Founder coaching
Grow the “you” product.
Your company can only scale as fast as you do. I coach founders on both - the operational playbooks that scale a company, and the inner skills that scale its CEO.
A founder's-eye view
What nobody tells you about the founder job
You'll be tempted to run your company on “shoulds.”
Your investors say you should do X. A YC partner - after a twenty-minute conversation - says Y. Other founders are all doing Z. So you contort yourself into their playbook and quietly stop doing the things that made you start this in the first place. The fix isn't more advice. It's learning to hear your own signal again.
Your Slack is not a strategy.
If your to-do list is your inbox, your priorities are set by whoever is loudest. The most valuable work you could be doing never pings you. I teach founders the operating systems - weekly planning, time-blocking, real prioritization - that make sure the important work actually happens.
Five percent more joy changes everything.
Starting a company is hard enough without turning it into a grind you dread. The founders who last learn to manage their energy, protect the work they love, and point their best hours at what actually matters. Bringing even 5% more joy into your work transforms your experience of it - I run two businesses this way.
The body knows before the spreadsheet does.
When a founder is stuck in loops on a big decision, the missing data usually isn't in the deck. My somatic decision-making approach gets logic, intuition, and conviction pointing the same direction. It's not therapy and it's not woo. It's decision-making at full signal strength.
How it feels
I'll hold up a mirror - and stand beside you while you look
Coaching with me is direct. I'll reflect back the patterns you can't see from inside your own company - including the ones quietly costing you - and give you honest feedback, always with care and always in service of your growth. Sometimes that's uncomfortable. That's usually the sign we've found something worth working on.
You don't need another advisor telling you what to do. You need a partner who helps you see clearly, believes in what you're building, and stays in your corner while you do the hard parts. What that unlocks: stronger relationships with your team, decisions informed by both data and gut, patterns that finally shift after years of running you.
Every session ends with concrete next steps you choose - and the real growth happens as you live them between sessions.
About
Hi, I'm Luna
Founding a company is hard - I've been there, including the days when you just want to sprawl on the floor and ask, “what do I do next?”
Before I was a founder: two MIT degrees, Bain & Company, then a decade in product - leading User Acquisition at Instagram as it grew from 700 million to 1.1 billion people, launching consumer social VR at Oculus, running the marketplace org at Faire, and a stint in venture at SignalFire.
Then I did the thing everyone tells you not to do: I applied to YC as a solo founder. I got in, thought “oh shit, I'm building a company now,” and spent the next four years finding out what the founder seat actually asks of you - including a pandemic that made our first product irrelevant overnight.
I eventually replaced myself as CEO, moved into the Chair role, and became a founder coach - I've now coached more than 100 YC founders. Then my company needed a CEO again, so I went back. As a boomerang CEO, I made an unfashionable call: stop raising venture, rebuild the team, and run Plura to profitability. It worked, and it unlocked a whole new layer of leadership I'm still exploring.
That's the experience I coach from: not theory about the founder journey, but two separate tours in the seat - plus training in six coaching modalities, including Hakomi, Pain Reprocessing Therapy, EAET, and IFS (parts work). In plain English: evidence-based, mindfulness-rooted tools for rewiring how you respond under pressure.
Off the clock: hiking, dancing, ukulele, meditation, small dogs, and an ongoing obsession with self-inquiry.
The north star
The same tools that can dissolve chronic pain can dissolve whatever stands between you and the future you say you want.
Here's the model: if all of your parts are vectors pointing in different directions, your current reality is the sum of what those parts can agree to. There's a part of you that wants to build a billion-dollar company - and almost certainly a part that doesn't, with real fears and good reasons. We don't override that part. We get curious about it, understand it, even love it - and when it shifts, the whole sum changes. Your nervous system moves out of the stress-fear loop into grounded optimism, and outcomes that felt out of reach become buildable.
I practice this live in my own life. It's what I guide founders through.
Working together
What founders work on with me
Every engagement is customized to you and your company. Most work falls into three areas:
Build systems & teams that scale
Every engagement starts tactical, so you get value from session one: the operational, product, and organizational practices that take you to the next stage. Scaling issues, go-to-market acceleration, hiring, product specs, planning systems - the playbooks I road-tested at Instagram, Oculus, and Faire, then proved in my own YC company.
Scale yourself to lead your scaling company
The transition from builder to CEO is the hardest product you'll ever ship. We work on your blindspots: communication, delegation, managing your board, and the identity shift from doing the work to leading the people who do it. If you came up as an engineer, this is the leap I've coached dozens of founders through.
Overcome whatever is hardest
Co-founder conflict. A hard conversation you keep avoiding. Fear and anxiety that hijack your decisions. Even chronic pain and symptoms that flare under stress. When the challenge isn't tactical, we go deeper - structured somatic work that aligns logic, intuition, and conviction so you can make the call cleanly and act on it. Less noise, more calm, sharper action.
Format: two sessions per month. Each session ends with concrete next steps - the real work happens as you live them between sessions.
From founders
What it's like to work together
“It's different being coached by someone who was a founder.”
“Luna is awesome. I've done career coaching before, but it's different being coached by someone who was a founder. She really understands the pressure and what I'm going through. Coming out of our sessions, I had clear goals I set for myself based on what we explored.”
Dori Wilson, Founder & CEO, Thorntale“A uniquely effective coaching relationship.”
“Luna blends years of business and startup experience with deep emotional and somatic intelligence to offer a uniquely effective coaching relationship. I recommend Luna to anyone aiming to succeed while maintaining personal alignment and well-being.”
Maverick Kuhn, CTO, Thyself“Friendly but firm.”
“Luna is incredible, she's friendly but firm. She's been in our shoes and can draw on a variety of experiences to help root cause and address what might be holding you back. Highly recommend.”
Sunny Singh, Founder & CEO, Vendora“I'd come out of every meeting energized and with greater clarity.”
“It was invaluable to have someone with more experience and breadth help pattern match problems.”
Calvin Chen, Founder & CEO, Fetchr“Alternative perspectives that help you take the right action.”
“As a founder, you have so many thoughts going on in your head that it feels more like a sea of chaos. Through our sessions Luna was able to offer alternative perspectives which helps you take the right action. I came out of these sessions with much better energy.”
Vaib Saxena, Co-founder, Infer.so“Easily one of the best investments I've made this year.”
“Being a founder involves a near constant stream of hard decisions, all of which are shaped and sized differently with varying consequences and opportunities attached. This can get overwhelming, especially as your product, customer base, and team evolves. Working with Luna has helped me find clarity and confidence through all of these decisions, and is easily one of the best investments I've made this year.”
Ayman Nadeem, Founder, Nuanced (YC W24)“Thank you for helping me be a better person. Eternally grateful.”
Text from a client, April 2026Is this a fit?
I work with a small number of early stage founders at a time
My best clients are introspective, disciplined, and ready to look at what's holding them back - in the company and in themselves. Most people find me through a founder or coach I trust; if that's you, we're probably already halfway there.
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