Scale your startup
without losing
what made it great
As your headcount grows, leadership complexity explodes. I help startup CEOs adopt the management behaviors, structure, alignment and culture, to scale fast — avoiding the hidden costs of hypergrowth.
“Iain helped us quickly build trust, alignment, and cohesion within a newly formed management team, to the point where it feels like we have been working together for years.”
Ane Anesland
CEO, Thrustme
How Thrustme anticipated the traps of hypergrowth
As orders surged, Ane anticipated hypergrowth's hidden costs: slower decisions, misalignment, and stalled delivery.
The challenge
Thrustme entered a new phase of development: organic growth driven by high market traction. 7 out of 10 managers had joined in 12 months. The risk of fragmented culture and leadership misalignment was real.
The approach
Create a tailored coaching program to build a shared understanding of leadership at Thrustme — creating cohesion, alignment and a shared management culture as Thrustme scaled.
“What I particularly value in Iain is his ability to move naturally between a CEO-level perspective, pragmatic operational frameworks, and a deep understanding of human dynamics. He brings the credibility of someone who has scaled companies himself, not just advised them. His feedback is direct and demanding, always delivered with empathy and a clear intent to help leaders grow.”
Ane Anesland
CEO, Thrustme
7/10
New managers onboarded in 1 year
Weeks
To build team cohesion & trust
0
Performance drop during scaling
600+
Tech & startup leaders coached
Clients I coached using this approach
A coaching approach to scale smartly
3 phases to transform your leadership team from fragmented to aligned — without losing momentum.
Diagnose leadership gaps
Identify together the main misalignments, cultural gaps and blind spots you believe slow down your decisions and delivery as you scale.
Align Excom members by raising mastery of key management skills
Bond and align Excom by making it work as a team to raise its mastery of core management practices to the desired level — feedback, delegation, hard conversation, 121s, change management…
Create an Excom engine that initiates, embeds and spreads change
Build a repeatable change engine where one Excom member experiments a new habit (e.g. mastering feedback), repeats it, and is joined by another who shows how they personally embedded it — then spreads it by coaching a manager reporting to them, leading to company-wide stabilisation.
Built by someone who has scaled companies, not just advised them
Turning a hybrid Excom composed of founders and newly hired experienced managers into an engine of change helps the Excom bond. Everyone sees how each member works to master one particular new skill to serve the Excom's collective delivery of decisions and change. This background of transparency and emulation also makes it easy to spot what blockers hold back the Excom's delivery and who may benefit from coaching to deliver fully in one area.
Operator mindset
Former CMO, CRO, and scale-up CEO with real transformation experience in Europe and the US. I've lived many of the challenges you're facing.
Outcome-driven, not theoretical
Focused on traction, execution, and measurable business impact. Every session ends with clear, actionable objectives — not frameworks to file away.
Built for scale-up complexity
Deep understanding of the leadership, organizational, and cultural challenges unique to fast-growing tech companies at every stage.
Empathy + radical candour
I coach with both empathy and directness. Feedback is demanding, always delivered to help leaders grow — never to criticise.
Trusted at senior levels
Advisor to CEOs, executive teams, and product leaders across scale-ups and listed companies in France, Europe and the US.
Active founder
Currently building my own early-stage startup — staying grounded in today's market realities, not yesterday's playbooks.
Book your free discovery call
Let's talk about your scaling challenges and see if we're a good fit. No commitment, no pitch — just a real conversation.
Book a free chat in my calendarOr reach out directly
Adresse
44, rue Laborde
75008 Paris, France