The "under-the-radar" strategy was Elena’s design, and it was as much about survival as it was about growth. While the high-end boutique firms in Manhattan were fighting over the scraps of the Fortune 500, Elena was focusing on the companies that existed in the cracks of the economy—logistics firms with fleets of five hundred trucks, regional data centers, and mid-tier supply chain managers who were too big to fail but too small to be noticed. These were the "grey firms," entities that handled billions in assets but possessed IT infrastructures that were barely held together by legacy code and optimism.
"We have to be ghosts, Clara," Elena had insisted during their first strategy session. "If we go after the sharks, we get eaten. If we go after the minnows, we get ignored. We need to be t
