Playbooks don’t produce courageous leaders.
Because every leader is a unique and complex person who never stops evolving, we use an organic, deeply personal, judgment-free coaching approach to drive success.
A partnership for your entire leadership journey.
Lionpoint works shoulder-to-shoulder with you across all phases of your personal evolution from founder to leader.
We meet you where you are on your leadership journey—the sooner, the better.
In most cases, our relationship begins when you’re actively building and scaling your business and have reached an inflection point that requires clarity and upleveling as a leader.
Our long-term partnerships can translate into an advisory relationship, leveraging Lionpoint’s deep knowledge of your organization to keep growing with you—offering guidance on strategy, organizational design, culture, and more.
Idea incubation
Team expansion
Organization scaling
Idea incubation
All great ventures start with an idea. Bringing your idea to life depends on one crucial factor that is in your control: designing a context (e.g., team and culture) that aligns with who you are. Over time, our guidance and insights will help you identify the ideal context to begin to realize your idea’s potential. Getting clear on your goals, vision, purpose, values, and talents is a critical first step towards building the ideal context in which you’ll thrive as a leader.
Team expansion
As you gain the resources to expand your team (often beyond your co-founders), your leadership and culture-building responsibilities are accelerating quickly. You're in the early stages of transitioning from founder to leader. The need for rapid learning and improved team design is critical as you build a team that works in unison towards a common vision. Lionpoint coaching includes regular “issue diagnoses” with a focus on personal responsibility, blind spots, and where clarity within your organization can be enhanced. Together, we develop personalized, leader-specific solutions through in-session insights and takeaways. This learning powers you to deliver clarity to your fast-growing business through improved leadership, rapid leading, and enhanced culture.
Organization scaling
You’re a leader or co-founder who is a few years into your organization’s journey with additional resources, a more established culture, and product-market fit. As your operations become more complex, repeatability, scalability, maintaining standards, and reinforcing culture are essential. Achieving clarity is even more challenging as leadership becomes more distributed. Your leadership team becomes even more critical. Decisions carry even more weight as you progress towards greater market share, much higher expectations from customers and the wider community, and a potential liquidity event. We continue to diagnose issues together, benefiting from improved organizational clarity, team design, and your enhanced self-awareness.
Partner with Lionpoint to gain three essential building blocks:
Clarity
Understand the leader you are and the one you aren’t. Define your values and vision as the essential starting point to make them a reality.
Alignment
Build your team, design your organization, and craft your unique role within it to fully align with your values and point your team towards a shared vision.
Methodology
Absorb a new framework and lexicon to structure your organization, build your leadership team, shape your culture, and help achieve your boldest business goals.
Over time, our work together helps you become a better coach (as all the best leaders are), creating a virtuous cycle as your team develops and grows alongside you.
What we promise
You’ll receive deeply personal coaching instead of a playbook.
Your work with us will help you lead authentically.
You and your leadership team can work with people bound by the same ethos.
You can work in lockstep with us through your leadership journey—and all phases of your organization’s growth.
"From a complete ambiguity stage to a successful exit, I can’t recall a single stage of my company’s and my personal development where Doug hasn’t played a critical role. It wouldn’t matter whether it was about challenges of scaling the company from a tiny team to >50, problems related to managing cross functional teams, challenges of go to market, issues in relationships, etc.—he would always guide me to the best version of myself to find solutions and answers to all problems and questions during my journey."
"From a complete ambiguity stage to a successful exit, I can’t recall a single stage of my company’s and my personal development where Doug hasn’t played a critical role. It wouldn’t matter whether it was about challenges of scaling the company from a tiny team to >50, problems related to managing cross functional teams, challenges of go to market, issues in relationships, etc.—he would always guide me to the best version of myself to find solutions and answers to all problems and questions during my journey."
Dachi Choladze
Co-founder + CEO, PulsarAI
"Doug has a way of cutting through the clutter and helping me focus on what really matters. Working with him has made me a more confident leader who leans into my values and communicates them better, so I can lead with conviction and authenticity. Doug helped me simplify the big challenges and turn them into clear, actionable steps. It’s had a ripple effect—my team is more empowered and more aligned than ever as we all know what’s most important."
"Doug has a way of cutting through the clutter and helping me focus on what really matters. Working with him has made me a more confident leader who leans into my values and communicates them better, so I can lead with conviction and authenticity. Doug helped me simplify the big challenges and turn them into clear, actionable steps. It’s had a ripple effect—my team is more empowered and more aligned than ever as we all know what’s most important."
Alex Ewart
Co-CEO + Co-founder, Explorate
"Reflecting on my journey working with Doug inspires a sense of grounded confidence. Doug and I built up a rapport that provided a strong human, intellectual, and strategic foundation for my personal and professional growth. Looking back, it's clear that Doug's congenial, engaged demeanor rests on top of a passion for helping those around him grow, solve tactical challenges, and move towards their strategic goals in a clear-headed way. Our coaching relationship was—and continues to be—an important touchstone for me."
"Reflecting on my journey working with Doug inspires a sense of grounded confidence. Doug and I built up a rapport that provided a strong human, intellectual, and strategic foundation for my personal and professional growth. Looking back, it's clear that Doug's congenial, engaged demeanor rests on top of a passion for helping those around him grow, solve tactical challenges, and move towards their strategic goals in a clear-headed way. Our coaching relationship was—and continues to be—an important touchstone for me."
Jacob Smith
Co-founder + CMO, Packet
"My coaching sessions with Lionpoint provide great opportunities to step back and critically reassess my role as a leader. At the beginning, we built a shared understanding of my responsibilities and my goals. This was instrumental in helping me explore new perspectives, refine my leadership approach, and develop actionable strategies. This guidance has driven positive changes in my professional life."
"My coaching sessions with Lionpoint provide great opportunities to step back and critically reassess my role as a leader. At the beginning, we built a shared understanding of my responsibilities and my goals. This was instrumental in helping me explore new perspectives, refine my leadership approach, and develop actionable strategies. This guidance has driven positive changes in my professional life."
Olivier Standaert
Head of Programs, WeForest
"Doug has been an invaluable executive coach, fundamentally transforming the way I lead. He has an exceptional ability to break down complex challenges, guiding me to clarity and helping me identify the nucleus of an issue. Through his coaching, I’ve gained a deeper understanding of long-term patterns, enabling me to manage challenges more effectively while seizing opportunities for rapid growth. This extends beyond individual growth—Doug fosters clarity to help leaders align their teams, organizations, and business priorities with precision.
For startups in particular, Doug’s focus on culture as a key determinant of success is tremendously impactful. Doug has joined me “in the trenches”—both personally and professionally. If you are lucky enough to work with Doug, you will find that a multiplier force of a partner has just joined your team."
"Doug has been an invaluable executive coach, fundamentally transforming the way I lead. He has an exceptional ability to break down complex challenges, guiding me to clarity and helping me identify the nucleus of an issue. Through his coaching, I’ve gained a deeper understanding of long-term patterns, enabling me to manage challenges more effectively while seizing opportunities for rapid growth. This extends beyond individual growth—Doug fosters clarity to help leaders align their teams, organizations, and business priorities with precision.
For startups in particular, Doug’s focus on culture as a key determinant of success is tremendously impactful. Doug has joined me “in the trenches”—both personally and professionally. If you are lucky enough to work with Doug, you will find that a multiplier force of a partner has just joined your team."
Josy Hamren
Chief Operating Officer, The Expert
"Doug always pushed me to look deeper into the "whys"—why I was doing what I was doing; why I was feeling about it the way I was feeling about it; why I was ignoring some things or paying too much attention to others; why I lead at all. He found a way to become the voice of my best nature and aspirations and to speak those out loud to me in a way that inspired me to be true to them."
"Doug always pushed me to look deeper into the "whys"—why I was doing what I was doing; why I was feeling about it the way I was feeling about it; why I was ignoring some things or paying too much attention to others; why I lead at all. He found a way to become the voice of my best nature and aspirations and to speak those out loud to me in a way that inspired me to be true to them."
Lisa Baird
Partner, Heidrick & Struggles
"Doug is humble, personable, and has a way of truly focusing on my challenges without being overly assertive. The most valuable part of working with Doug is getting the space and opportunity to focus on the things that really matter. I generally come out of our sessions with energy and clarity on the next steps of whatever issue I'm tackling."
"Doug is humble, personable, and has a way of truly focusing on my challenges without being overly assertive. The most valuable part of working with Doug is getting the space and opportunity to focus on the things that really matter. I generally come out of our sessions with energy and clarity on the next steps of whatever issue I'm tackling."
Karan Anand
Chief Strategy Officer, HNRY
"Partnering with Lionpoint has helped me to maintain my focus and develop the instincts and vocabulary to navigate our biggest challenges—both external and internal. Most significantly, Doug has helped me understand when to take a deep breath, collect myself, and gather my thoughts before wandering into areas of potential misunderstanding and conflict with my partners. Maintaining one’s core values can be a real challenge when navigating business imperatives, an ever-shifting market, and the opinions of my partners. One thing I can count on: Doug will tell me what I need to hear, even if it’s not what I want to hear. I confide in him stuff I only share with my closest friends, and that trust has been hard won."
"Partnering with Lionpoint has helped me to maintain my focus and develop the instincts and vocabulary to navigate our biggest challenges—both external and internal. Most significantly, Doug has helped me understand when to take a deep breath, collect myself, and gather my thoughts before wandering into areas of potential misunderstanding and conflict with my partners. Maintaining one’s core values can be a real challenge when navigating business imperatives, an ever-shifting market, and the opinions of my partners. One thing I can count on: Doug will tell me what I need to hear, even if it’s not what I want to hear. I confide in him stuff I only share with my closest friends, and that trust has been hard won."
Axel Alonso
Chief Creative Officer + Co-founder, AWA
