Fractional COO for founder-led B2B SaaS companies
Fix how the company runs. Keep execution with your team.
I work with founder-CEOs whose companies have outgrown the way they plan, decide, and execute.
We can start with a focused 90-day operating reset or an embedded fractional COO relationship. Either way, I work at the senior operating layer. Your leaders run their teams. I help the company run as one.
The operating condition
You probably know this situation.
The company has capable people. The strategy is not a mystery. But too much still depends on you.
- Cross-functional decisions keep coming back to the CEO.Decision rights
- Leadership meetings surface updates but do not resolve tradeoffs.Cadence
- Priorities change faster than the team can absorb them.Focus
- Functional leaders hit their own goals while company priorities slip.Alignment
- You find out too late that the quarter is off track.Visibility
- You are debating a COO hire without a clear definition of what that person should own.Role design
None of this means the team is weak. It usually means the company grew faster than the way it runs.
Two ways in
Choose the shape that fits the problem.
The 90-day operating reset
Fix the system. Hand it back.
A fixed engagement with a hard end date. I find the operating constraint, redesign the two or three mechanisms behind it, install them with your leadership team, and transfer the system to a named owner inside the company.
Some companies take the reset and run it themselves. Some use it as the first 90 days of an embedded relationship. Both are valid outcomes.
See the first 90 daysEmbedded fractional COO
Keep senior operating ownership in the room.
I join the leadership team as fractional COO. I own the company operating cadence, stay in the room for cross-functional tradeoffs, and help the team run the system quarter after quarter.
Your functional leaders still run their teams. This is not daily operations management or interim executive coverage.
See what I ownAfter a reset, some companies keep a lighter standing-advisory cadence. We decide that at the end, not before the work begins.
The first operating cycle
Install it by running it.
Days 1 to 30. Find the constraint.
I interview you and the leadership team, sit in the operating meetings, and watch how decisions actually move. I map ownership, escalation, priorities, and the points where the system stalls.
Outputs
- One written operating diagnosis
- A map of the primary constraint
- Agreement on the two or three mechanisms to change
Days 31 to 60. Redesign and install.
We redesign the minimum operating system the company needs: priority architecture, decision rights, leadership cadence, scorecards, and escalation rules.
Outputs
- Clear company priorities and owners
- Decision and escalation rules
- A leadership cadence built around decisions rather than status
Days 61 to 90. Stabilize and transfer.
We run the system on real work and fix what does not hold. The rules get documented. The internal owner takes over, or the embedded relationship continues.
Outputs
- A working operating cadence
- A trained internal owner
- A before-and-after review and next-step recommendation
The boundary
Senior operating work. Not outsourced operations.
I do
- Diagnose company-wide execution problems
- Work directly with the CEO and leadership team
- Redesign priorities, decision rights, and escalation
- Install the operating cadence and accountability model
- Coach the internal owner through adoption
- Stay in the room for cross-functional tradeoffs in an embedded relationship
I do not
- Run daily operations for you
- Join routine standups
- Replace functional leaders
- Cover an open executive seat full time
- Take turnarounds or acute cash crises
- Monitor Slack around the clock
Your leaders run their teams. I help the company run as one. If you need a full-time executive in the building every day, I am the wrong call and I will tell you quickly.
A fit usually looks like this
- Founder-led B2B SaaS or software-centered company
- Roughly $5M to $30M in revenue and 30 to 150 people
- Past product-market fit
- A real functional leadership team already exists
- The founder is willing to change personal decision behavior
- For a reset, someone inside the company can own the system after handoff
I will turn away
- Pre-product-market-fit companies
- Companies needing daily executive coverage
- Turnarounds and cash crises
- Companies without a management layer
- Founders unwilling to change how priorities, decisions, or authority work
The operator behind the work
Experience in the seat. Not a borrowed playbook.
I have held the COO seat three times and the CRO seat once across public and private technology companies. I was an early team member at Automattic, later operated at Tucows, and now run Helm.
I have worked across revenue, product, technology, finance, and G&A. The value is not a universal framework. It is knowing which operating problem the company actually has, what to change, and what not to add.
- Automattic
- Early operating experience inside a distributed company that scaled globally
- Tucows
- Public-company operating and executive experience
- Helm
- Current founder and CEO, building an operating-system software company
- Between Two COOs
- 67 long-form operator conversations
The operator corpus
What 67 operators taught me about where scaling breaks.
Between Two COOs is not a testimonial attached to this page. It is an ongoing body of research. Across long-form conversations with COOs, presidents, chiefs of staff, founders, and investors, three patterns repeat:
- Execution breaks when priorities are stated but tradeoffs stay implicit.
- Founder bottlenecks persist when authority is delegated without decision rules.
- Management systems fail when they create reporting work without changing decisions.
The patterns inform the diagnosis. Your company still gets a specific one, not a borrowed playbook.
How the relationship works
Attention, with clear boundaries.
I run Helm full time. That shapes the boundary of this offer, not the seriousness of the work.
I do not sell daily operating coverage. I work directly with the CEO and leadership team on the decisions and mechanisms that require senior operating judgment.
Working commitments
- A scheduled CEO working session each week
- Leadership and implementation sessions as the work requires
- Written review of the operating materials we agree on
- A two-business-day normal response window, with an agreed urgent standard
- For a reset, a hard start date and hard end date
- For an embedded relationship, participation in the agreed company operating cadence
Fair questions.
You run another company. Will I actually get enough of you?
That is the right first question. The engagement has a fixed cadence, defined commitments, and a clear boundary. If your problem requires daily executive attention, it requires a different operator and I will say so on the call.
Can a part-time COO actually work?
Sometimes no. If the job is daily management, emergency coverage, or constant firefighting, no. If the constraint is priorities, decision rights, cadence, and accountability, a part-time senior operator can change the system without becoming another dependency.
How is this different from a consultant with a deck?
The deliverable is not a document. It is a running operating system installed on the company's real work. If nothing about how decisions get made has changed, the engagement failed.
What happens after a reset?
The internal owner runs the system. Some companies keep a lighter advisory cadence. Others continue into an embedded fractional COO relationship. Others need nothing further. The reset is designed to end cleanly.
Are you using this to sell Helm?
No software purchase is required. If Helm is ever genuinely relevant, I will say so directly and you can decide. The operating work stands on its own.
What does it cost?
The reset is a fixed fee. The embedded relationship is monthly. I do not bill hourly. Final scope and price are set after the fit call.
Start somewhere useful
Bring me the operating problem.
We will decide whether it needs a 90-day reset, an embedded fractional COO, or a different kind of operator.
Book a fit call