24 months, 5 engagements, 4 transformations of scale-ups between €5M and €15M in revenue.
Not easy. But behind every transformation there are ambitious CEOs and teams that want to deliver, so I took every engagement and we got the work done — together.
Product, Design, and Engineering teams that have lost their ability to deliver business impact? Marketing and Sales teams desperately short on the material they need to sell? Trust between departments eroding? AI investments with no clear ROI?
If none of those sound familiar, you're a solopreneur — and even then, you can still disagree with yourself! These are growth problems. I see them on repeat in perfectly healthy companies.
Here's what I took away from supporting 4 French scale-ups through their transformations:
1/ Our startups can go incredibly far in "founder mode."
For a coach like me who breathes organization and best practices, hitting €5M, €10M, or €15M ARR in founder mode still impresses me. The downside: founders become the bottleneck, and the talent they hired stays under-used.
2/ If the CEO isn't bought in on the transformation, don't even try.
Marty Cagan calls this "transformation theater" — and that's exactly what it is. When transformation isn't the CEO's priority, it isn't anyone's priority.
3/ We're using AI too much in silos.
The companies that will unlock the famous 10x in AI productivity are the ones that figure out AI collaboration across teams, not just within them.
4/ Watching a team take real ownership of its transformation is exceptionally rewarding.
Owning the new principles, running the new rituals, refocusing on value, becoming autonomous. When human impact creates business impact — that's the part of this work I love the most.
Transforming your organization isn't a sign of failure. It's one of the ingredients of success.
Every growing company goes through several organizational breaking points (see Dunbar's thresholds). Handling them deliberately protects your growth; ignoring them will cost it.