Work with me.

Order & Chaos.

This diagram has lived on my wall for ten years. It’s the most honest version of how I see the work.

Science on one side... logical, orderly. Art on the other... emotional, instinctual, playful. Most founders pick a side. The real work happens in the middle. Just enough order to keep the wheels on, just enough chaos to make something new. I sit about sixty/forty toward the art.

The burning building.

It’s the picture I draw most often. You’re on the top floor of a burning building. Ten doors in front of you. Your team is behind you saying which door, boss? and the smoke is coming.

The winning move is picking a door, convincing your team you have a feeling about it, and working out the rest in the stairwell. Most founder coaching avoids this conversation. I lean into it.

What I actually know.

I ran FMG through the 2008 crisis as a first-time CEO. I founded Ceros in 2012 and led it for thirteen years, from fifty grand in revenue to just under sixty million, until it sold to Sumeru in 2020. Hired well, hired badly, kept some people too long, learned the difference. I know how this works, and I know how it breaks... mostly because I’ve done both.

• Hiring, firing, and the years it takes to get a feel for either.
• Building leadership teams. Rebuilding them when they stop fitting.
• GTM that worked at twenty people and stopped working at sixty.
• Reinvention, when the ground moves under you... which, right now, it is.
• What AI is actually doing to the work, the team, and the way you think.
• Founder identity, and the way it fuses with the company without anyone asking permission.

Nearly every operational problem is a human problem wearing a logical disguise. We’re usually two layers down within an hour.

I don’t work alone.

AI isn’t a tool I use. It’s the way I operate. I’m running six agents at a time most days and it feels like a team of thirty. My personal AI, Jony, lives in my Slack and ships real work daily. He built the page you’re reading... including the little red thing that’s been riding down the side of it with you :)

When it makes sense, I install the stack with you and we learn to operate this way together. Most founders start out curious and leave operating in a completely different way.

The frameworks I actually use.

I’m not a playbook coach. The world is too chaotic for that right now. But there are a few I lean on enough to name.

• Lencioni’s Five Dysfunctions. I’ve been teaching it for thirteen years. I know it cold.
• Business Sprints. Built with my old CTO. The plan never survives. The alignment does.
• The Hard Thing About Hard Things. Ben Horowitz: the great CEOs are the ones who decide when there is no right decision to make. That’s the whole burning building.
• Play Then Apply. My own. Become a curious child again. Play with the tools, notice the patterns... and only then, apply.
• Sandler. On the sales side. Less ego, more honest conversation.

The kind of founder I’m built for.

Pre-seed, seed and Series A is where I light up. Later stage works too... I got Ceros there myself. But the joy is earlier.

Good fit if you...

• can sit in the room when I tell you something you don’t want to hear
• are stuck in the no right answer trap
• care about creativity as much as execution
• know something fundamental is shifting because of AI, and want a thinking partner more than a coach

Probably not me if...

• you want validation for decisions you’ve already made
• vulnerability isn’t on the table

The shape.

Sometimes a retainer. Sometimes advisory equity. Sometimes just a conversation, because the situation matters more than the invoice. Always month to month... the value should be obvious enough that it works for both of us.

I keep a tight book. Three to six clients at most, and right now I have room for two to four more.