Semco³ · We build self-updating companies.
Your products evolve. Your systems evolve. Time for your company to evolve.
We retrofit companies so change becomes something they can do for themselves.
Twelve months, mostly remote. We guide the transition, build the capability, hand it over, and leave.
A first-of-a-kind retrofit for mid to large sized companies. Under US$30 million in revenue, a self-guided version.
*The MRI = our deep company X-ray. The first one is on us. Try it.
The problem
The problem isn’t change. It’s your outdated org chart.
The boxes-and-lines schematic on your wall is a nineteenth-century invention built for armies and railways at a time when information moved at the speed of a horse.
The new path is a different chart and shape.
The answer
The Round Pyramid.
Not a flat company. Not a boss-free commune. A pyramid, because hierarchy is still necessary. But rounded, shorter and faster.
- Three tiers, not more.
- Rotating leaders validated by the people they lead.
- Small cohorts to take on big issues.
RADICAL STAKEHOLDER ALIGNMENT. Shareholders, executives and employees, clients and suppliers. The chart redraws, without a reorg or a consultant.
6 LAYERS · 5 TRANSLATIONS · THE REQUEST CRAWLS
Want to see what this looks like in practice? Try the Simulator. →
NOTHING IS DEMOLISHED. NOTHING STOPS.
Who works with you
Twelve months. Mostly remote. Then we step back.
Three quarters of our team are people who have led in the real world.
The retrofit is guided by people who have run companies, customized for each client.
Perry Timms
Ricardo Semler
Doug Kirkpatrick
Dong Chang
Yanko Guimarães
José Violi Filho
Jochen Goeser
Luuk Willems
Joe Koudsi
Katy Stanley
Kirsten Buck
How it works
Change moves through cohorts of ten.
Ten people, with a leader the cohort confirms. Above, a gentle coordination layer and a Steward (one of our seasoned execs) to guide.
Cohorts include independent contractors, gig workers and AI.
A monthly dashboard shows how independent your team has become. By month twelve we’re out.
The other half
Half practice, half instrument.
The Retrofit is composed of two sides. The instruments read your company every week. What they install is up to 24 Semco³ practices. You choose which.
TWENTY-FOUR PRACTICES, SIX FAMILIES, ONE OFFERING · AFTER THE PASS, POINT AT A MARK; A CLICK OPENS ITS FAMILY.
What happens when we arrive
Our proprietary tools took many years to build.
The MRI scans and reads the company like a body. TruthScan, unique, tells you what current and ex-employees, clients you lost, and your former suppliers think about your organization. No other tool measures former stakeholders and social media murmur about your company and turns it into intel.
PerryScope sweeps 24/7 through your market, competitors, clients and suppliers and comes back weekly with insight on what’s changed.
Why “PerryScope”? Named in homage to Perry Timms, our first Rotating CEO. The CEO rotates. The periscope rotates.
To be clear: we are not an AI-driven consulting firm, nor a strategy or HR shop. The Retrofit is strategy, new mindset and preparation for Gen Z and AI, all sitting on the foundation of a contemporary workplace with a trust and self-directed base.
The instruments you keep
A toolkit your people are certified to run.
Not a philosophy to absorb. Five working instruments, AI at their core, installed during the retrofit and yours for good. Our deep certification program qualifies your people.
PLUS THE HUMAN LAYER
Explore all the instruments →Beyond the company x-ray: every week, a fresh rescan.
Your company, your pace
Strong medicine. Your dosage.
No surrendering control. For twelve months we will guide you while the business keeps running. All choices are yours.
After the twelfth month
Your self-updating company.
After month twelve we pack our things and say our goodbyes. The instruments are yours to operate; your people are certified on them. The Steward hour continues for as long as it’s useful. When you want outside brains, we assemble three unConsultants (one who knows your company, one your industry, and one your challenges) for a one-hour session. No retainers. Ever.
THE PLAN · LIVE
SELF-UPDATING · plan revision increments on its own
And the menu stays open. You’ve watched us guide your first practices; in years two and three you program the others yourselves, straight from the bank of twenty-four.
How we charge
Year One: We cover our costs. Years 2-4: We share only in the value we create. Then it ends.
YEAR ONE
Roughly our cost.
YEARS 2-4
A part of the extra profit we generate.
The self-guided Retrofit is priced separately: US$30k to 80k a year, about the cost of an analyst.
The first year, you’ll pay a fixed fee that covers our costs and little more. Well below what a midsized consultant charges. After that, we’re paid a success fee based on KPIs. If you don’t make more, we lose money. That does wonders for our attention span.
One more thing: You measure the extra EBITDA; no audits, no arbitration. Yes, we’re serious.
Choose your path
Two ways in. One method.
The Retrofit, guided
For companies, or divisions of larger ones, above US$30M. Twelve months of guidance, the instruments, a crew of operators, and the economics presented above. Then it’s yours.
The Retrofit, self-guided
For smaller companies, under US$30M. Install the same Round Pyramid yourself: the same instruments and cohort engine, run by your own people, at US$30k–80k a year (about the cost of an analyst).
Why us
We’ve done this from both sides of the table.
Ricardo Semler and this team spent forty years starting fourteen companies, none with venture capital. Then a decade of the Semco Style Institute: operations in eleven countries, two hundred client companies, many of them retrofitted, including one of the largest banks in Europe and one of India’s large software companies.
40 yrs
Semco as the original laboratory
~200
companies worked on through the SSI network
11
countries, on four continents
Thirteen of their stories, ABN AMRO included →
CURRENT THINKING · 01The End of the BossRicardo Semler, 2026 · the argument, book-length. Out now →WHY THE CUBE?
The ³ is a generation count. Semco was the first generation, the company in São Paulo that proved these ideas work. Semco Style Institute was the second: a decade of deploying the methods in Amsterdam, Tokyo, Mumbai, and Shanghai. Semco³ is the third: all our capability and knowledge, installed in your company and yours to keep.
SEMCO³ · THE SELF-UPDATING COMPANY