an institution is and what it could become. Awesome in the older sense: the feeling when something that seemed stuck moves.

We work on
Companies · Industries · Societies
We return
Solutions you can run, not slides
We test against
The field's own experts — starting with you
The engineHow a problem becomes a solution

One method, any field

The same engine runs whether the problem is a pricing structure, a stalled industry, or a democratic institution. What changes is the research and the expert we test against. What never changes is that we finish.

  1. Stage 1

    Frame

    Find the real problem underneath the stated one. Separate facts from assumptions. Name the tension nobody has written down.

  2. Stage 2

    Research

    First principles, then everywhere the problem has been solved before — other industries, other centuries, other disciplines.

  3. Stage 3

    Invent

    Generate several candidate solutions, not one. Analytical rigor and creative range at the same time — that mix is the institute's edge.

  4. Stage 4

    Test

    Stress every candidate against the people who know the field — the client's own experts first. Scoring models, pre-mortems, worked examples.

  5. Stage 5

    Systemize

    Turn the winner into things that run: structures, documents, incentives, cadences, products. Then explain it so a general audience can carry it.

We don't need to be the expert in your field. We need to be the people who ask the questions your field stopped asking — and who have a working partner in the room who can tell us when we're wrong. That partner is usually the person who hired us.

ArenasThree scales of problem

Where we work

Enterprise

One organization · its decisions and machinery

The gap between a leadership team's strategy and what actually happens. We design the decision architecture, the operating systems, and the paper layer — contracts, incentives, role structures — where strategy becomes behavior.

  • Decision packages a leadership team can ratify, amend, or reject
  • Leadership operating systems, including AI-assisted reporting with a human gate
  • Executive sessions designed to close with owners and dates
  • Brand architecture, pricing, and incentive structures scored on a model, not taste

Industry

One sector · what it hasn't built yet

New products, business models, and market mechanisms for a sector — designed from the outside in, with an insider testing every assumption. We bring the range; you bring the depth; the collision produces the idea neither of us would have had alone.

  • Product and business-model concepts, from thesis to clickable prototype
  • Market mechanisms: lead engines, partner programs, pricing ladders
  • Category and positioning work for markets being reshaped by AI
  • Concept papers built to travel up to the decision-maker

Society

Institutions · the long problems

The structural questions most institutions have declared unsolvable: how democracies stay representative, where capitalism leaks and how to patch the leaks, how complex systems can be explained to the people who live inside them. Long-form work, for governments, foundations, and anyone who has to decide.

  • Papers on the future of democracy — the holes, and specific repairs
  • Papers on capitalism's failure modes and structural fixes
  • Policy and institutional design, tested with practitioners
  • Translation: making layered systems understandable without flattening them
WorkSelected, anonymized

Problems we've taken up

Client work is described without names or figures. Papers are listed with their status. Full case material is available under NDA.

EnterpriseDelivered

A leadership team that argued instead of deciding

For a seven-brand technology group inside a public holding company: a landscape report, a strategy proposal, and a four-document decision package that turned a year of circling into a set of ratifiable decisions — then a three-day executive session that ratified seven of them with owners and a 90-day gate.

EnterpriseRunning

A CEO who wanted the signal without another meeting

An AI-assisted leadership reporting system: meeting transcripts and email read by machines, drafted into a weekly picture of who committed to what, published only through a human gate. Twenty-seven tracked responsibilities; nothing reaches the CEO unconfirmed.

IndustryDelivered

Paying partners for growth without paying twice

A partner-program mechanic for a holding-group market: commission on collections above each brand's high-water mark, one clock per client group, a tail that survives termination — balanced by an anti-avoidance clause. Written to be read by Fortune-500 counsel and understood by the partner.

IndustryDelivered

A free product that is really a marketing campaign

A market-intelligence lead engine: ten presence categories, a composite score, and a gating rule — "everything past #1 is a door" — carried from a sketch to a pitch family for a holding-company CEO and a clickable prototype.

IndustryDelivered

Naming as a decision, not a taste contest

An eight-criterion scoring model and clearance pipeline that ran ~230 candidates, treated the incumbent names as fairly as the new ones, and made the CEO's favorite pass through the same gate as everyone else's.

SocietyPaper · in revision

The future of democracy: the holes and the repairs

Where representative systems are structurally failing their citizens, why the usual fixes don't reach the failure, and a set of specific mechanisms that could. [Working title — confirm]

SocietyPaper · in revision

Capitalism's leaks

The places where the system's incentives point away from the outcomes it promises, and structural patches that keep the engine while fixing the plumbing. [Working title — confirm]

RulesHow we work, written down

Rules we run on

Finish.

A solution that stops at the recommendation is an essay. We stay until it is a structure, a document, an incentive, or a product someone can run.

The expert is in the room.

We are not the authority on your field — you are. Every candidate solution is tested against the people who will have to live with it.

Several answers, then one.

Invent widely before choosing. The first plausible solution is rarely the best one; it is just the first.

The model is the deliverable.

In any contested choice, hand over the scoring model, not just the answer. People accept results from a model they can see.

One source per number.

Every figure has exactly one place it comes from. Two sources is how a room argues arithmetic instead of strategy.

Mark what you don't know.

Every unconfirmed fact carries a tag. Hidden uncertainty is a debt the reader pays later.

Decisions end in ratify / amend / reject.

With the cost of deferring written next to each option. Anything else is a discussion.

Machines draft; people publish.

We use AI heavily — tiered by task, logged, and gated. The judgment stays with a person, and so does the signature.

Explain it or it isn't solved.

If the solution can't be carried by someone outside the room, it will not survive the room. Systemize, then say it plainly.

EngageFour ways in

How an engagement works

Solution sprint

Four to six weeks · one hard problem

The full engine on one question. You get the frame, the research, several candidates, the tested winner, and a solution package your organization can act on the day it lands.

Standing counsel

Ongoing · a leader or leadership team

The institute as an extension of your office: the seat next to the decision, the cadence, the documents, the difficult stakeholder work. A chief-of-staff function with an engine behind it.

Commissioned paper

Industry or society · long-form

A problem your field or institution has stopped arguing about, taken up properly: researched, tested with practitioners, written to be read by people who decide.

Build-out

After the sprint · until it runs

We stay to implement: the offsite that ratifies it, the contracts that encode it, the operating system that keeps it honest, the prototype that shows it.

Bring us the problem your organization has stopped trying to solve. If it turns out you'd rather bring the engine inside — as a chief of staff, a head of strategy, or a founder-in-residence — that is a conversation we are open to as well.

Bring us a problem
FounderDirector

Zack Richeimer, Founder & Director

Zack is the son, grandson, and great-grandson of inventors, authors, scientists, and businessmen; inventing solutions is the family trade. His own mix is unusual — rigorously analytical and restlessly creative at the same time — which is why the institute's method insists on generating several answers before choosing one.

He teaches advanced religious philosophy to highly intelligent working professionals, which is where the institute's fifth stage comes from: taking layered, complex systems of thought, systemizing them, and explaining them so a general audience can carry them without losing the depth.

Most recently he was Chief of Staff to the Chief Strategy Officer of Leaders Group, a seven-brand AI marketing-technology group inside Stagwell — designing the executive session that reset the group's structure, building its AI-assisted leadership reporting system, leading its brand-architecture and pricing work, and running its contracts function. Before that: head of strategy at a consultancy, independent consultant on change management and growth, founder of a travel app that shipped to the App Store, and private-equity research in Hong Kong. He holds a BA in International Business from Lauder Business School, Vienna.

His papers on the future of democracy and on capitalism's structural failures are the institute's first Society-arena work.

Zack Richeimer speaking, holding a microphone