Silicon Valley · San Francisco Bay Area · Remote Worldwide
Co-Founder Coaching
For Partnerships Under Pressure
The relationship between founders decides how everything else goes. I help co-founders and business partners work through conflict and build a way of operating that holds when the stakes are high.
Confidential. For founding teams and the companies that back them
CO-FOUNDER COACHING FOR THREE MOMENTS
Where Co-Founders and Business Partners Begin
You keep having the same argument with different content. Decisions stall because neither of you wants to reopen the fight. Co-founders and business partners come to this work for different reasons.
The starting point shapes what we do first.
BEFORE CONFLICT BREAKS
Prepare for pressure
The company is entering a new stage and you want the partnership ready for it. Business partner coaching builds decision rights and a shared way to handle disagreement before the next raise or the next hard quarter forces it.
WHEN CONFLICT REPEATS
Partnership repair
You're stuck in repeating conflict, trust has thinned, or you're quietly wondering whether the partnership survives. Co-Founder coaching gives you a structured way to understand what's driving the conflict and what to do about it.
WHEN SEPARATION IS THE ANSWER
A conscious parting
Sometimes the healthiest answer is a well-managed separation. Parting in a way that protects the company and the relationships that survive the split. Most teams who arrive at this question find more options than they expected.
65%
of high-potential startups fail because of people problems within the founding team.
Noam Wasserman, The Founder's Dilemmas, Harvard Business School
In Wasserman's research, founding teams of friends and family failed most often. They avoided the hard conversations to protect the relationship.
The work here is learning to have those conversations well.
What Is Co-Founder Coaching?
Co-founder coaching is structured work with business partners on how they make decisions together and handle conflict under pressure. It treats the founding relationship as a working system that can be examined and rebuilt, the way couples specialists treat a marriage.
Executive coaching develops one leader. Co-founder coaching works on the relationship between leaders, which is where most startup failures begin. Both partners are in the room, and the partnership itself is the client.
THE WORK
I've Sat on Both Sides of This Work
YOUR COACH
Hi, I’m Giulia.
I spent 15 years in management consulting, working with Fortune 500 companies and managing teams across three continents. I became an equity partner at a consulting firm and later founded my own consultancy. Between consulting and the work I do now, I directed a program at Stanford. I know from the inside what it costs when the two people at the top of something can't operate together.
I later trained deeply in relationship systems and built a practice working with high-stakes partnerships. Today I work with founders and senior leaders from Silicon Valley's largest technology companies and venture-backed startups, and I advise a foundation focused on conscious leadership.
The combination matters. A business coach can restructure your decision rights and miss the resentment underneath. A relationship specialist can name the resentment and have no idea what a board deadline does to a partnership. This work needs both.
The Mycelia Method
See the Pattern
We map the conflict cycle between you: what triggers it, what each of you does next, where it stalls
Repattern the System
Learn to catch the escalation in real time, in a board prep session or a debate, while it can still change course
Build Structure
We turn unstated expectations into agreements: who decides what, and what happens when you disagree
Sustain Change
Practice under real pressure until the new patterns become your default response
WHAT CHANGES
The Partnership Stops Being the Bottleneck
Decisions get made and stay made
Clear decision rights mean disagreements end in a call, with both of you behind it, instead of a quiet re-litigation two weeks later.
Conflict surfaces early
Tension becomes a signal you read together while it's still useful information, before it hardens into something structural.
Expectations become agreements
Clear decision rights mean disagreements end in a call, with both of you behind it, instead of a quiet re-litigation two weeks later.
Personal and company goals reconnect
You each get clear on what you want from the company and from each other, and whether those answers still fit together.
WAYS TO WORK TOGETHER
Programs for Founding Teams and the Firms Behind Them
Engagements are built around concentrated work, not weekly sessions. You accomplish in days what open-ended talking rarely reaches.
STARTING AT $25,000
Partnership Intensive
Two days of concentrated work on the partnership, followed by 90 days of integration: written agreements, follow-up sessions, and direct access while the new patterns hold.
BY APPLICATION
Annual Partnership Program
A year-long relationship for founding teams who want the partnership held as the company scales. Quarterly intensive work with standing access between.
BY PROPOSAL
For Firms and Funds
A partnership resource for your portfolio. Intensives for the founding teams you back, assessments for the ones you flag early, and a direct line for the moments that decide a company.
FOR COMPANIES AND INVESTORS
A Founding Team in Conflict Is a Company Risk
If you back or employ a team that needs support, you can engage me on their behalf. Investors and boards bring me in for founding pairs and executive teams where the working relationship has become the bottleneck.
When a company pays, the content of the sessions stays confidential to the participants. The company gets a team that can make decisions again.
HOW IT WORKS
From First Call to a Working Partnership
Engagements are built around concentrated work, not weekly sessions. You accomplish in days what open-ended talking rarely reaches.
STEP ONE
A free 20-minute consultation
We talk about what's happening and whether this is the right fit. Both partners are welcome on the call, and one is enough to start.
STEP TWO
Partnership assessment
I meet with each of you individually, then together. You leave with a clear picture of the pattern and a plan for the work.
STEP THREE
The
engagement
An intensive over one or two days, followed by integration work. Remote, in person in the Bay Area, or as a multi-day retreat.
BEFORE YOU BOOK
Your Questions, Answered
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Faster decisions, fewer repeated conflicts, and explicit agreements about roles and responsibilities that replace the unstated assumptions most founding teams run on. Leadership instability also has operational costs: stalled hires, delayed fundraises, senior talent leaving.
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The founding relationship is the single point of failure investors worry about most. Co-founder coaching gives the team a working structure for disagreement, so conflict produces decisions instead of gridlock. Companies that have gone through this work make hires faster, align on strategy with less friction, and stop losing weeks to the same unresolved tension.
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Yes. Many engagements begin with one partner. The first conversations often give you language to bring the other person in, and I can speak with them directly if that helps.
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No. This is coaching: structured, forward-looking work on how you operate as partners. If I believe one of you would be better served by a different kind of support, I'll say so and help you find it.
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Either. Founders engage me directly, and companies or investors can engage me on behalf of a team. When the company pays, the content of our sessions stays confidential to the participants. Engagement structure and fees are covered on the consultation call.
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The best way to get started is to schedule a free and confidential 20-minute consultation using the booking link on this page. https://www.myceliacoaching.com/contact
During that call, we'll discuss your situation, clarify whether coaching or therapy is the right fit, and answer any questions you have about working together.If you prefer to reach out first via email, you can contact me at gpdavis@myceliacoaching.com. I typically respond within 24-48 hours.
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I'm based in San Francisco and work with founding teams worldwide. Sessions run remotely or in person in the Bay Area, with multi-day intensives available.
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Yes. The same patterns show up in professional practices and family businesses, in any company run by two or more partners. Business partner coaching follows the same structure as the co-founder work.
