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A founder describes the isolation CEOs face and pitches 24/7 confidential support for them. After emailing 40 CEOs and getting strong interest, he flew to Austin to help one founder over a weekend, convinced this is the work to pursue.
A founder describes the isolation CEOs face and pitches 24/7 confidential support for them. After emailing 40 CEOs and getting strong interest, he flew to Austin to help one founder over a weekend, convinced this is the work to pursue.
And I came to the realization that a lot of founders and CEOs go through things that nobody really understands as they're building their companies. They have advisors, they have mentors, they have board members, investors, they may have a partner at home, but nobody really understands what it means to be the lonely guy on the bridge or the co-founding couple that is having issues and trying to resolve them because the fundraising didn't go as you planned or whatever it is. Nobody really gets that. So what I did was I said, maybe I want to work on that. Maybe I want to help people who build companies. And I wrote 40 founder CEOs around the world, people who didn't know me, had no prior relationship with me. And I described this idea. I said, what if there was somebody who you could talk to 24/7 about anything, be that troubles at home, troubles in the business, strategic questions, tactical questions? How would that be? And lo and behold, a bunch of them got back to me and said, that sounds amazing. How much is it? And when do we get started? Literally. That's a nice response. That is like product market fit right there, right? You're like, even a blind squirrel finds a nut. So I didn't do anything with it actually for a few months because I was like, oh yeah, maybe I'll do this. Maybe I'll do something else. I was also in the process of writing a book, but that's a story for another day. And then I got a text message from somebody I had not written from Texas, a founder over there who said, I heard from so-and-so that you're doing something like this. I'm in the middle of something. I really have nobody to talk to. If I pay for a plane ticket and your time, would you mind coming to spend the weekend with me? So off I went to Austin. We spent the weekend together. We talked about what was going on in his life. And I was like, I think I'm good at this. I think I should do this. That sounds fucking awesome. I mean, it was like, there are some signs, right?
