Operational diagnostic for startups, calibrated to your stage (2–50+ people). Know where you stand, what to fix next, and what "good" looks like.
Beyond the diagnostic: an open ops wiki and a Virtual COO agent skill — both live in beta, both grounded in the same stage-aware playbook.
Still building: deeper wiki coverage, sharper check-ins, and automations toward an open-source fractional COO anyone can plug in. Operational excellence as a public good.
Works best with a COO or operational advisor. Self-assessment has limits.
"Ops are a mess! I think we need a COO." That's how many conversations start.
Often the fix isn't a hire yet — it's knowing which ops are actually broken versus which only feel urgent. Two patterns keep showing up: the all-rounder who hit the ceiling around fifteen people, and the product founder who duct-taped ops until it's visibly breaking. We built an open diagnostic and wiki so you can see that map before the next big hire.
Read: A Starting Point →Run the assessment for a scored map of your ops. Use the wiki for stage-calibrated guidance on what good looks like. Read the blog for how the framework was built and where it's headed.
Assessment from a handful of processes at founding to 30+ at scale — reliability, ownership, documentation, tooling, and headroom to grow. Calibrated to your stage, with a prioritized fix list.
Best for: New COO onboarding, pre-hire clarity, advisors working with founders.
Start diagnostic →Open playbook: what good looks like at each stage, what to do, warning signs, and how processes evolve as you grow. Growing page by page from real sources.
Best for: Ops hires, founders fixing one process at a time, AI-assisted ops work.
Explore wiki →Deep dives, essays & observations. More opinion, and more explanation of why something matters than the Wiki.
Featured
A Starting Point
Why I started this. And two patterns that send founders looking for a COO.
Best for: Learning from lessons of others.
Read featured post →Prefer a stage-by-stage browse? Stage roadmap →