Enabling the next generation of mission driven startup leaders
Eddie Nguyen, Leadership Coach
The founders I’m lucky to coach don't just want to build startups that move fast. They also want to move with clarity, intention and purpose. Speed still matters (it's oxygen for early-stage companies), but sustainable velocity comes from knowing who you are, what matters, and how you lead.
Who I work with
Stage: First-time founders, Seed to first $10M ARR.
Ambition. Purpose-driven and building at venture scale impact.
Transition: Moving from driving results yourself to driving results through your team.
What we work on
1. Evolving as fast as the company
What it looks like now. What worked at five people breaks at twenty-five. You're still in every decision. The team waits on you instead of owning outcomes. Velocity is slowing as you grow.
What good looks like. Clear decision rights, real accountability, conflict people can survive. The team moves without waiting on you. Your culture does the work you used to do in person.
2. The conversations you're not having
What it looks like now. The co-founder tension postponed for three months. The early employee you should have let go a year ago and are protecting for reasons that aren't about the company. Most of what slows a company down is sitting inside a conversation someone is avoiding.
What good looks like. You have the conversation in the week you notice it's needed, not the quarter after. Your team learns that hard things get said out loud here.
3. Focus, in all the noise
What it looks like now. Investors, employees, customers, family. Everyone wants a piece of you. You're chronically reactive, never strategic, and the important work never gets done.
What good looks like. You protect time for the work only you can do. You say no without flinching. Your week reflects your priorities instead of your inbox.
4. The inner work
What it looks like now. The critic is loud. The voice telling you that you got lucky, which you believe, and which is quietly making your decisions. Fear of failing — sometimes of succeeding — is driving calls you'd make differently on a good day.
What good looks like. You can tell a real signal from an old story. Your worth isn't riding on this quarter. The practices are small and specific: how you start the day, how you prepare for a hard conversation, how you catch yourself going reactive before your team does.
What coaching looks like
1:1
Team
Method
Systems thinking, small experiments, tight feedback loops. It's the loop you already run on the product, pointed at how you lead. Two speeds at once: enough urgency to move the business this week, enough space for the growth that takes longer.
The same loop run on the team. Name the system, try something small, look at what actually happened rather than what was planned.
Approach
90-minute deep dives, twice a month. Office hours in between, because the hard moments don't wait for the calendar. Assessments to see strengths and blind spots clearly. An annual review to step back and set direction.
Workshops for goal setting, retros, and conflict. Multi-day offsites for vision, strategy, and team dynamics. Office hours for the reports you're counting on.
Focus
Leadership skills, clarity, energy, mindset, and the blocks underneath them.
How the team decides, disagrees, and recovers.
About Eddie
“Eddie has single-handedly changed the trajectory of my company, career, and my life. He's more than a coach -- he's a mentor, a teacher, someone to make the founder journey less lonely. He's helped me grow as a leader by building confidence in myself, taking time to slow down, and identifying and investing in what gives me energy.”
1:1 Executive Coaching | 👩🏻⚕️ Cassie Choi | Co-Founder, COO | Pair Team (future of healthcare)
“Eddie’s no nonsense approach to facilitation helps get issues and challenges out on the table, quickly. I was surprised at how much we could achieve in just one day of team building. In other situations, it might have taken me a year to get here. Trying to get individuals from different backgrounds to operate as a unit is challenging, especially early on when you don't have shared goals and established practices."
Leadership Team Offsite Facilitation || 👨💼Erik Boe | VP, Program Management | Atlassian (future of work)
"What I love about working with Eddie is that he'll give you the framework and best practices to guide your thought process while still challenging you to solve your own problems so that you can truly develop the soft and hard skills to become a self-sufficient leader!”
New Manager Training || 👩🏻💻 Miji Hendrix | Director, Customer Success | UpKeep (future of work)
The future is bright. 😎
I get to spend my days coaching leaders and teams who are building meaningful products and services today that will be powering the world of tomorrow my children will be growing up in. I help founders close the gaps between where they are and where they want to be through 1:1 coaching and team workshops.
My approach is informed by:
🚀 17-year career as a business leader, decision-maker, and team builder at startups like Optimizely (seed to $120M ARR), IronPort (75 employees to $830M acquisition), Marketo (12 employees to IPO)
👨🏫 8+ years of practice as a coach and facilitator for startups backed by investors like Y Combinator, First Round, Point9, Redpoint, A16Z, Kleiner Perkins, Emergence
🙏 10+ years of mindfulness practice (Esalen Institute, Search Inside Yourself, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction)
👩👩🏽👨🏽👨 Received mentorship from masters of the craft: Karen Kimsey-House (Founder, Co-Active Training Institute), Peter Bregman (Marshall Goldsmith Top 10 Coach), Shirzad Chamine (Stanford, Positive Intelligence), Carl Buchheit (Founder, NLP Marin), Phil Fernandez (Co-founder, CEO, Marketo), Peter Fenton (Benchmark Capital)
If you're a founder and would like to learn more, email me at: hello@enbl.co
