This is a function of empathy. It reflects my belief that you have everything you need to succeed and that our task is to discover, reveal, and apply your existing capability to the challenge you’re facing. The path forward begins exactly where you are, and we’ll find a step forward for you whether we’re starting from your limitation or your strength.

This is a function of love, which in its highest form is given freely without expectation. I offer the support that I believe will best serve you given what I know, and leave you fully free to make your own choice about what’s right - or wrong - in applying that to your startup. I will not upsell, spam, or push any particular direction on you because I preference the integrity of your decisionmaking, the dignity of your knowing, and your freedom of choice over my revenue (and ego). I don’t need you to listen to me. I need you to do what you know is right to do, and I will support you in clarifying and moving forward in whatever direction that is.

This is a function of nonjudgment. Your internal experience is morally neutral. You think and feel and believe what you do because of your life experiences - not because anything about you is inherently good or bad. Absent judgment, we’ll look instead at the function of your actions, thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and values. Do they help you achieve your vision? Do they hinder you? We’ll maximize the aspects of you that support your highest ambitions, and make a thoughtful choice about how to change, heal, or downsize what doesn’t.

This is a function of trust and courage - and directly related to my years at YC where I heard hundreds of off-the-record talks about how the best founders achieved their success. Spoiler: Every successful founder’s story is unique. This means that your path to success will not look like anyone else’s. Nor should it. Your startup gives you the opportunity to make choices - big, small, major, minor, daily, strategic - that will enable you to build a product no one else ever has before, because no one else has ever been you. This is how your startup will enable your authenticity, if you let it - because it’s an expression of you. Your authenticity is how you’ll become an outlier, and only outliers win in SV. You win by being yourself. This is simple but not always easy, and my commitment is to support you in courageously executing from your authenticity.

This is a function of optimism, which I personally can’t distinguish from hope or faith. I believe in making choices that protect and enable the greatest possibilities for all living beings. I believe that our inability to tolerate the fear and ambiguity that come from many unknown, unending paths forces doors closed that don’t need to be shut. Humans have a tendency to preference certainty over possibility because knowing is emotionally easier to tolerate than not-knowing. But until you yourself make the call to shut down your startup, I will always believe in the possibility of your startup succeeding, in your ability to find a way through, and in your ambitious dream being ground into reality and taking shape IRL.

This is a function of reciprocity and healthy ego. I am an expert in founder psychodynamics and will teach you what I know. But you are the expert of you and I am necessarily your student. Partnership with me should feel like a co-created exchange where your expertise, wisdom, agency, and self-knowledge are paired with mine so we can discover together how to apply what I offer.