Team Facilitation & Training

OVERVIEW

Our facilitation service was intentionally designed to support the dynamic, unpredictable environment of early-stage company-building. Typically, founders engage us to facilitate a 1-day workshop for the following reasons:

Enable your team to quickly work towards an outcome (or solve an important problem) with the assistance of a neutral party who is more detached from your day-to-day activities.
Avoid the need to learn an entirely new framework or curriculum from a larger, institutional training vendor. Rather, you want simple, practical frames that will help you develop your in-house approach over time.
Remove the stress of having to be both facilitator and participant for your working session.

Our workshops are custom-designed for your needs— they are 95% practical (real-time application) and only 5% theory. Furthermore, the simple tools, frames, and exercises are designed to augment (rather than conflict with) any framework, tactic, or process you have learned or will learn in the future. These workshops work best for groups of 6 to 18 people.

RELEVANT TOPICS

Our facilitation service covers a range of topics that can be seamlessly put together in a 1-day workshop experience— it all depends on what you want to achieve now. Much of what we cover is built on the first-principles— providing the foundation for teams to come together and orient for greater speed. Here is a list of some relevant topics (not exhaustive):

Strengthening Team Trust & Psychological Safety: understand the anatomy of fear and how to work with it to unlock performance. for performance. This has become even more relevant as startups navigate the challenges of a remote and more siloed working environment.
Network Activation for Fundraising, Sales & BD… Anything: learn a tactical, proven playbook to get anything you want by systematically activating your networks— even if you don’t believe you have a strong network already! The world is a smaller, more accessible place for you.
Team Alignment: early-stage startups are much about running towards the hard things without flinching. Learn how to see what is so you can navigate towards what can be, together.
Operational Hygiene: simple frames for effective communication (vertically and horizontally), ownership/accountability, tracking progress, and new decision-making.
10X Thinking & Problem-Solving: learn how to identify and challenge limiting assumptions/beliefs (yours and others’) so you can gain new perspectives and develop better solutions. This is applicable to achieving outcomes and removing roadblocks.

What We Help Achieve

We get our hands dirty with founders to help move the needle on things that matter most. When you confront unnecessary drag— mental, tactical, and/or material— we will help you reorient for greater speed. Some areas where we have been noticeably helpful as of recent (but not limited to):

Secure more capital with a proven strategic fundraising process. In 2023 alone, we helped more than five founders secure additional capital (Series A+) with both inside and outside capital — a round that was considered to be impossible to secure.
Grow revenue through fractional support with sales, business development, and partnerships. Some examples include helping founders increase ACVs to $500,000K+ (from $100K) and structuring partnerships to add >$65M revenue in 2 years. The focus is on moving the revenue needle with what you have versus waiting to hire the perfect leader for the role.
Create paths to profitability. For example, we have helped founders find early PMF, boost revenue 2-3X, reduce burn, and create paths to profitability within 12 months.

WHO We Work With

Early/Early-growth B2B Companies (mature Seed to Series C). We have experience working with startups spanning industries such as: Finance, Life Sciences, Hospitality, Aviation, Freight, Advertising & Marketing, E-Commerce, Real Estate, and Education.
Our clients are backed by venture investors such as: Tiger Global, Sequoia, Goodwater, Softbank, a16z, Lightspeed, Accel, and Founders Fund, to name a few.

WHO We Are

We are seasoned company-builders and performance coaches— we help startup founders move the needle on the hard things such as the fundraising process, board leadership, GTM, team performance & accountability, planning and operational hygiene. Our services are a compound of tactical support and performance coaching. Unlike traditional advisors, we enjoy providing hands-on, highly responsive tactical support to founders.

Typical Engagement

We typically expect at least 2 weeks notice to help tackle your immediate facilitation needs. We understand that an emergency situation means shorter notice— we will accommodate you to the best of our needs. Assuming we work together, a typical engagement is as follows:

Kick-Off Call with Founder/CEO: we typically start with a 60-minute call to deeper understand your most immediate need— key outcomes, top challenges, and core constraints.
Agenda Preparation: we draft an agenda for the day that we believe will meet your needs. You are invited to provide input, feedback, and suggestions. We typically turn this around within 24-48 hours.
Brief Pre-Workshop Survey: a short, 5-minute survey that will help us check the pulse of the participants (and your company) so we can hit the ground running on the day.
1-Day Facilitation: 8:30AM - 5:00 PM day with relevant breaks throughout the day. We recommend participants be as well rested, hydrated, and prepared for the day’s activities.
Debrief Call with Founder/CEO: we schedule a 60-minute debrief with you to help you organize any thoughts, learnings, and actions going forward.