Hi, I’m Katie. I’m a Fractional COO. I help early-stage SaaS founders stop running their companies from: vibes Slack threads “Steve knows how to do it” Around here you’ll find: • startup psychology • systems that actually stick • AI that saves time (not creates more work) • observations from inside growing companies Welcome. 👋

One thing I've been thinking about after a founder conversation: Hiring someone impressive and hiring someone who fills an actual gap on your team are two very different things. The résumé can be beautiful. The organizational fit can still be terrible. Very expensive distinction.

I’ve spent years getting dropped into growing companies when things feel harder than they should. My biggest lesson: The problem everyone is complaining about is very rarely the first problem I fix. Follow the friction upstream.

If your team has to ask the founder where to find information more than once, you've got a systems problem. If they have to ask EVERYYY week, you've got an expensive systems problem. (And probably a very tired founder.)

I think a lot of founders confuse being needed with being effective. I get it. When you're the person who knows everything, solves everything, and catches everything, stepping back feels crazy. sometimes the most important thing you can build is a company that needs you less

Hot startup take I will defend forever: A little process makes you faster. Having six people ask the same question in Slack does not.

If your team needs the founder to answer the same question for the fourth time…quit with the slack channels and just document the dang thing.

Somewhere in America right now, six highly paid adults are sitting in a Slack channel waiting for someone named Brian to answer ‘who owns this?

Check out the latest article in my newsletter: Your team needs ownership. NOT another tool! linkedin.com/pulse/your-team… via @LinkedIn

tiny career rule I believe deeply: Tell people when you think they’re good at something. Recommend them when they’re not in the room. Make the introduction. Send the opportunity. There is plenty of room for more than one person to win.

if I’m dropped into a company where everything feels chaotic, I don’t start writing SOPs. I start here: What keeps breaking? Who actually owns it? Where does information live? What keeps coming back to the founder? You can learn a LOT before creating a single new process.

“We don’t have time to fix our processes.” Team spends five hours a week manually fixing the same problem. “We don’t have time to document this.” Founder answers the same question 11 times. Startup math remains fascinating to me.

Onboarding taking 18 days. $30K+ ARR sitting uncollected. A founder answering questions all day. Five people giving five answers to “who owns this?” Different symptoms. Same thing I’m looking for: Where has the company grown faster than the way it operates?

One of my favorite client results: Onboarding went from roughly 18 days → 6. The answer wasn’t “work faster.” We mapped the customer journey. Clarified ownership. Fixed the handoffs. Created an actual operating rhythm. Speed was the result. Clarity was the intervention.

Founders often ask if they need to hire another person. 1st Q: What is creating the workload? More customers? Great. Duplicate work, bad handoffs, unclear ownership, and humans manually stitching systems together? Let’s maybe not spend $100K+ solving that with another human

The founder bottleneck is measurable. I worked with a growing company where onboarding took roughly 18 days. We mapped the customer journey, clarified ownership, and rebuilt the handoffs. Onboarding dropped to 6 days.

If your Head of CS asks you whether a customer should receive something Sales promised three weeks ago… I already know three systems I want to inspect.

Founders will spend $30k on software before admitting the actual problem is nobody knows who owns anything.

My favorite startup species is the person who says: “This might be a stupid question…” And then asks the question that reveals the entire company has been doing something ridiculous for 18 months. Protect them at all costs.

very underrated business milestone: The first time you realize you’re no longer asking: “Will someone let me do this?” You’re deciding what you want to build. Different energy.