Startup Coaches, Events, and Resources

Welcome! With over two decades of experience in leadership and executive coaching, I specialize in empowering startup founders to navigate the complexities of scaling their businesses. As the Founder of Surko Coaching, I have partnered with high-potential leaders to enhance their executive presence, strategic decision-making, and resilience, ensuring they are equipped to lead with confidence and clarity. My extensive background includes roles such as Chief Experience Officer at Flowcode and Senior Vice President of Customer Success at Bluecore, where I drove significant growth and operational excellence. I am an ICF Accredited Coach and hold certifications in Career and Leadership Coaching, which I leverage to tailor my coaching approach to each client's unique needs. Let's connect to explore how I can support your journey to success!

The equation is simple: value = pain + education. Your clients or prospects have the pain: I help you educate them. I've helped entrepreneurs raise, sell, and close millions of dollars from the powerful stories we tell in the form of sales and pitch decks. I've honed this skill as I've been trained in a pitch deck design firm, to running a startup incubator, to working in VC, to now running my own brand and deck agency. I'm your go-to source for branding, storytelling, and presentation structure. In addition, I have extensive experience in data analytics, 0 to 1 startup innovation, customer research, market/competitive analysis, and strategy. I love the entrepreneurship game! Looking forward to learning about your story.

Welcome to my profile! With a rich background in entrepreneurship and finance, I am here to help you navigate the complexities of starting and growing your own business. As a Co-Founder of Sora Finance, I've successfully raised $5.5M and we recently sold to Flourish (a subsidiary of MassMutual). giving me firsthand experience in scaling startups and raising capital. My time at McKinsey & Company as a consultant honed my strategic and operational skills, which I now leverage to guide entrepreneurs in achieving their goals. Additionally, my leadership roles at Kiva and Generation have equipped me with the expertise to support small businesses and drive impactful change. Let's connect and turn your entrepreneurial vision into reality!

I’m a Stanford GSB MBA, McKinsey & Co, and Northwestern alum who’s excited to join you in the trenches of building and scaling startups! As a co-founder of Bluebird Kids Health, I’ve helped grow a 100+ person team and raise $32.5M in venture funding in under 2 years. I know firsthand the highs, lows, and unexpected hurdles of the entrepreneurial journey, and I love being a springboard for others figuring it out - whether that’s breaking into startups, navigating compensation negotiations, fundraising as a founder, building a strategic framework, or just figuring out your next career step. I bring both strategic insight and real-world experience, and I’ve successfully coached entrepreneurs and operators to successfully take on the challenges of launching and growing. I’ve been in your shoes — and I’d be excited to help you chart what comes next!

- Founder 2 AI startups (funding, revenue) - Early employee at $250M startup

Welcome to my profile! With a rich background in entrepreneurship and business development, I am passionate about guiding early-stage founders to success. As the Co-Founder of Sonic Unity and Entrepreneur in Residence at Oneday, I have firsthand experience in launching and scaling innovative ventures. My role as COO at QUALITY has honed my skills in strategic planning and leadership, ensuring that startups thrive in competitive markets. I also bring expertise from my consultancy, Be My Guest, where I specialize in building iconic brands and sustainable business models. Let's work together to turn your startup vision into reality—reach out to start your journey today!

I’m a former VC and the CEO/founder of a venture-backed startup funded by Silicon Valley and Singapore-based investors. I’ve spent 20 years in finance, strategy, and investing where I've been evaluating hundreds of founders, reviewing pitch decks, shaping investment narratives, and leading diligence across early-stage and growth-stage companies. As a former Partner at Turret Capital and Director of Investment Strategy at Catcha Group (Southeast Asia’s leading venture builder), I’ve overseen a $1 billion portfolio and worked directly with founders on business models, GTM strategy, traction storytelling, and fundraising readiness. I’ve also raised capital for my own company, giving me firsthand insight into what investors actually look for in a pitch. My specialty is helping founders win high-stakes opportunities by crafting clear, compelling, investor-ready materials. I support early-stage teams with pitch deck creation and refinement, business plan development, investor narrative strategy, market sizing, competitive analysis, and overall fundraising preparation. Whether you're refining your pre-seed story or preparing for a Series A raise, I bring both investor and founder perspective to help you communicate your value with precision.

I work with startup founders the same way I approach real-world decision making. No hype, no theory, and no pretending there is a one-size-fits-all playbook. I focus on helping you make clear, practical decisions based on your actual situation, not what sounds good online. My background is built around working with real people, solving real problems, and cutting through bad assumptions that hold businesses back. Whether it is structuring your next move, thinking through risk, improving decision-making, or getting unstuck, I bring a disciplined, straightforward approach that helps you move forward with clarity and confidence instead of guesswork. I am also the author of Who’s Got Your Six?, which focuses on accountability, trust, and making better decisions when it matters most. That same mindset carries into how I work with founders. I am not here to impress you with jargon. I am here to challenge weak assumptions, help you think clearly about risk and opportunity, and build a plan you can actually execute. Whether you are early stage, trying to stabilize, or looking to make smarter strategic moves, I bring a disciplined, straightforward approach that helps you move forward with clarity, confidence, and a much higher level of awareness than most people operate with.

I'm a 3x founder and CTO who's shipped products as a sole engineer, scaled startups from the inside, and led an open-source AI research team. I was a top performer in Sandbox's SB05 Cohort, one of the most selective startup accelerators for Utah founders. I'll help you cut what's killing your runway, ship what matters, and leverage AI to move like a team twice your size.

I’ve been involved with dozens of successful early-stage startups as a Co-founder, CEO, Investor, Advisor. I’m passionate about helping others avoid the pitfalls of early-stage startups, team formation, idea validation, development, and go to market strategy. I currently help run a Venture Studio in Utah called Philo Ventures where we're building startups with a team of software engineers, product strategists, ux designers, marketers. Part time I also help run a student startup incubator based at Brigham Young University called 'Sandbox' where undergraduate students take a year off of their normal coursework and get college credit while we pair them up with experts from the community and teach them how to start a software startup.