The founder does the work
There is no junior varsity team at Rubato. No work is farmed to associates. The person you meet in the first conversation is the person drafting your script at eleven at night before the call.
About
One person, three careers, twenty years of Wall Street.
Derek started his career at JP Morgan H&Q where he was a sell-side equity research associate covering enterprise software. Following his sell-side stint he spent six years pursuing his doctorate from Brown University in Comparative Literature, where he defended a dissertation with distinction on the intersection between finance and literature in the turn of the 20th century American and French novel.
With academic pursuits satisfied, Derek returned to his Wall Street roots and started a 10+ year career in Investor Relations, beginning with Google, where he worked for over four years helping to drive quarterly earnings as well as landing historic corporate moments like the company’s Class C issuance, acquisition of Motorola Mobility, and Alphabet restructuring.
Not content to remain in the internet sector, Derek embraced his enterprise software roots and revamped Investor Relations at Tableau Software beginning in 2017, leading up to the company’s successful acquisition by Salesforce for $15.7 billion dollars, as well as helping to communicate to Wall Street the fastest subscription business model transition in software history.
Excited to bring his expertise to a wider market and to work with smaller companies, Derek founded Rubato Consulting Group to help tech startups build durable relationships with long-term institutional investors and to help these growing companies fully prepare for a successful IPO. Spanning across three vastly different arenas (academia, finance, tech) Derek’s career experience and insights offer his clients the rare and valuable combination of narrative storytelling, rigorous financial acumen, and broad tech industry knowledge.
How we work
Three commitments that shape every engagement.
01
02
A deliberately limited roster
The client list is smaller than it could be, on purpose. That is what makes real availability possible — hands-on, reachable, and quick with a tactical read when something moves.
03
Nothing cookie-cutter
No template decks, no recycled target lists, no checklist masquerading as strategy. Every plan is built around your management team, your culture, your existing resources, and where you are actually trying to go.
Why are we called Rubato?
Tempo rubato — the temporary disregarding of strict tempo, an expressive quickening or slowing, usually without altering the overall pace.