You raised the round. You earned the title. Now you're accountable for everything — strategy, hiring, board, runway, morale. In 12 weeks, you'll build the operating system, the rhythms, and the standing to run the company without it running you.
The Reality Check
You're a first-time CEO. Funded, ambitious, and suddenly responsible for revenue, hiring, board management, narrative, runway and culture all at once.
You've read every book. You've talked to every other founder you know. You've copied frameworks from a dozen blog posts.
But there's no Monday morning playbook. No one to tell you which fire to fight first. No board member who will say out loud what the chair is whispering. And no peer room that isn't either a vendor pitch or a popularity contest.
You need to drive the company. Not get driven by it.
The Opportunity
The CEOs who scale through Series A and B aren't smarter. They're more deliberate. They install systems early — for strategy, hiring, board, narrative and personal time — before the business forces them into reactive mode.
The ones who don't get replaced quietly between rounds. Their boards don't lose faith because of revenue misses; they lose faith because the CEO is still firefighting in month 18.
This program installs the operating system early. You'll leave with the artifacts the best Series A CEOs use weekly — and the cohort of peers who'll keep you honest about using them.
The Solution
A 12-week peer advisory program for first-time founders and CEOs who've raised seed or Series A. One goal per week, five tasks per goal, 12 live sessions, and 5 anchor outputs — plus one live CEO OS dashboard you actually run from.
Stop running your company in your inbox. You'll ship a quarterly OKR system, a weekly leadership-team rhythm, and a personal weekly review that locks in clarity before chaos.
Five anchor outputs you can actually use — a one-page strategy, a board deck template, a hiring scorecard system, a narrative memo, and a CEO time audit. Demoable, defensible, durable.
Pressure-test your decisions in a curated, NDA-protected room of fellow first-time CEOs facing the same wall. Peer pairs, weekly check-ins, no investors in the room.
Learn to communicate up (board), down (team) and out (investors, customers) with the same narrative — so every audience is rowing in one direction by Demo Day.
The Five Anchor Outputs
Who This Is For
Funded founders running seed to Series A companies (3–60 people). Especially first-time operators who suddenly own functions they've never managed.
Tired of running the company from your inbox. Ready to install rhythms now and earn back your calendar — before month 18 arrives.
You can take feedback without flinching. You want a curated, NDA-protected room of peers — not another podcast playlist.
Not for: Aspiring founders who haven't raised, serial CEOs running their third company, or anyone looking for a generic leadership course. This is a first-time-CEO-in-the-fire room.
Your Guide
Veteran CEO · Founder · Forward Achieve Partner
Your guide has scaled two venture-backed companies from seed through Series B, raised more than $80M across rounds, sat on six boards, and coached 40+ first-time CEOs through their first 18 months. The curriculum draws on the Forward Achieve operating-system library, the Beast Score diagnostic and a library of unlisted founder interviews.
What to Expect
Frequently Asked
No. Every artifact you build is grounded in your real company — your real OKRs, your real board, your real hiring plan. You'll be a more useful CEO in Week 4 than you were in Week 1.
Yes. Every tool in the stack is no-code or AI-assisted, and you build live, with the guide and your peers. First-time CEOs are exactly who this is designed for.
2–3 hours most weeks, ~5 in the three build weeks. If your calendar can't hold that, this isn't the right cohort and we'll tell you so on the call.
No. It's an operating-system program. You'll write a narrative memo that helps with fundraising, but the work makes you a better CEO inside the company you have.
Those are accelerators — they help your company. This is for you, the CEO. The artifacts you build are yours, the room is curated for first-time CEOs only, and there's no demo day in front of investors. Demo Day here is for the room.
Ship Anchor 1 by the end of Week 3 and decide it's not delivering — tell us and we'll refund you in full. [CONFIRM refund terms before publishing.]
The Full Syllabus
Three stages. Twelve weeks. Click any stage to expand.
Run the Founder Beast Score live with the cohort. Diagnose your CEO Gap. Draft your top 3 quarterly OKRs.
Session 1 · 90 min · Cohort orientation, Beast Score, OKR primer.
Map your week against the 4-tier CEO framework (Strategy / People / Capital / Time). Identify your top 3 highest-leverage activities.
Session 2 · 60 min · Task-stack clinic.
Run the Clarity Prompt against your task stack. Ship a one-page strategy artifact. Pressure-test in peer pairs.
Session 3 · 90 min · Strategy artifact clinic.
Install Claude Code + Notion or Obsidian. Load your board docs, OKRs and hiring plan. Run your first AI query against your own KB.
Session 4 · 60 min · Side-by-side build session.
Diagnose the last three board meetings. Redesign the agenda, pre-read and cadence. Draft your next pre-read memo in room.
Session 5 · 90 min · Board doc clinic.
Lock the board deck template, pre-read memo and agenda. Send to one trusted board member for feedback.
Session 6 · 60 min · Board OS shipped live.
Ship a scorecard system, leveling rubric and interview loop. Push one open role through the new system in week.
Session 7 · 90 min · Hiring system clinic.
Pre-score 3 candidate narratives against the 4 audiences (board, team, investors, customers). Pick your anchor narrative.
Session 8 · 60 min · Narrative Canvas built.
Ship the narrative memo. Use it in your next board email, next all-hands, and next investor update. Three audiences in one week.
Session 9 · 90 min · Narrative role-play.
Calendar audit + Maker/Manager block planning + delegation matrix. Hand off two recurring meetings before the week is out.
Session 10 · 60 min · Calendar audit live.
Build your weekly dashboard in Claude Code with facilitator support — pipeline, hiring, cash, OKRs. Runs end-to-end on real data.
Session 11 · 90 min · CEO OS built live.
Present your 5 anchors + live CEO OS to the full cohort. Sign your 90-day plan.
Session 12 · 90 min · Demo Day.
Apply
This is the inaugural run of the program. Pricing, access, and the seat at the table all reflect that — and won't repeat in future cohorts.
We build AI intake systems for a living. For this room, we're deliberately not using one. Seven seats deserve a conversation, not a form — so there's one step:
Internal: Sales playbook — ICPs, Apollo search & 5-touch sequences ↗
If you're a first-time CEO running a funded company and want to install your operating system before month 18 arrives — let's talk.