Mentoring

My sweet spots are:

  • Founders who will or have raised between 200k€ and 5M€ or have a high-growth bootstrapped ambitions
  • HR or EDTech
  • Impact-oriented projects
  • Kind people

Rhythm: 1h30 every 2 weeks. Call me anytime.

I’m convinced that we get the most value from people that are 1-3 years ahead of us in the journey.

To date I can take 2 more projects. If you’re interested, send me an email

Below is the framework I use. If you’re interested about how I got to this model, read my story about being coached and becoming a mentor.

Chaos & Foundations

Working on only one problem when the whole ship is burning is frustrating. Spending 100% of our time putting off fires doesn’t bring progress. So we need a balance.

Foundations are the basic elements where you need clarity and skills. They’re the basic blocks your founder’s life is relies on.

Chaos is real life. Chaos is when it’s too late for theory, and you have to act.

  • Theory is “always hire people smarter than you”.
  • Chaos is “Bob was fired last month, and we need someone to handle this $1M customer. Deadline is yesterday”.
  • Foundations is “how your people system is linked to your growth engine?”

Different impact, different timing. Chaos challenges the theory, and helps you connect to your foundations. So tame the chaos, and then work on the foundations. But if you always listen to the urgent cries, you quickly lose your hearing.

That’s why in each session we do 50% Foundation / 50% Chaos.

The foundations model

The model is split in two parts: the Self and the Path.

Self :

  • Energy (sleep, diet, sport, stress, playfulness)
  • Mental (ambition, confidence, invest relationship, love)
  • Rhythm (rituals, people relationship, org., work environment)

Path :

  • Strategy (co-founder ambition, exit strategy, positioning)
  • Systems (NCT, people mgt, board mgt, sales motion, robustness)
  • Momentum (fundraising, progress, narrative)

Most foundations’ blocks are interlinked: working on your exit strategy helps you work on your co-founder relationship and board management. Sometimes you need to focus on a block in isolation, sometimes working on one moves the whole base.

Foundations scale can change. To feel good, sometimes you only need a few nights’ sleep, sometimes you need $1M in your bank account. It evolves, and it’s important to regularly check where we’re at for each block.

By working on your foundations, you become more fulfilled and take better decisions. It makes the job “lighter”. It doesn’t solve all your problems (it’s a founder/business-centric coaching method after all), but it makes sure you anticipate and work on all the main dimensions of your adventure.

“If you don’t know where you are going, any road can take you there.”

Cheshire Cat – Alice in Wonderland

I picked the blocks (sleep, exit strategy, …) from my own experience, and ranked them by impact and frequency. As simple as that.

A few examples of blocks that made the top 25, and one that didn’t:

  • Exit strategy: low frequency (1 is enough!), huge impact, huge personal experience
  • Sleep: high frequency (every day…), low immediate impact, moderate personal experience
  • Looking at progress: mid frequency, low personal experience, but… science says it has a huge impact!
  • VC brand: lower impact than most think. 😉

From experience, most founders are really really bad at exit strategy, co-founder ambition, sleep, board management, and ambition. It’s baffling to see how many founders are obsessed with company growth while having absolutely no idea about who would buy their company and why. No blame here, I was part of the club!

One question I like to ask: “if you could sell your company right now and get $2M on your bank account, would you do it? What about your co-founder?”. Most of the time the answer is “yes” and “I have no idea”, while pursuing a strategy that could make the company worth $0 or $50M (see Dragster, boat or rocketship: are you building the right startup?).

What’s next?

Feel free to use this framework to coach people, or to reflect on your current self. And again – if you need mentoring… send me an email!