It starts with goals nobody agreed on, decisions nobody makes, and responsibilities nobody owns. Sound familiar? You have come to the right place.
Who I help
You are seeing the first signs of team friction. Miscommunication in client delivery. Misalignment in priorities. Progress blocked by lacking cooperation. And trust taking a hit. I make you have the hard conversations on the five make-or-break elements of every team: goals, alignment, decisions, responsibilities, and trust.
Take the 3-min testYour biggest risk is whether you and your co-founder can still have the hard conversation. I coach founding teams through the people problems that actually sink startups.
Take the 3-min testYou've become the bottleneck. Every decision runs through you and you're working past midnight. I step in part-time as your COO, build the rhythm, and hand it back.
Email me about a COO roleHow it works
For a founder building something hard who is seeing the first signs of team friction: coaching that gets goals, alignment, decisions, responsibilities, and trust solid before the cracks widen.
Delivered over a three to six month period. Coaching collaborations start from €1,000 + VAT, after an intro session.
For a founder whose biggest risk is the people building the company: coaching that gets the co-founder relationship, the team, and the way they work solid before it cracks under pressure.
Delivered over a three to six month period. Coaching collaborations start from €1,000 + VAT, after an intro session.
For a founder drowning in operations and doing every job themselves: fractional / interim COO work focused on growth operations, senior operational leadership without the cost or commitment of a full-time hire.
Monthly collaboration retainers start from €2,000 + VAT, after an intro session.
Proof
A PhD researcher joined with a lab project and a co-founder she had never had a hard conversation with. Six months later they had split equity, incorporated the company, and pitched it at a demo evening. What unstuck them was finally having someone make them talk about who owns what.
Two co-founders came in barely speaking, splitting decisions to avoid fights, with a team quietly picking sides. A few months later they had the hard conversations they had been dodging for a year, redrawn who owns what, and the team stopped walking on eggshells. The roadmap moved faster because the founders were finally not the thing blocking it.
A solo founder with eight people and no operating structure was personally approving every decision and working past midnight. Within three months of her coming in two days a week, the team had clear OKRs, weekly rhythms, and owned their own areas, and the founder went back to doing the one job only she could do.
“Some of the best emotional support and technical guidance to navigate the numerous complexities on the road to become an entrepreneur!”
About
For as long as I can remember, I've been interested in people and in building teams that sail through hardships, come back stronger than before, and lead to success. I help founders with the part of building a company where warning signs are often missed: the people and how the work runs with them. Often it looks like: goals, alignment, decisions, responsibilities, trust. When one of those slips, everything else gets harder.
I work in three ways. I coach founders building hard things through the first signs of team friction. I coach and consult founding teams through the hard conversations and decisions they've been putting off. And when a founder becomes the bottleneck, I step in as a fractional/interim COO, build the rhythm, and hand it back.
Most of this is work you already know needs doing and never get time for. I make the time and create the space for those hard conversations. If you want to know where to start, the bottleneck test takes three minutes. If you already know the fractional/interim role is more what you are looking for, send me an email: sini@focuspocus.fi
Email me
A free 30-minute conversation. No form, no funnel. Email me a line about where you are and we'll find a time.