Choose one problem and give me a call

When a high-growth founder has a problem that needs solving now, I step in to help. You get senior level execution starting this week, without recruiting lag, without the full-time cost, but with a clean handoff.

The right full-time hire is three to six months away. Your problem is not.

Over the past 25 years, I lived on the front lines of community, strategy, ops, product, and growth as Community Architect at Zappos, COO of Revelry Labs (7 years, 100+ products shipped), as Chief of Staff at Venteur through its acquisition by Thatch, and as a founder with two prior exits (LaunchRock, Primeloop). Along the way I coached more than 1,200 leaders through their toughest problems, taking more than one company from chaos to clarity, and building systems that outlast me.

High-growth founder, this is for you

You have real runway, real momentum, and real problems to solve, but the person who should own it is a full recruiting cycle away. Every week you wait is a week of growth you don’t get back. (And that compounds.)

• You need the work done now, not just a JD posted soon.
• You haven’t found the right hire yet, or can’t yet justify this postion before the next milestone.
• You’d rather someone senior take it off your plate than manage someone through it (or, more likely, try to do it yourself).
• You want to come out the other side with a running system, not a dependency.

I can help you across this valley several ways:

1. Fractional COO or CoS

I set up operational excellence so you can lead.

For the founder who has quietly become the bottleneck, where the company is growing faster than the operating machinery, but also needs to hit the next milestone before unlocking these full-time roles.

• The offer: I translate your strategy into an operating cadence, set up the planning and team rituals, dashboard the metrics that matter, and unblock the team so that small decisions stop routing through you.
• You get: an installed operating system and a team that runs it, plus the space you’ve been missing to work on the business instead of in it. And, optionally, the right full-time leader recruited and onboarded to keep it running.
• Why me: 25 years operating across startups. I’ve built and run this function, not just advised on it. And I’ve hired the people who inherit it.

2. Crackshot Problem Solver

Point me at your biggest headache.

For the founder with a gnarly, high-stakes problem: a dangerous backlog in customer service that isn’t getting resolved, a secret war between sales and marketing sabotaging the roadmap, a controversial high-performer who is affecting the culture, a strategic pivot that needs extra care and attention, your own inability to dig out of your inboxes and meetings, (should I go on?)

• The offer: I dig in, get to the bottom of it, and either solve it outright or hand you a clear plan and a referral to the right person for delivery.
• You get: the problem resolved on a deadline, and your attention freed up for vision and strategy.
• Why me: founders bring me their hardest, least-defined problems precisely because they don’t fit anywhere else — and I’ve spent a career untangling them.

3. Fractional Community Growth

I turn your customers into a growth engine.

For the founder whose product gets better and spreads faster when users bring more users and members create value for each other, but who can’t yet land a full-time Head of Community.

• The offer: I find the real reason your people would gather, design the experience, seed and activate the first cohort, and build the rituals and cadence that keep it alive without you.
• You get: a live growth loop with engaged members, a documented playbook, and the hire profile for whoever runs it next.
• Why me: I’ve built community-owned ventures from zero for a living: Interwoven, Zappos, Launchrock, Uservoice. Community isn’t a tactic I read about; it’s the thing I make.

Bonus Option: Just a Call

One person you can dump the truth on.

For the founder who is lonely at the top, carrying too much on their shoulders, and just needs someone safe to speak openly with.

• The offer: I hold a safe/confidential space for you to unload on someone who has been in your seat. I won’t offer unsolicited advice, but I will ask questions that cut through the bullshit.
• You get: someone who isn’t your spouse, or investor, or cofounder, or employee who you can unload on, and the truth told to your face.
• Why me: I’ve been there myself. I’ve coached and mentored over 1,200 founders through the deepest questions, and I believe nothing is more valuable to a company than the mental health of its executives.

What this is not

• Not advice from the sidelines. I do the work alongside you and hand you a running system — not a slide deck of recommendations.
• Not a full-time hire in disguise. Every engagement is built to hand off. The goal is for you to stop needing me.
• Not a fit for everything. If what you actually need is a different specialist or a full-time hire, I’ll tell you.

How these engagements work

• Every engagement is a scoped project with a named win and deadline before we start. You’re buying a result, not an hourly rate.
• I start as early as tomorrow. We get things moving while a full-time search would still be scheduling first-round calls.
• You keep an always-open line. A light async channel runs through the engagement so nothing is waiting on ‘our next weekly sync’.
• It is built to hand off. Each engagement ends with you owning a running system and, if you want it, the profile and shortlist for the full-time hire who inherits it.

If this seems too good to be true, pick one problem that you will lose sleep over tonight, and give me a call to find out.

The ball is in your court

If you have a problem you’re carrying right now, let’s find 20 minutes.

Bring the messy version. I’ll tell you honestly whether I’m the right operator for it and how I’d scope it.

Anything open here is yours:
https://cal.com/thomasknoll/20-min-discovery