I coach the relationship that runs the company.
I work with venture-funded cofounder pairs who are building something that matters and have started to fight about it. My job is to help them stop having the same fight.
Here is what the work has done for founding pairs.
They nearly split three times on the way there.
Every decision had turned into a referendum on whose company it was. They are now raising at a billion-dollar valuation, and they credit the work on their partnership with getting them there.
They went from texting only to closing major deals together.
Their arguments had gotten so explosive that they stopped talking in person, right as they found product-market fit. Within three sessions, each of them could name their own part in the dynamic. Now they take walks together, give each other feedback before it's asked for, and are closing major deals as a team.
They turned quiet doubts into their biggest advantage.
They were aligned on the company and still had private doubts about each other, so they started coaching before those doubts grew. Since then they have built a strong culture while scaling, and they used what they learned with each other to win a major negotiation with one of their investors.
I've been the cofounder who left a 10X on the table.
For nine years I built two companies with a cofounder. We had our share of conflict, and we were ultimately successful, with a solid exit. We also left a 10X outcome on the table. It wasn't that we weren't aligned. We never asked ourselves the questions that would have taken us to the next level.
I learned the hard way that the business problems we kept arguing about were never the real problem. The real problem was a conversation we didn't even think to have, let alone avoid.
Today I facilitate Interpersonal Dynamics at Stanford Graduate School of Business, the course students call “Touchy Feely.” I've spent years in rooms where smart, driven people learn to say what they actually mean to each other. I bring that work to founding teams.
How I work
I'm direct, and I'll tell you what I see in our first session. I'll ask both of you to be real and not sugarcoat what you're going through. I'm also deeply supportive, so you can have the hard conversation with me in the room.
My background
- Facilitator, Interpersonal Dynamics (OB 374), Stanford Graduate School of Business
- Coach to founders and leaders at Discord, Adobe, Turo, AllTrails, Google, Pax8 and AWS
- Coach to founders backed by Y Combinator, General Catalyst and Benchmark
- Former leadership columnist for Techstars
- Nine years as a cofounder across two consumer companies
- Founder of Vitality Lab and cofounder of Zero Zero Guild with Arthur Levitan