Operator-grade clarity.
Human-grade depth.
Executive coaching for venture-backed founders navigating the problems that don't come with playbooks: cofounder tension, board pressure, executive team scaling, hard strategic decisions, and the private question of whether you're still the right leader for the next phase.
Book an intro conversationYou're here because the stakes just changed.
You just closed a round and the expectations doubled overnight. You doubled the team and the people problems tripled. The cofounder relationship that used to run on trust and texting is now running on tension and avoidance. Your board conversations feel like performances instead of working sessions. You hit a leadership ceiling you can't push through with more hours or more effort. You're exhausted from being the answer to every question.
You're not looking for validation. You're not looking for generic advice from someone who's never sat in your seat. You want someone who understands what it actually takes to build a venture-backed company and who can help you lead through this next phase with clarity, not just grit.
Why founders choose this over the usual alternatives
White-knuckling it alone
This is what most founders do. You absorb the pressure, process it alone at 2 AM, and keep performing confident leader for everyone around you. It works until it doesn't. The cost is slow: eroding judgment, creeping isolation, and the gradual narrowing of your thinking at the exact moment your company needs it to expand. The founder who tries to hold everything alone eventually becomes the bottleneck they're trying to prevent.
A conventional executive coach
Many executive coaches are skilled at leadership frameworks and behavioral feedback. But most have never built a company, never raised venture capital, never navigated a board that controls your fate. The result is a translation problem: you spend half the session explaining the context, and the advice lands at the surface level. For founders at real inflection points, this gap matters.
Therapy
Therapy is valuable. Many founders should be in therapy, and some of my clients are. But therapy is primarily oriented toward healing and understanding the past. This work is oriented toward understanding and leading. We may touch on origin stories and patterns, but always in service of a concrete leadership decision or conversation happening this week. The pacing, the orientation, and the accountability are different.
A peer group or founder community
Peer groups like YPO, Hampton, or EO provide camaraderie and normalized struggle. That matters. But the conversations are broad, the context switches are constant, and the depth is limited by group dynamics and time. You're unlikely to bring the hardest, most vulnerable material to a room of twelve peers. And no one in that room is trained to help you see the pattern underneath the problem you just described.
How companies actually get unstuck
Most of the breakdowns founders bring to coaching look like company problems on the surface: missed targets, unclear strategy, team dysfunction, bad board dynamics. Underneath, they're almost always leadership problems. The company can't scale unless the founder's inner operating system evolves with it. That's not a philosophical claim. It's a pattern I've seen in 120+ engagements.
Self
When a founder's nervous system is running hot, it shows up everywhere: snapping at the team in stand-ups, micromanaging decisions they've already delegated, avoiding hard conversations because the emotional cost feels too high. The work here is building the internal steadiness to lead from clarity rather than reactivity. Not suppressing the intensity. Channeling it.
Team
Poor delegation, unclear executive ownership, meetings that produce discussion but not decisions, senior hires who wait for the founder to tell them what to do. These are symptoms of a founder who hasn't learned to lead through others yet. The work here is building a real leadership team that carries the weight of the company with you, not for you.
Company
Weak operating cadence, strategy that changes every quarter, board conversations that feel performative, investor relationships built on spin instead of trust. The work here is building the systems, rhythms, and governance that let the company run without the founder at the center of every decision.
How I work
We talk about your roadmap, your org chart, your board dynamics, your executive relationships, and the conversation you've been putting off for three months. We also look at the beliefs, habits, and emotional patterns driving your decisions underneath. You don't need to translate the startup context or simplify the problem to fit my frame. I've lived it.
- Sharp questions that cut through the noise to what's actually going on.
- Direct truth, delivered with care, when you're getting in your own way.
- Concrete next steps: a conversation to have, a decision to make, a boundary to set.
How This Works
The container
I work with a small number of founders in a 3-month initial engagement. Most clients extend, but a focused sprint on a specific challenge is often the most powerful place to start.
Kickoff
We begin with a longer intake session to map your world: company stage, key relationships, pressure points, leadership patterns, and 2 to 3 real commitments for our work together.
Cadence
Weekly or biweekly sessions, 60 to 75 minutes over video. Each session is focused on what's live: cofounder dynamics, board prep, hiring decisions, strategy forks, the conversation you've been avoiding.
Between-session support
Email or voice memo for high-stakes moments that can't wait: drafting a tough message, a quick perspective check before a board call, debriefing after a hard conversation.
Experiments and practices
After some sessions, one small experiment: a conversation to have, a boundary to hold, a new meeting format to try, a reflection prompt. Insight becomes action. Action becomes pattern change.
Closing integration
Before we wrap, we consolidate what you've learned, what changed, and how you'll sustain it beyond our work together.
FAQ
Who do you work with?
Primarily venture-backed founders from Seed through Series C, especially technical founders and product-led founders navigating the transition from builder to leader. I also work with selected C-suite leaders in high-growth companies, but founders are the core of my practice. The common thread is someone who's building something that matters and who's willing to do the inner work the outer work demands.
Do you work with technical founders?
Technical founders are some of my strongest engagements. I'm a technical founder myself: three startups, products built and scaled, engineering and product decisions I've lived through, not just studied. I speak code, product, infrastructure, org design, and boardroom fluently. You won't need to explain what a sprint is, why your CTO and VP Eng have different jobs, or how board dynamics work at a Series B. We start where you are.
How is this different from therapy?
Therapy is primarily oriented toward healing and understanding the past. This work is oriented toward understanding and leading. We may touch on origin stories, patterns, and the emotional material underneath your decisions, but always in service of a concrete leadership situation happening now. The pacing is faster, the orientation is forward, and there's real accountability built into the work. Both are valuable. They do different things.
What if I'm not sure I'm coachable?
Coachability isn't a personality type. It's three things: the willingness to tell the truth about what's actually happening, the willingness to look at your own patterns rather than just everyone else's, and the willingness to act on what you discover. If those three things sound like you, you're coachable. If you want someone to validate your current approach and tell you what you want to hear, we're probably not a fit.
What's the time commitment?
Most clients meet weekly or biweekly for 60 to 75 minutes. Between sessions, expect occasional homework: a conversation to have, a reflection prompt, a small experiment to run. The time investment is modest. The return on that time is typically the highest-leverage hour of your week.
How long do engagements last?
We start with a 3-month container. Most clients extend to 12 to 24 months, but coaching is month-to-month after the initial commitment. You can end anytime.
What's the investment?
I'll share pricing on our intro call once I understand your situation. This is a premium engagement designed for leaders whose decisions affect teams, investors, and outcomes worth protecting.