Check three things before you shortlist any of the best executive coaches for startups and scaleups: whether they have worked at your stage, what they are credentialed in, and whether their method is written down. I have coached founders through the messiest stretch of their company's life. This list comes with a disclosure: I put myself on it, first, because I built my practice for exactly this transition.
Most coaching lists run on fame. I would rather you started with fit. A growth stage leader does not need a famous coach. They need a coach who has sat with the specific terror of scaling faster than your judgement, of hiring people you no longer have time to manage, of answering to investors while the ground moves under you. That is a narrow skill. Very few coaches have it.
So this is not a directory. It is a position. Startup coaching is not therapy with a whiteboard, and it is not motivational theatre. It is the deliberate work of building leadership capability faster than the company outgrows it. Speed against complexity. That is the whole game.
I want to be clear about how this list works. The order is not a ranking, and I have not assessed or tested the methods of anyone listed below. I put myself first because it is my site, and the other nine follow in no order of merit. What I say about each of them comes from their own website, with a link so you can check it for yourself. A growth stage founder is spending scarce money and scarcer time, and the wrong fit is expensive, because it can distort the decisions a founder makes for months. Fit first. Reputation second.
As startups transition into scaleups, leadership demands shift dramatically. Founders must move from hands-on execution to strategic leadership, people development, and long-term decision making. This transition requires more than experience or instinct. It requires structured leadership development.
Executive coaching has become a critical growth lever for startups and scaleups handling these transitions. The most effective executive coaches help leaders expand their thinking, strengthen accountability, and build leadership systems that scale with the business. The list below names 10 coaches and coaching voices for growth stage leaders to consider. It is a selection and not a ranking, and each entry repeats only what that person's own website or publisher says about their work. The aim is to help you look for real experience of high-growth environments.
How I Judge a Startup and Scaleup Coach
Before the list, here is my lens. When I assess whether a coach is genuinely equipped for growth stage leaders, or just marketing to them, I test five things. I have not put the people below through this test, so run it yourself when you speak to any of them, including me.
- Stage fluency: They understand that a seed-stage founder and a Series C CEO have almost nothing in common. The pressures, the decisions, the failure modes all differ by stage. A coach without stage fluency gives you advice calibrated for the wrong company.
- Builds systems, not dependence: The test of a good coach is whether you need them less over time. I want a leader who has internalised a way of thinking, not one who books me before every hard conversation. Coaching that creates reliance is a business model, not a service.
- Founder-role fluency: They can hold the specific identity crisis of a founder becoming a CEO: giving away the work that made you, trusting people who are not you, leading a company that no longer fits in your head. This is not generic leadership. It is a role transition few coaches have lived.
- Iteration speed: Growth stage moves in weeks, not quarters. A coach who works on a slow, reflective cadence is misaligned with the operating tempo. I want fast loops (diagnose, act, review, adjust) that match the speed of the business.
- Honesty under investor pressure: When the board is anxious and the runway is short, most advisers tell the founder what calms the room. The coach worth paying tells them the uncomfortable truth that protects the company. Candour under pressure is the rarest quality on this list.
Ten Executive Coaches for Growth Stage Leaders
Ten names follow. I have not put any of them through the five tests above, so run the tests yourself when you speak to each one. I list myself first and say so plainly in that entry.
1. Stuart Andrews
Best For: Founder to CEO transitions and scalable leadership systems
My focus is leadership capability and long term leadership architecture. My about page says I coach leaders and architect the systems around them, and that I work with CEOs and CHROs of organisations across technology, telecommunications, investment banking, healthcare and Fortune 500 companies, helping them build the leadership infrastructure their growth demands.
I do not build dependence on me. The same page says the work is embedded inside the business so it runs without me, which is the point of leadership capability development. Disclosure: I wrote this list and I listed myself first, so read my about page and judge the fit for yourself.
2. Marshall Goldsmith
Focus: Behavioural change for senior leaders
On his website, Marshall Goldsmith says his mission is to help successful leaders achieve positive, measurable, long-term change in behaviour for themselves, their people and their teams, and the site says he has coached more than 200 top CEOs and executives. On his Stakeholder Centered Coaching page he says he created the process early in his career, that he asks that a leader's progress be judged by the people around them rather than by him, and that the coaching starts with an anonymous 360-degree assessment from the stakeholders the leader identifies. These descriptions are his own.
3. Cameron Herold
Focus: CEO and COO coaching
According to his website, Cameron Herold offers CEO and COO coaching, one on one and in groups, and runs a mastermind group for COOs. On his about page he says that during his 6.5 years as the COO he ran everything except IT and finance. These descriptions are his own.
4. John Mattone
Focus: Character, values and self-concept
The John Mattone Global website presents John Mattone as an executive coach and says its work is grounded in the Intelligent Leadership methodology. It describes its starting point in these words: "we start with the inner core. Character. Values. Self-concept." The site is the firm's own description of its approach.
5. Erica Peitler
Focus: Leadership coaching and facilitation for organisations
On her website, Erica Peitler describes herself as a leadership performance coach and facilitator, and as CEO and Managing Partner of Erica Peitler & Associates, a boutique leadership coaching and facilitation firm whose clients are mainly private and family-owned businesses. The site presents Leadership Rigor as a practice and philosophy designed to accelerate leadership performance and productivity.
6. Jennifer Garvey Berger
Focus: Adult development and complexity in leadership
The Cultivating Leadership profile of Jennifer Garvey Berger says she supports leaders, teams and whole organisations to rise to the challenge and opportunity of a complex, changing world, and that her clients tend to call her at a moment of change, often a promotion to the C-suite. The firm's books page lists her book Changing on the Job and describes it as offering practical tools and insights based on adult development theory.
7. Rebecca Zucker
Focus: Executive coaching for senior leaders
Rebecca Zucker's profile on the Next Step Partners website says she coaches C-level executives and other senior leaders across the globe, with clients spanning sectors that include technology, venture capital and private equity. It also says she is a regular contributor to Harvard Business Review and Forbes.com.
8. Tony Robbins
Focus: Personal and business results coaching
His official website describes him in its page title as a "Personal & Business Results Coach" and offers events, one-on-one coaching and programmes. It describes the one-on-one strategy sessions as run by its expert results coaches. If you are weighing it, ask who your coach would be.
9. Peter Bregman
Focus: Leadership coaching for senior leaders and their teams
On the Bregman Partners website, Peter Bregman says he has devoted the last 30 years of his career to coaching senior leaders and their leadership teams, and that he has been CEO of a global company himself. The site addresses CEOs, senior leaders of Fortune 100 companies and leaders in a fast-growth startup, among others.
10. Michael Bungay Stanier
Focus: Coaching as a leadership habit
Michael Bungay Stanier is the author of The Coaching Habit, according to his Box of Crayons website. The same page says that after 25 years the company is winding down its enterprise business and stopping enterprise training, while continuing to support individuals, with a live class called Bring Out Their Best and keynotes. Check what is currently on offer before you plan around it.
Why Executive Coaching Is Essential for Scale
Executive coaching for startups is not about fixing weaknesses. It is about accelerating leadership readiness before complexity outruns it. As companies scale, leadership challenges grow faster than operational ones, and understanding factors such as investment level and coach fit becomes part of making informed, strategic leadership development decisions.
I have watched brilliant founders quietly become the bottleneck of their own companies. Every decision routed through them. Every hard conversation waiting for them. They mistook indispensability for leadership. Coaching is what changes that. The best of it delivers a few specific things:
- Founder to CEO transitions that move leaders from execution to direction
- Strategic thinking that holds up under sustained pressure
- Alignment across teams that are expanding faster than anyone can manage by memory
- Resilience that prevents the burnout and decision fatigue that end companies without warning
How do I choose from executive coaches for startups and scaleups?
Choose on evidence you can check, not on reputation. Six checks do most of the work, and you can run all of them in a first conversation. The table sets out what to ask for and what should worry you. I have not applied it to anyone on the list above, so apply it to every name, mine included. For the longer version of this process, read how to choose an executive coach, and for the case for and against coaching at all, is executive coaching worth the investment and executive coaching vs leadership coaching.
| Check | Evidence to ask for | Red flag |
|---|---|---|
| Stage fit | Two or three situations at your size and stage that the coach has worked on, described without client names | Every example comes from a large corporate, or the coach cannot say what changes between seed and Series C |
| Credential | The credential level (ACC, PCC or MCC) and the body that issued it, which you can verify with that body | A badge on a website with no level, or hours quoted that the issuing body does not publish |
| Method in writing | A written description of how sessions run, what happens between them and how progress is judged | 'Every client is different' with nothing that repeats from one engagement to the next |
| Challenge record | The last time they told a senior client something unwelcome, and what happened next | Only stories of clients who felt supported |
| Sponsor and confidentiality | A three-way agreement: the sponsor sees progress against agreed goals, session content stays with you | An investor or board chair who expects session notes |
| Exit | A review point, an end date and a description of what you will do without the coach by then | An open-ended retainer with no review |
What do ICF credentials tell you about a startup coach?
The International Coaching Federation (ICF) publishes the hours behind each credential. According to its credentials page, the ACC level requires 60+ hours of education and 100+ hours of coaching experience, the PCC level requires 125+ hours of education and 500+ hours of coaching experience, and the MCC level requires a PCC credential, 200+ hours of education and 2,500+ hours of coaching experience.
A credential shows that someone has met a published standard for coaching practice. It does not show that they understand a company at your stage. Coachful's buyer guide notes that the title of coach is unregulated and proves nothing on its own, and it recommends running chemistry calls with at least three coaches and signing a three-way agreement with your sponsor before the first session. I would add one step: ask what the hours were spent on. Five hundred hours with founders at your stage and five hundred hours with executives in a different kind of company are not the same preparation.
What breaks at each stage, and what should you ask a coach?
Stage fluency is the check founders skip most often, so here is how I would test it. The table is my working view, not an industry classification, and the questions are the ones I would want a coach to answer about me.
| Stage | What tends to break | What to ask the coach |
|---|---|---|
| Founder-led: the founder makes most calls | Decisions queue behind the founder, and direction depends on one person's attention | Which decisions did you help a founder give away, and how did you check they stayed given away? |
| First leadership layer: the first managers and heads of function | People promoted for craft are now expected to lead, and the founder still reviews everything | How do you work with the new layer and not only with the founder? |
| Several layers: leaders managing leaders | Priorities and decision rights drift apart across layers, and fast hires disagree about what matters | What did you leave behind when a company outgrew the founder's attention? |
Stanton Chase's 2026 white paper on the invisible ceiling makes a point that fits the middle row. On promotions, it says the default criterion is individual performance. That is how the first managers in a young company are usually chosen, and it is why a coach who only works one to one with the founder can miss the layer that is carrying the weight.
Does a startup coach need to have been a founder or CEO?
My view, and I label it as mine: no. What the coach needs is experience of being accountable for consequential decisions in a business that was changing faster than its structure, and the discipline to question your reasoning instead of handing you a playbook. A former founder can bring pattern recognition. A former founder can also bring one story told to every client. Ask which you are getting, and ask what the coach does when your situation does not match theirs.
I do not lean on research for this one. The 2023 meta-analysis by Cannon-Bowers and colleagues concludes that workplace coaching is effective, with a moderate effect, and the authors say there is simply a lack of controlled studies. That is a reason to be modest about any rule on who makes the best coach, including mine. It is also a reason to ask for evidence of the coach's own work rather than a general claim that coaching pays.
What my own work with founders looks like
I will keep my own evidence short and attach it to the claim it supports. I have coached 100+ teams and senior executives directly, around the world. One engagement shows the first row of the stage table. A CEO told me their team was not strategic. The cause was unclear decision rights, and capability was not the issue, so I coached the CEO to separate the decisions they must own from those they could hand on, then coached the team to work within the new boundaries. The team then took decisions within the new boundaries, and the CEO's involvement in routine decisions dropped.
I hand over frameworks that the client can run independently, because a founder who needs me every month has bought a dependency. If you want to talk about where your company sits, start at the founders page, read how I work on work with me, or read about CapabilityAI, my AI leadership coach built on this methodology. The related pieces on what makes CEO coaching effective and when coaching is the wrong intervention cover the other side of the decision.
The Distinction I Coach To
If you take one idea from this list, take this one. A weak coach makes the founder feel supported. A strong coach makes the company less dependent on the founder. That is the whole difference, and almost nobody names it out loud.
The failure to watch for is a brilliant founder slowly becoming the bottleneck of their own company. Every decision routed through them. Every hard conversation waiting for them. They mistook indispensability for leadership. It is the opposite. The measure of a growth stage leader is how well the business runs when they step back, and the measure of a growth stage coach is how quickly they build that capacity into the leader in front of them.
So when you choose from this list, do not choose the biggest name. Choose the coach who understands your stage, who moves at your speed, and who will tell you the truth the board will not. Fame is a poor proxy for fit. I would rather be the right coach for a scaleup than the famous coach for everyone.
That is why I built my practice the way I did. Not to be needed forever, but to make founders capable of leading the company their success created. Build the leader, and the company follows. That is the work, and it is the only work worth doing at this stage.
One last thing, because it is a fair question to ask. You do not need to pick the single perfect coach for the whole life of the company. The right coach for your seed stage may be the wrong coach for your Series C, and that is fine; it is a sign you have grown, not a sign you chose badly. What matters is that whoever you work with right now understands the stage you are standing in, builds capability rather than reliance, and has the nerve to disagree with you when it counts. Get those three right and the specific name matters far less than the market wants you to believe.
A founder does not need a coach who has done the job. They need one who can tell them what the company now needs that the founder cannot supply.