I help seed-to-Series-B founders in Raleigh, Durham, and RTP go from being the bottleneck to a business that runs on systems — documented, connected, diligence-ready — in 90 days. Hands-on in the Triangle, not a name on a Zoom invite.
From university spinouts to RTP-adjacent SaaS and life-science ventures, this region produces deeply technical founders. The pattern I see: the product thinking is world-class, and the operating infrastructure is held together with heroics.
Triangle startups are often born from research labs and engineering teams. Founders who can build the product end up running payroll, onboarding, and vendor chaos by improvisation — and becoming the single point of failure.
Funding lands, the mandate is grow, and headcount doubles before any process is written down. I've scaled operations through exactly that — fulfillment operations from 4 centers to 23 across the US and Canada, 16 launched during COVID.
When you're competing for talent with the region's corporate anchors, you can't afford three-month ramp times. Documented systems get new hires productive in days — and keep the knowledge when someone leaves.
Sophisticated investors and enterprise buyers are a feature of this market. I've operated inside the compliance regimes of Apple, Tesla, and Asurion — I build operations that hold up when someone looks closely, because someone will.
At Enjoy Technology I ran operations through Series B, hypergrowth, a SPAC listing, and the hard landing after — bankruptcy and acquisition. I know what breaks at every stage because I was helping to hold it all together. Most fractional execs have a framework. I have scar tissue — and I build and implement the systems, then work myself out of the job.
30 minutes, free. You walk me through where the business is stuck; I tell you honestly whether fractional ops is the right move for your stage.
A fixed 30-day engagement: map how the operation actually runs, find what's throttling growth, build the first system, hand you the roadmap.
~2 days a week, including onsite time in the Triangle. I own operational outcomes in the lanes we agree on and build the systems that scale past you.
The operation runs on the system, not on you. Success is measured by needing me less over time.
Most fractional COO engagements in the market run roughly $3,000–$10,000+ per month depending on scope and days per week — a fraction of a full-time COO's six-figure salary plus equity. kwick engagements start with a fixed-scope 30-day Operations Diagnostic, then scale into an embedded retainer scoped to your stage. Exact numbers are part of the first conversation, not a surprise at the end of one.
When the founder is the bottleneck: every decision routes through one person, hiring is outpacing documentation, and growth is stalling on the founder's bandwidth rather than the market. In the Triangle this often hits right after real funding lands — the team doubles, the systems don't, and the operational debt starts compounding. It's also the right moment when an enterprise deal or a raise is about to put your operations under a microscope.
Yes. I'm based in North Carolina and the Triangle is one of my two focus metros — engagements include regular onsite time in Raleigh, Durham, and RTP as the work benefits from it, with a tight async cadence in between. This isn't a fly-in consultant relationship; it's a fractional operations leader who shows up.
A seed-to-Series-B startup usually needs COO-level systems more than it needs a COO-level salary. Fractional operations gives you an experienced operator about two days a week who builds the operating infrastructure — documented processes, connected tools, real metrics — and then hands it off. You get the systems without the six-figure commitment, and unlike most fractional execs, my goal is to make myself less necessary over time, not more.
Book a free founder call. Thirty minutes, an honest read on whether fractional operations is the right next move for your stage — from an operator who's lived every chapter of the lifecycle you're in.
Raleigh · Durham · RTP · Cary · Chapel Hill — also serving Charlotte and founders nationwide