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LATEST POSTS 📚

If you’re new, not yet a subscriber, or just plain missed it, here are some of our recent editions.

🥣 Unfiltered: Granola Ate The Competition. A decade of AI note-takers, all beaten by the one that refused to join your call.
🪦 Substack Committed Creatorcide. A little part of the creator economy was murdered in cold blood.
👾 Building Culture & Resilience. An interview with me, Bill Kerr, Founder & CEO at Athyna.

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HOUSEKEEPING 📨

I work—guess you’d call it work—as a mentor and investor at Startmate, which I often refer to as the YC of the Southern Hemisphere (90% of their funds are top-decile venture returns worldwide). We’ve been using a great new tool: Happenstance.

We found Happenstance through YC, actually, because it’s the tool they use to mine one another's networks for connections, leads, customers, etc. It’s an agentic people-hunting tool to find anyone in your network or your network’s network. If you like deals, and even more so, winning them, you should check it out.

INTERVIEW 🎙️

Alexis d'Amecourt, CEO at Mochary Coaching

Alexis d'Amecourt is the CEO of Mochary Coaching, the coaching firm built on the system Matt Mochary developed and wrote up in The Great CEO Within. Alexis got there the long way around. He spent twenty-five years as an operator and three-time founder before he coached anyone. He started coaching in early 2022 and has since worked with more than 65 CEOs across North America, South America, Europe, and Asia, at companies that have raised over $4.3 billion between them. The client list includes the CEOs of Substack, EigenLayer, Booksy, Magic Eden, Raycast, Recall.ai, and Yuga Labs, and partners at Accel, Bessemer, a16z, Khosla, and Sequoia send founders his way directly.

Coaching is a crowded, largely unregulated market, and plenty of it is noise. His coaching is tactical and rooted in real-world strategies, focusing on decision-making, execution, and accountability. What makes him worth listening to is mostly what he refuses to do. His allegiance is to the person in the chair, not the cap table. He is also a three-time founder who, by his own account, drove all three of those companies off a cliff, which turns out to be a more useful credential than it sounds.

Why do the world's best CEOs still need coaches?

Anything that doesn't come naturally to people, like leadership and management, is where you need a coach. It's the same as wanting to get to the top of your game in golf or any other sport. You need someone on your side who can also challenge you and support you as you grow.

There's another reason startup CEOs in particular could benefit from it. So many of them come up through a non-traditional management path, which is a nice way of saying there is no path. They jump into that seat and literally go, what do I do next? They're very smart and they work hard, but it isn't enough. They haven't had the ten or fifteen years of mentorship and training, of actually falling over, scraping their knees, and learning something.

Then there's the pressure. Investors, board members, partners, parents, and the buddy you roomed with in college, all wondering out loud why you still haven't raised a Series E. I think a good coach is a clever thief. They've seen a little bit of everything; they've taken what they see as the best of it, and rather than let you reinvent the wheel, they hand you the thing that already works. But it runs all the way through to just asking what's on your mind. Someone told me today that one of their siblings is going through a really tough time, and that it's hard for them to ask for time off to go and see them. Sometimes it's just talking that through for 50 minutes and getting them to a place where they can go. That's why a good coach can wear various hats.

How does a coach differ from a mentor or an advisor?

A coach is the one who's there to support you. A mentor will often look at what you're dealing with and relate it to how they did it, then show you their way and tell you that's the way to do it. An advisor will say, 'That's great, but 0.5% equity in the company would be really helpful.' I don't think a coach should take equity. We don't do it in our company. The reason is that taking equity clouds your judgment. Investors should take equity, but a coach should be a completely supportive relationship that isn't clouded by how the whole company is doing. It's about how the person you're coaching is doing and their growth.

So the job is to grow the person, not the company?

I'm there to coach the person and help them grow. That means I will say things that make them uncomfortable. I will call them on what I see. I will hold up the mirror and tell them exactly what I'm seeing, including when I think they're BSing me. But the point of all of it is to watch that person grow, not just to watch the company grow. My allegiance is to the person. It isn't my job to sit there thinking they're not growing the company, so they're not growing my equity, so they're not growing the valuation, so maybe we should get someone else in that seat. That's the investor's job, and I leave it to them.

What are the foundations of Mochary Coaching?

As I said earlier, we're clever thieves. There are a lot of frameworks out there. On feedback alone, you could have the McKinsey version with 37 points to it, or the lumber yard version, where feedback is one word. Both work. Our job is to find the one that fits you. What we're really doing with CEOs comes down to two things. First, we make them feel heard. We practice saying things back to them, out loud, so they know they've landed. The second is feedback—how to give it, how to receive it, what to do with it once you have it. We run that every single session.

The listening piece is what sets us apart, and it's simpler than it sounds. A founder will tell me about walking into a room where everyone looks at them, and the second they float an idea, the whole team agrees it's brilliant and decides to run with it. That's being the loudest voice in the room. I don't need to interpret that for them. I just repeat it back, and they hear themselves for the first time. What they said might have been perfectly reasonable. The tone might have been slightly off. Either way, until someone plays it back, they have no idea what they sound like.

Then we spend the last 10 minutes of every session on what happens next. What did you commit to? What are you actually going to do about it? This isn't a therapy session where I tell you I hope you feel better. If you've named five actions and each one takes two minutes, we do them right there, in front of me. Everything drives to action. We’ve put together the best playbooks with Matt Mochary in the Mochary curriculum.

What do founders misunderstand about coaching?

The objections run the whole range. It goes from ‘my investor wants me to get a coach’ to ‘are you kidding me? I don't have time for a coach. We don't even have product-market fit, and you want me to talk to a coach.’ And then all the way over to wanting one because an investor gave them feedback, and hiring a coach proves they're taking it seriously.

What I say to founders is lots of people report to you, but you report to no one. So in a way, you'll be reporting to me. It's a bit like swaddling a baby. The baby stops fighting it and realizes it doesn't have to be the one holding everything together in the room. That's what I see happen.

The coach is time-boxing the session, asking the questions, writing things down, moving them toward a decision. And then the coach points out there are three actions on the table, two minutes each, six minutes total, so let's just do them right here, out loud, right now. So they get to that place where, for once, they aren't the person responsible for everything, controlling everything, carrying all of it.

What happens in the first session, and the first month?

It's mostly about getting to know them. The first thing I ask a CEO is to tell me their story. And they'll start with how three years ago they and their co-founder started Acme Corp, and this happened, and then that happened. I stop them right there. Wait. Where were you born? Did you have brothers and sisters? Did you get into math, into technology, or was it something else entirely? What's the fiber that makes you? That takes three to five minutes. Then I tell them my story. Now we have something to build on.

After that, I want to know the biggest obstacle in front of them right now, and they'll usually say something like finding the right operating system for scale. But here's the secret: I don't need to know how to solve their problems. They think about their company 24/7. I think about coaching 24/7. So instead, we start writing it down. They start describing the exact issue, we break it apart, and before we go anywhere near a solution, I ask how they contributed to the problem. They'll hesitate, say they don't really know, and then rattle off three things. Those three things are almost always the basis of the solution.

And sometimes what comes out is much older than the problem itself. A CEO once told me the reason he doesn't give feedback is that four years earlier, someone called him a jerk for it, so he stopped. I asked whether that person actually said it. Well, no, but he was fairly sure he caught them rolling their eyes. Did they really roll their eyes? Well, they were in a dust storm at the time. So we get to the real reason, and you keep breaking it down like that. At the end of it, they look at you and see someone who's in their corner and still willing to challenge them.

How much of coaching is psychology, facilitation, or advice?

I say it again and again: I'm not a therapist. I haven't been trained as one, and I don't know how to be one. My training is being a three-time CEO, and I drove every one of those companies off a cliff, so I learned a lot. I'm also a CEO right now. There's nothing I recommend to you that I'm not doing myself at my own company. It's all tested. I believe in it. Beyond that, I want to be able to be compassionate and hold you accountable at the same time.

There's also the confidentiality piece, which matters more than people realize. When you're the CEO, and you have a heart-to-heart with someone on your team, or they give you deep feedback, and you open up, you then have to keep working alongside them. Twenty minutes later, you're wondering what they made of it. With me, that doesn't happen. I'm not in your kitchen making tea. I'm not walking past your water cooler. So you can open up knowing it's a safe space and nothing leaves the room. But I'm not there to fix a mortal wound or childhood trauma. I can relate to you, and I'll fully support you in going to get a therapist. I have CEOs with two therapists, a family counselor, and a separate counselor for the co-founders. Ultimately, I'm here to help you scale your business.

How do you coach someone through firing an executive?

You should have the conversation. Here's the reality of what's happening, here's the path, here are my expectations. But the truth is that when a CEO first raises somebody's name with me, that's usually the writing on the wall. What I'm doing at that point is giving them space and saying it back to them, while quietly knowing that maybe it lands in a month, maybe six, but that ship rarely turns around. Typically, the hesitation is because of the emotional weight of the decision in letting someone go. A great framework we walk them through is separating the decision from implementation. You know what’s right for the company—now, the actual blocker is the pain of executing this decision. So we should actually be thinking about how to make the execution less painful. That might mean offering generous severance, helping this person land their next job at a company that’s the right fit for them, etc.

Then they get to the point where they're ready to let the person go, and the first thing I tell them is that you have to be the one to have the conversation. We call it ‘firing well’. Different countries have different rules, but here in the United States it starts like this. You tell them you have difficult news to share and that you've decided to let them go. Then you stop. You let them absorb it. Most of the time, they say they knew it was coming, and there's a kind of relief in it because it's been hanging over them.

What comes next is mortgage, family, and whether this hurts their chances of getting another job. There's some shame in it too. They might get emotional, and if they do, you wait. You don't tell them it's going to be okay. You don't pat them on the shoulder. You give them the space and you sit in it with them. Then you ask if they're open to talking about severance, because the mortgage is the loudest thing in their head right now. And the framing matters. This didn't work here because of me, the CEO, and here's the severance we're giving you. If they can walk out thinking they've got enough runway to land the next job, that's an enormous weight off them.

The follow-up question is about everyone else. Are we treating the people we've worked with compassionately? It's a small price to pay for the whole company knowing you're treated as well going out the door as you were coming in. I'm also firm that today is their last day. There's no extra two weeks, no helping so-and-so with the handover. Too many variables, too many things that can go wrong. From there, you can ask whether you can share their email so people can say goodbye. And I tell people to make one more offer. I will help you find your next job, whatever it turns out to be.

Then you go to the team. You have hard news: you've let this person go; they were valuable, and here's why the decision was made. Say it plainly. Make clear this is the one dismissal, not the start of someone leaving every Friday for the next month. Because that person is going to talk to their colleagues afterward and compare notes, and your messaging needs to hold up when they do.

How widely should you share the news that someone has left?

It's case by case, and a lot of it depends on the size of the company. But what I always come back to is that in a vacuum, your colleagues will fill the gap with something. They'll build a story. They'll decide that person is leaving because of that game of rugby three weeks ago where they didn't score. Obviously, that's why. And you're sitting there thinking that it isn't it at all. But people write their own narrative if you don't give them one. So I think of it as showing compassion and respect while still being direct. And you're showing everyone else something too. If I'm ever asked to leave this company, I've watched it happen four times before, and every time it was handled with kindness.

What challenge keeps coming up with your clients right now?

Yeah, there's this thing called AI, which seems to be gaining some traction. What I hear from employees is that they aren't afraid of losing their jobs. They're afraid the job is doubling. Whatever they were doing before, they're now doing that plus the AI version of it, because AI gets treated as the cure-all for everything. Management is having to deal with that.

The other one is fear of missing out, and it hits the CEOs. Six years into building the company, two years ago the valuation was a billion, or a hundred million, and now it's come down a bit. Meanwhile, they could be working at Anthropic. They could be working anywhere. It's the same feeling as looking at your college friend and remembering you had the better scores, that three years ago you were the toast of the graduating class, and now you're not. So there's the FOMO, and underneath it, the opportunity cost of staying.

Plenty of them still love the product and want to solve big problems, and they're happy where they are. But there's a lot of money being thrown around right now. And even if you're never actually going to get hired by Anthropic, part of you thinks you could if you wanted to, you're just not trying. It's an overhang for some.

What does your day-to-day as CEO look like?

I set it up, so I have a full slate of clients. Tuesday through Friday, I'm in coaching sessions, with organizational work threaded through the gaps. Mondays are cleared for our coaching meeting, and then I'll sit down with our COO, who also drives revenue, and with our head of coaching. It's like anything else. The sessions are my big rocks for the week. Everything else, the operations of the company, is the water we pour in around them.

Because if I watch too closely and get involved in the how, I'm micromanaging. So I step back. I make sure everyone in the company understands the why. Then I agree on the metrics with our head of coaching and our COO, and I leave the rest to them.

How do you set goals?

Look, there's one way I do it. What are your goals for the quarter? Let's go through them, let's make sure you're actually hitting them, and what are the actions you're taking to get there. I do that with clients, and I ask our own team the same thing. But then there's the other layer, where you're running OKRs or some other framework and constantly checking whether you're meeting them. I'm not good at that. I'm just not very good at keeping it up. So our COO owns it.

Which leads to something every CEO should ask themselves. Can you delegate this? Can you outsource it? Or can you make it more fun? The truth is, as a CEO, there are very few things that you can’t delegate. Look at your to-do list, and at the three or four things sitting at the bottom, and notice that one of them has been there since 2024. Go through that list honestly. That item isn't giving me any energy. It actually depletes me. So can I hand it off, can I outsource it, or do I need someone sitting next to me to make it bearable? That's exactly what I did with goals and OKRs. Someone else does it.

Who are the most important people around a CEO?

Again, it depends on the size of your company. I don't think you should go out and hire a whole roster of C-suite people when you've got twenty people. Stay close to whoever is talking to customers, and that includes you, and stay close to product and engineering. But as you grow, you start noticing the things you're just not doing. I'm horrible at this one. That one gives me no joy. I'm perfectly capable of the third, but it's nowhere near my zone of genius.

So I have a Chief of Staff. I could do my own calendar, but me doing my calendar is like watching a toddler build with blocks. Something gets built, but it comes out wobbly. She's great at it, and she runs plenty of other things that would eat up my week. I don't need to spend ten hours sorting my own schedule. I also have a COO, and the way it clicked for me was something she said. Think about a movie set. You can be the director or the executive producer out in front of it. She'd rather be the one in the background pulling the permit for the location, sorting the night shoot, handling what the shoot needs. That's where she thrives.

So I look at what I won't do and don't do well, and I find someone who genuinely loves that part. It's their passion, their zone of genius. And you find yourself asking whether they really get energized by making sure our taxes are filed on time. Because I'd know they were due Monday, start worrying about it Thursday, and press the button at nine on Sunday night. It takes her four minutes. But ask her to run coaching sessions and after an hour she'd be flat. She does not want to coach, and I'm energized by it. I can do eight sessions in a day and still be ready to go.

How do you get the best out of yourself?

Second, I read a lot. I'm a voracious reader, but I keep the nonfiction to about twenty minutes a day and read fiction for an hour or two. And I recommend that to everyone, because people are always asking which leadership book will teach them about leadership. Go read a Steinbeck. Go read some Russian literature. You'll come away with far better insight into the world and how life actually works. I don't think you can separate your startup from your life anyway. It's all the same thing.

Extra reading

• How I Coach The Top 0.1% CEO's in Silicon Valley - May, 2025

• Executive Coaching in a Box: The Mochary Method and my Takeaways - January, 2023

• The Mochary Coaching Curriculum - Unknown

And that’s it! You can follow Alexis on LinkedIn or check out Mochary Coaching on their website to keep up with what they’re building.

BRAIN FOOD 🧠 

TWEETS OF THE WEEK 🐣 

TOOLS WE RECOMMEND 🛠️

Every week, we highlight tools we like and those we actually use inside our business and give them an honest review. Today, we are highlighting Svix—a webhooks-as-a-service platform that helps developers send secure, reliable, and scalable webhooks.

See the full set of tools we use inside Athyna & Open Source CEO here.

HOW I CAN HELP 🥳

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