How do I find a startup coach?

The best source is other founders at your stage, followed by your chair or a board member, followed by people whose writing you already trust. Directories give you volume without signal. Expect to speak to three candidates, and expect the useful part of the search to be working out what you actually need.

Finding is the easy half. This piece is about sourcing. Vetting is a separate job.

Start by working out what you need

Most bad searches begin with browsing. Ten minutes of thinking first will save you three wasted conversations.

Write down the sentence you have not said to anyone. The real one, not the tidied version. About your co-founder, the raise, or whether you want this in two years.

Then sort it. If it is mostly "I do not know how this works," you want a mentor, and mentors are found differently and usually cost nothing. If it is "I know what to do and I am not doing it," that is coaching.

If you cannot write the sentence at all, you are not ready to hire yet, and the first three calls will be vague in a way that wastes everyone's time.

Where the good ones actually come from

Other founders at your stage. By a wide margin the highest-yield route. The critical detail is how you ask. Do not ask whether they liked their coach. Ask what changed in how they operate. A founder who cannot name a specific change is telling you the engagement was pleasant and inert.

Your chair or a board member. Better connected than they usually let on. It also removes any anxiety about how the board will read the decision, and in my experience boards read it well.

People whose writing you already trust. Slow, and it rarely misleads you. You can hear how someone thinks before you pay them. If their writing is generic, the sessions will be too.

Operator networks and peer groups. Founder communities, alumni networks from a previous company, small CEO groups. Recommendations here come with context you can interrogate.

Where not to bother

Open directories and marketplaces. They rank by who paid or who filled in the most fields. Useful for building a list of names, useless for judging any of them.

Cold inbound. If a coach found you and pitched, you are on a prospecting list. Not disqualifying, and not a signal of quality either.

Search results alone. Ranking measures marketing effort. Some good practitioners are excellent at both and plenty of the best have almost no web presence because their practice is full.

What a full practice looks like

Worth knowing, because it changes how you approach people.

Coaches doing this seriously usually have limited capacity, often a roster in the tens rather than hundreds. I work with 67 founders and CEOs across 13 countries, and that is close to a ceiling. What is open, and what it costs, is on the services page.

This means the best route in is frequently a referral rather than a form, that waiting lists are real, and that someone with immediate availability is not necessarily bad but is worth a question about why.

It also means many will qualify you rather than sell to you. I stopped offering free discovery calls to unqualified leads because the work only functions when both people take it seriously from the start. Being asked hard questions on a first call is a good sign, not a bad one.

How many to speak to

Three is the right number. It gives you a comparison without turning the search into a project.

More than five and you are usually avoiding the decision, which is worth noticing on its own. It is also a pattern that shows up later in the work.

Speak to all three before deciding on any of them. Founders who commit to the first conversation they enjoy tend to be buying rapport rather than judgment.

What to have ready for a first conversation

Your sentence. The one you wrote down, or the output of the founder burnout risk quiz if that is easier to start from. You do not have to lead with it, but you should be willing to say it, and how they respond is most of your signal.

A genuinely complicated situation from last quarter. Describe it and watch how fast they get to a good second question. Someone with the right background moves quickly. Someone without it needs ten minutes of setup.

Your constraints. Budget, cadence, whether you or the company pays. Do not hide these to seem more attractive. If you cannot afford someone, it is better for both of you to find out in the first ten minutes.

Before you commit

Ask for a paid three-session trial with a clean exit. A good coach offers this before you ask, and anyone making the exit awkward is showing you how the ending will go.

Then settle logistics in writing: cadence, engagement length, what happens in a crisis, confidentiality, and notice period. Six to twelve months at fortnightly sessions is the working default in my practice.

For what to actually test during those conversations, how do I choose a CEO coach covers the three questions that separate the field.

Common questions

Does location matter?
Rarely now. Most of this work runs remotely and has done for years. I work across 13 countries. What matters more is time zone overlap when something breaks on a Tuesday.

Should I find someone in my industry?
Usually not necessary. Judgment, relationships and role problems are not sector-specific. Industry knowledge matters for advisory work, which is a different purchase.

How long does the search take?
Two to four weeks if you are deliberate. Longer than that usually means you are avoiding the decision rather than researching it.

What if my co-founder should have one too?
Common and reasonable. Different coaches, usually, so neither of you is managing a shared relationship. Sometimes a separate co-founder session with a third person on top.

The short version

Ask founders at your stage what changed for them, ask your chair, and read people before you meet them. Speak to three. Then trial before you commit.

More on the category in what is startup coaching. If you want to find out quickly whether we would work, see how I work.