Coaching & advising for founders

You don't need another consultant.
You need someone who's sat in the chair.

I'm Paolo Petrolini. I spent eleven years building product at Google and then founded a company and sold it. Now I work one to one with founders and their startups: as a coach, an advisor, and where it helps, on the board.

Any industry. No decks to hand over, no team to embed, no dependency to create.

Get in touch Tell me where you're stuck. I'll tell you straight if I'm the right person.

The job is lonely, and the advice is usually generic

Most founders don't lack input. They're drowning in it: investors, podcasts, peer groups, frameworks. What they lack is one person who understands their specific situation deeply enough to be useful, and is independent enough to be honest.

That's the role I play. Not a service provider you brief, but a thinking partner who knows your business almost as well as you do, and who has already made most of the mistakes you're about to make.

I've done this for more than fifty companies, across wildly different industries. The pattern is always the same: the hard problems are rarely technical. They're about what to build, what to kill, who to hire, when to raise, and whether the thing you're avoiding is actually the thing that matters.

Three ways to work together

All remote. All one to one. All built to make you better, not to make you need me.

01

1:1 founder coaching

For the person, not the company

A recurring conversation with someone who has no agenda in your cap table and nothing to sell you. We work on the decisions you're circling, the conversations you're postponing, and the gap between the leader you are and the one the company now needs.

  • Regular 1:1 sessions, plus async access between them
  • Pressure testing decisions before you commit
  • Hiring, firing, and the cofounder conversations nobody enjoys
  • Growing into the job as the company outgrows your habits
02

Startup advising

For the company, not just the founder

Working on the business itself: strategy, product, positioning, what to build next and what to stop building. I bring the outside view and the uncomfortable questions, then leave the decisions with you, where they belong.

  • Product strategy and roadmap: sequencing, focus, ruthless subtraction
  • Zero to one: getting the first real product out of the building
  • Structure for teams that grew faster than their processes
  • Fundraising narrative and the story behind the numbers
03

Board & advisory seat

When the relationship should be formal

Where it genuinely helps, I'll take a seat as a board member or formal advisor, and carry the accountability that comes with it. Fewer of these than the other two, by design: a seat only means something if I can give it real attention.

  • Board or advisory board participation
  • An independent voice in the room, especially with investors present
  • Governance and reporting that's useful rather than ceremonial
  • Available to the exec team between meetings, not just at them

What I don't do

Being clear about this saves us both time. It's also the point: the value of an outside voice collapses the moment that voice starts depending on you for a living.

No fractional roles. I won't be your part time CPO, CTO or head of anything. You need an owner in that seat, and it shouldn't be someone who's only there two days a week.
No consultancy projects. I don't take briefs, staff teams, or deliver a strategy document you'll file and forget. The work happens in conversation, and the output is your decision, not my deck.
No execution or delivery. I won't write your code, run your sprints, or manage your people. That's your team's job, and my job is to make them better at it.
No single industry. I don't only work in one vertical. The problems founders face rarely come from the industry. They come from the stage, the team, and the founder.

Why me

Both sides of the table: the very large company and the very small one.

The operator

Eleven years building product at Google

Leading Trust & Safety product across Search, Gmail, Ads and Shopping, and running the Switzerland operation. Scale, constraints, politics, and the discipline of shipping inside a system you don't control.

The founder

Built a company, sold it to Experian

I founded compensIT, a regulated fintech, and took it from first idea to acquisition in 2025. I've done the raise, the hiring, the hard moments and the exit.

The advisor

More than fifty companies advised

Across industries and stages, from two people and an idea to companies with hundreds of staff. Enough repetitions to recognise your situation quickly, and enough humility to know when yours is genuinely different.

Coaching and advising is deliberately a small part of my week, which is why I take on few people, and why the ones I do take on get real attention.

Is this a fit?

Probably yes if

  • You're a founder or founding team, at any stage from first idea to scaling
  • You have decisions to make and nobody neutral to make them with
  • You want to be pushed, not reassured
  • You're willing to actually act on what comes out of the conversation

Probably not if

  • You want someone to take a job off your plate rather than help you do it better
  • You're looking for an implementation team or a delivery partner
  • You want validation for a decision you've already made
  • You need a name on a website more than you need the conversations

Start with a message

No booking links, no funnel. Write to me in your own words: what you're building, what's actually stuck, and what you've already tried. I read everything and reply personally.

If I'm not the right person, I'll say so, and where I can, I'll point you at someone who is.

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