The business hit a ceiling
More effort produces more activity, but not the next level.
FOUNDER COUNTERPART · BAR, MONTENEGRO · WORLDWIDE
Alone, you circle. Together, we climb.
I step into situations founders can no longer untangle alone — in the business, the decision or their own role. Together, we find the real constraint, choose a direction and get things moving.
Maybe the business has stopped moving.
Maybe you've outgrown the way you used to run it.
Maybe a pivot is overdue.
Maybe you already know exactly what needs to happen — and still haven't done it.
Founder · operator · 16+ years building, scaling, pivoting and fixing companies.
KIRILL — FOUNDER COUNTERPART
16+
years building companies
6
ventures from zero
80+
people in teams led
F/O/M
founder · operator · mentor
RECOGNITION BEFORE ADVICE
Does any of this feel familiar?
The visible problem is not always the real one. You do not need to arrive with a clean diagnosis.
The role that got you here doesn't fit anymore
You can still perform it. The harder question is whether you should.
A decision has been waiting for months
You keep doing useful work around the decision instead of making it.
You don't know whether to pivot
The current direction feels wrong, but changing it has a real cost too.
Everything looks reasonable
The plan, team and numbers make sense on paper. Something still does not move.
You already know what to do
Clarity exists intellectually. Effective action still has not happened.
You don't need to diagnose the problem before talking to me. That's part of the work.
Tell me what's stuckTHE SYSTEM, NOT ONE HALF OF IT
I don't work on the business without the founder.
Consultants usually look at the business. Coaches usually look at the person. I look at the relationship between the founder, the business and the decisions connecting them.
HUMANFounder
DECISIONS · ROLE · REAL CONSTRAINTWhat actually has to change?
OPERATING REALITYBusiness
Structure problem?
Maybe you need structure. Maybe delegation. Maybe a CEO. Or maybe you are trying to become a CEO you never wanted to be.
Pivot problem?
Maybe the strategy is wrong. Or maybe an exhausted founder is trying to escape a situation that still has a strategic answer.
Growth problem?
Maybe the bottleneck is acquisition. Or product. Or the founder role and decisions that worked at the previous scale.
Diagnosis before prescription.
The founder makes the decision. The founder doesn't have to think alone.
Founders operate at the edge of uncertainty. There is rarely complete information or one obviously correct answer.
Your team, investors, partners and family can all be valuable — and none of them are fully neutral. Each person has their own role, incentives and emotional stake.
I know from my own difficult stages how useful it is to have another human who can withstand the ambiguity, challenge the story and still leave the decision where it belongs: with you.
Someone who can challenge you without taking the decision away from you. Someone who understands the human being and can still open the P&L.
HOW I WORK
From fog to effective action.
Not a proprietary framework. Just a practical sequence for getting out of circular thinking and into a real next move.
Reflect
Tell me what's happening — including the parts that do not fit neatly into a slide.
See
Separate symptoms, assumptions and noise from the actual constraint.
Decide
You choose what needs to change. I bring perspective, challenge and operating experience — not borrowed certainty.
Act
Turn the decision into a concrete next move. Clarity is only useful if something happens next.
FOUNDER TRANSITIONS
The work usually starts when the old answer stops working.
These are not service case studies. They are examples of different constraints hiding behind familiar founder problems.
Better thinking, not borrowed answers.
We started working together when he had hit a scaling ceiling. He did not adopt many of my actual recommendations. The conversations still helped him reflect and make his own decisions. During the period we worked together, his company grew roughly 9x in revenue. The decisions and execution were his.
The goal was never obedience to my plan. It was better founder judgement.
I spent months trying to become better at a job I didn't want.
About a year ago, one of my companies was close to falling apart. I became obsessed with whether I was structured enough to be the CEO the business needed. A mentor eventually reframed the question around the three roles I was carrying. That exposed the real problem: I did not want to be CEO at all. Today I describe the role I actually want as selling co-founder — deciding what we sell, to whom and why.
Sometimes the problem is not “How do I become better at this?” but “Why am I trying to do this job at all?”
When the core concept stops working, a large team still has to move.
At Nival I led a 60+ person team through a core-concept pivot into Early Access. The work was not only choosing a new direction; it was carrying a large organization through uncertainty and execution. During that period we also reduced business-unit costs by roughly 50% while maintaining output.
A pivot is not a slide. It is a decision that a whole operating system has to survive.
Ideas are cheap. Prioritization is the work.
At Kujo AI my role includes catching creative hypotheses, fitting them into strategy, prioritizing them and carrying them toward launch. Co-founder Mikhail Badelin describes it simply: “Nine ideas out of ten die in conversations — with Kirill, they ship.”
Reflection without action becomes another form of avoidance. The point is to make something happen in reality.
WAYS TO WORK
You don't need to choose a service before we talk.
There are three useful shapes the work tends to take. The first conversation is about your situation, not a product menu.
01 · ONE SITUATION
Private diagnostic
For one difficult situation. We look at what is actually happening, what may be hiding behind the visible problem and what the next useful move is.
START WITH THE QUESTION, NOT A DECK.
02 · A CONCRETE CHANGE
Transition sprint
For a pivot, role change, scaling ceiling, business-model shift, team transition, new offer or strategic decision that needs focused work and movement.
CLARITY → DECISION → IMPLEMENTABLE NEXT MOVES.
03 · ONGOING
Founder counterpart
An ongoing private relationship for moments when you need a person you can think with while building — regular conversations and deeper involvement when useful.
A PERSON YOU CAN THINK WITH WHILE BUILDING.
ABOUT
I've been inside the system too.
My operating history matters because founder questions are rarely theoretical when payroll, cash flow, people and your own identity are inside the decision.
For more than 16 years I've worked as a founder, co-founder and operator across gaming, entertainment, technology and adjacent businesses. I've built ventures from zero, led teams up to 80+, carried P&L and cash-flow responsibility, sold, raised, hired, fired, pivoted and watched plans fail.
That experience does not make me the person with the answer to every founder problem. It does mean I can move between the human conversation and the operating reality without pretending they are separate worlds.
I have also had to reconsider my own role, my own companies and the stories I was telling myself about what a founder “should” be. That is part of why this work makes sense to me.
The objective is not dependency on an advisor. It is better founder judgement and more effective action.
SELECTED OPERATING HISTORY — Nord Beaver · Nival · True Lab · Mind Meal · Kujo AI · 1inch / DeFi Racer · Mail.ru Games · Game Insight · Arkadium · Belka Games
BASE — BAR, MONTENEGRO
FAQ
Before the first conversation.
The category is unusual. These are the distinctions that matter.
Is this coaching?
Not exactly. Sometimes the useful work is reflection. Sometimes it is strategy, numbers, organization, product, a role decision or a very practical operating problem. I use whatever lens helps us understand the real constraint. I do not sell a universal coaching framework.
Will you tell me what to do?
I have opinions and I will challenge a plan when it does not add up. But the objective is not obedience. The founder makes the decision. My job is to help you see more clearly, test the story and make a decision you can actually own.
What kind of founders do you work with?
Founder/co-founders with meaningful responsibility for an operating business, especially around a scaling ceiling, pivot, role transition, business-model change, team transition, loss of clarity or an overdue difficult decision. Industry is secondary to the transition.
What happens in the first conversation?
We start with what is happening, what you have already tried and what question keeps returning. The goal is to identify what problem we are actually solving and whether I am useful for it. You do not need a deck or a polished diagnosis.
Is this therapy?
No. This is not psychotherapy, clinical treatment or mental-health diagnosis. We may talk about fear, identity, exhaustion or other human parts of founder decisions when they are relevant, but the work stays connected to the founder's judgement, role and operating reality.
FIRST MOVE
What's stuck?
You don't need to diagnose it. You don't need to prepare a deck. You don't even need to know whether the problem is the company or you.
Send me 3–5 sentences:
- What is happening?
- What have you already tried?
- What question or decision keeps coming back?