Founder coaching
One-on-one coaching on clarity, energy, decisions and life design, so the person running the company keeps growing too.
Experience · Certified life coach who works with founders and executives on mindset, energy and alignment.
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Step 01 / 08 · Start with yourself
Start with yourself.
Your company will inherit your clarity, and your blind spots. So the first thing to build is you: a founder who knows why, and who can keep going.
Why it matters
Most startups don’t die because the idea was wrong. They die because the founders stopped, split up or burned out before the idea had time to work. Energy, judgement and relationships decide the decade, and founders rarely plan for any of them.
Self-knowledge is an advantage you can build. Know your strengths and you hire for your gaps. Know your why and you can hold a course when every signal is noisy.
How to do it
Start with yourself
01
Why are you doing this?
Write it in a paragraph, not a slogan. Why this problem, why you, why now, and what you are willing to give up for it.
02
Map your strengths and gaps
Be honest about what you are excellent at and what drains you. Your co-founder and first hires should cover the gaps.
03
Design your operating baseline
Sleep, movement, focus time and relationships are the infrastructure of success, not the reward. Set your non-negotiables before the company sets them for you.
04
Choose co-founders like a marriage
Shared values and a real history of working together beat complementary résumés. Talk about equity, roles and what happens if it fails, before you start.
05
Set your personal runway
Know how many months you can go without a salary, and what you will do when you reach the line. Financial panic turns good founders into bad ones.
Common mistakes
- Starting a company to escape a job rather than to solve a problem
- Treating health and relationships as things to fix after the exit
- Choosing a co-founder you have never shipped anything with
- Leaving equity and roles “to figure out later”
You’re ready for the next step when
- You can explain your why in one honest paragraph
- You know what you will not do, and who will do it instead
- You have a personal runway and a line you will not cross
From the studio
Great companies need founders who last. Joaquim is a certified life coach as well as an operator, and across 70+ portfolio companies the costliest failure he has seen is not a bad market. It is a founder running on empty.
Where the studio can help
Talent and team building
Hiring plans, recruiting pipelines, onboarding and the HR foundations you need before you need them.
Experience · Scaled MLG Blockchain from 4 to 120 employees in 9 months. Built the HR function at Secure Digital Markets as it grew from 9 to 40.
Read next
Meaning and purpose
Man’s Search for Meaning
Viktor E. Frankl
Why meaning, not pleasure or power, is what carries people through hardship.
Mind and resilience
Mindset
Carol S. Dweck
The difference between a fixed and a growth mindset, and why it decides how founders handle failure.
Founder health
The Second Mountain
David Brooks
From a life of achievement to a life of commitment. It is the idea behind “build and grow together”.
Leadership and relationships
Daring Greatly
Brené Brown
Vulnerability as the root of courage, trust and real leadership.
Work with the studio
Building something worth growing?
Tell us what you’re building and what you need. We read every application, and every founder gets an answer.