Startup Coaches, Events, and Resources

I help startup founders turn customer insight into sharper strategy, clearer positioning, and faster growth. Over the last two decades, I’ve led consumer growth and marketing across companies like Google and YouTube, built and scaled products used by millions, and founded Jammy, an AI-powered customer learning system focused on helping teams make better decisions under uncertainty. My coaching is most useful for founders working through positioning, go-to-market strategy, customer discovery, brand narrative, product adoption, and the messy transition from idea to repeatable growth. I bring a practical operator’s lens: clarify the real customer problem, separate strong signals from noise, and turn strategy into concrete next moves.

I run two AI companies while finishing my master's at Harvard. Demystifyd, a career platform serving 2,000+ international students across 38 countries. Aware.ai, an AI maternal health platform. Before founding, I shipped product at Apple, NVIDIA, and Tesla. The U.S. government awarded me an EB-2 National Interest Waiver green card for my work in AI and entrepreneurship. I coach a specific kind of founder: international builders who want to start, scale, and stay in the U.S. — without losing their visa, their company, or their runway in the process. Most founder advice assumes you're a U.S. citizen with no clock running. International founders are operating under conditions almost no startup advice accounts for. The visa decisions you make in years 1-3 of your company shape whether you're still building it in year 7. The fundraising decisions you make affect your immigration options in ways most lawyers and most advisors don't connect. The structure of your company, your role inside it, the timing of when you incorporate, who you raise from, when you file what — all of it interacts with your visa pathway. What I help international founders with: - Founder-track immigration strategy: O-1, EB-2 NIW, and the long game beyond H-1B - Company-building decisions that protect your visa runway (incorporation timing, role definition, fundraising structure) - Positioning your venture for credibility — with investors, with USCIS, with universities and accelerators - Navigating the school question: when grad school helps your venture, when it hurts it, when to defer - AI startup positioning specifically: category, go-to-market, narrative for the current funding climate - Deciding what to build, what to kill, and what to delay — through a founder-with-a-clock lens I'm not an immigration attorney. I'm a founder who built and structured my way through this system, and now I help a small number of others do the same. I take very few founder-track clients per cohort because the work is intensive and the stakes are high. If you're an international builder serious about scaling a U.S.-based company and protecting your future here, I'll be happy to help.

I provide independent strategy, solutions, and coaching for entrepreneurs so they can grow their businesses to the next level. I am passionate about working with innovative entrepreneurs and startups to develop unique strategies to grow and fund their businesses. Whether you are a startup on the track for traditional venture-capital financing or an entrepreneur on a more offbeat path, I can collaborate with you to develop and implement a creative and practical strategy for success. I also mentor and coach with a number of organizations that develop startups including Techstars Los Angeles, the Preccelerator, and the Consortium for Technology & Innovation in Pediatrics, working with their portfolio companies as they prepare to present to investors. In addition, I have advised entrepreneurial programs at schools including the Incubator School, Marlborough School, and Project ECHO. For seven years, I ran the coaching program at Women Founders Network, an accelerator that connects women building high-growth businesses with the tools and resources they need to achieve business success. Since 2013, WFN alumnae have raised over $100 million in funding. If I look familiar, it may be because I speak regularly on issues related to startups, tech and women in business and have appeared in publications including The Huffington Post, Entrepreneur.com, Inc.com, Fortune, CNBC, StartupNation, Women 2.0, and GenHERation.

I built a startup from scratch, solo, through to launch. I made mistakes and learned a lot, but I wish I'd had someone to help me navigate the mental side of it. Spinning multiple plates day after day is exhausting. The decisions never stop, the pressure doesn't let up, and there's rarely anyone in your corner who genuinely understands what that feels like. Having a voice of reason to help manage workload, stress and priorities would have been invaluable. That's exactly what I offer now. Although I primarily work with financial traders, the overlap is significant. Both worlds demand the same thing, showing up and performing, day after day, regardless of what yesterday looked like.

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 have 20 years experience in strategy consulting and loyalty/rewards marketing, and have created several successful businesses. I've consulted to numerous startups and NFT projects at various stages from concept/pre-seed through Series D. I have a strong breadth of industry expertise having completed projects and built businesses in web 3/NFTs, travel, financial services, real estate, retail, grocery, gas. I've created reward and membership programs around the world and managed Membership Rewards partnerships at American Express as well as the Black, Platinum, and Gold Cards and developed a portfolio-wide strategy. I have my MBA from Yale University and my BA from Cornell University. I pride myself on multitasking ability (I used to have a day "corporate" job with four of my own successful businesses on the side), reliability, and loyalty/transparency. I believe in developing a tight plan up front for every project and really focus on iterative development. I'm particularly good at taking complex problems and turning them into data-driven clarity. I'm also a game theory expert so I always very much focus on the competition and making sure the businesses I advise on are positioned appropriately.

I work with founders to turn ideas into scalable, data-driven products - focusing on what actually drives growth: product-market fit, activation, conversion, retention, and go-to-market strategy. As a Senior Product Manager at Delivery Hero, I lead growth initiatives across 20+ countries, working on products used by millions of users and running experiments at scale to improve core business metrics. My approach is highly practical and execution-focused: identifying the highest-leverage opportunities and helping founders prioritize what will truly move the needle. I’ve worked with founders across Japan, Italy, South Africa, Singapore and Thailand, supporting them on product strategy, experimentation, and GTM decisions. From early validation to scaling phases. Whether you're refining your product, improving growth, or navigating key trade-offs, I help you make faster, clearer, and more effective decisions grounded in real-world experience.

Over the last 25+ years, I’ve built my career across engineering, enterprise consulting, product management, and startup entrepreneurship. I began as a software engineer, spent several years helping enterprise customers solve complex business and technology problems as a consultant, and then spent more than 15 years leading products and product strategy in the technology industry. Today, I’m the founder of an AI startup building agentic software for enterprise customers. I coach aspiring and early-stage founders who are navigating the realities of turning an idea into a business. Whether you’re evaluating a startup idea, conducting customer discovery, building an MVP, thinking through product strategy, exploring AI opportunities, or deciding whether to leave a stable career to pursue entrepreneurship, I can help you think through the tradeoffs and avoid common mistakes. What makes my perspective different is that I’m not teaching entrepreneurship from a textbook or from a startup exit that happened years ago. I’m actively building a company today while balancing the same challenges many founders face: product development, customer acquisition, fundraising decisions, personal finances, family responsibilities, and long-term career risk. My goal is to provide practical, honest guidance grounded in real-world experience rather than startup mythology. If you’re considering a startup journey, building an AI-enabled product, or simply trying to determine whether entrepreneurship is the right next step for you, I’d be happy to help.

Having founded four companies, I’ve experienced the full spectrum of the entrepreneurial journey—one exit, bootstrapping two ventures, and raising over €1 billion in funding throughout my career. In 2019, I launched the first-ever Techstars accelerator in Italy, which quickly became one of the network’s top-performing programs. My portfolio companies have raised over $100 million post-program, with five successful acquisitions. As an investor, mentor, and executive coach, I focus on early-stage B2B companies (and sometimes B2C) across various industries, supporting the most ambitious founders worldwide. My own founder experience in Germany and Southeast Asia has equipped me to understand and guide entrepreneurs on their path to success, and I've backed companies in the US, Europe, and Southeast Asia.

Most founders don't fail because their idea was bad. They fail because no one around them knew how to build the machine behind it. That's the gap I close. Hey - I'm James. I help founders build operating models, sharpen GTM strategy, and execute like a firm - without the firm price tag. My background is BCG, Accenture, and Goldman Sachs but I coach from the founder side of the table, not the consulting deck. I'll help you: ▪️Build your operating model before you scale and lock in bad habits ▪️Structure your go-to-market, org design, or fundraising narrative with investor-grade rigor ▪️Pressure-test your strategy the way a board or investor would ▪️Turn your vision into a 30/60/90-day roadmap you can actually execute I've been a founder. I know what it feels like when everything is on fire and the deck is due Thursday. Let's build something that holds.