Dear hustlers, founders, operators and visionaries,
Today’s guest is Kate, founder of KaaS and former Chief of Staff and Executive Assistant at companies like Wise and DeepMind, where she worked at the center of decision-making in high-growth environments. She now advises founders and VCs on when and how to hire executive support to increase velocity and remove bottlenecks.
🎧 Tune in now on Spotify, Apple, YouTube and share your thoughts! In the meantime: Follow the Gradient and stay tuned!
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Why you should listen
You should listen to this if you are stretched between 10 and 100 people and still managing your own calendar, inbox, and follow-ups while claiming you want leverage.
As the conversation unfolded, it became clear that most founders try to fix strategy before fixing operations, which quietly caps speed and turns them into the bottleneck.
What we talk about
00:00 Introduction
02:30 When founder mode becomes the bottleneck
07:29 EA vs Chief of Staff: defining the roles clearly
11:24 The 15-person chief of staff trap
14:46 The cost of waiting too long: velocity
17:08 The 60-minute calendar audit
19:09 Building your EA into a second brain
26:37 What to look for when hiring an EA
32:41 When everything compounds: 12-24 months in
34:41 Working with C Levels
46:01 Rapid fire
Our main take away’s
Founder mode becomes a liability the moment momentum kicks in. Once you have investors, a growing team, and external expectations, every Slack reply and calendar tweak you insist on approving slows decisions and forces the team to wait for you.
Executive support is a velocity investment, not overhead. Buying back one to two days per week shifts a founder from reactive inbox management to proactive problem solving, and the real cost of waiting is competitors shipping while you are fundraising or buried in admin.
