A love letter to startups

Every company starts with an idea. But ideas don’t build companies, people do.

In startups, people have to grow as fast as the business. If they don’t, you get a revolving door of hires and fires, and when the door spins too fast, growth stalls. The race is always the same: build product, find market, drive revenue before the runway runs out. And the biggest lever you control is talent: who you hire, what they do on the inside, and how long their impact is high ROI. Get people right, and everything else is possible. Get it wrong, and nothing else matters.


Founders face a choice:

(1) hire experienced leaders who offer invaluable expertise but tend to be expensive and hands-off, and can hinder innovation if their playbook doesn’t align with your goals..

(2) bet on emerging talent who make up for what they lack in experience and know-how with immense persistence, passion, and adaptability to make things happen. High risk, high reward.

Founders make hundreds of decisions across product and business, many of which are build versus buy decisions. And we believe it’s no different when it comes to talent.

Pay the hefty price tag for the luminary? Or build high slope talent in house.

This is where we come in.

Waypoint Works exists to help founders and their teams navigate these inflection points, and invest in their high slope talent.
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Talent isn’t just something you hire; it is something you cultivate.

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A company’s core asset is its product, but the only way to deliver that product is with people in the right seats, doing the right things, at the right time. Efficient. Aligned. Future-ready. 

We believe managers can be multipliers, but only when designed and developed for the realities of startups. The handbook and the corporate seminar won’t get you there. Founders and startup leaders deserve advisors and coaches who have sat in the startup operator’s chair, who can flex between coach, advisor, and doer depending on what the moment demands. Teams deserve workshops and offsites built for their culture and stage, not for someone else’s.

Better outcomes are possible when talent strategy is treated as strategy, not as afterthought. The companies that win are the ones that adapt not only in product or market, but in how they build and grow their people.

Each company’s journey is marked by waypoints. Those moments when the map no longer serves and a new path must be charted. These waypoints are not failures; they are signals. They tell us it is time to evolve. There comes a time in your company where every day you are in the biggest job of your life. It comes with risk to fail, but even more room to grow. 

Our work is to help you and your high slope leaders navigate these days so you do more than survive the next waypoint, you thrive in it.

This is why Waypoint Works exists:
We support the brilliant founders who take bold bets on high slope talent, before they are proven. We are your early believer and steady guide, helping you navigate the unknowns of leadership and company building.

Through coaching, advisory, workshops, and offsites, we meet you where you are and accelerate the journey, developing the leaders you’ve already invested in and building talent systems that deliver lasting ROI.

Our mission is simple: to be a small but powerful detail in your company’s success story, ensuring every leader paces with your business growth.

We are more than a company. We are a movement that believes exceptional outcomes come from the people already in the room, once given the clarity, challenge, and support they need. If you share this belief, you’re already one of us. We’re glad you’re here.