What does a previous founder, and CEO, do after winding up their company?
In July 2021 we made the extremely difficult decision to wind up Zergo / SannTek. The worst part was by far letting go of our team of rockstars, all of who gave their heart and soul to the company’s mission. As leaders of the charge, Thomas and I refused to lead our teammates down a bad path, and with our lack of product-market-fit and sub-par traction, it sure seemed like we were heading that way. So, we sold off our assets and sent almost 40% of what we had fundraised back to our investors. During this time, I had lots of time to think about what our 3 pivots¹ had taught me, and what I wanted to do with all of this experience.
I picked up the phone and called around, mostly to founders who I felt inspired by during my time running the company. One of those founders was Storm Stillman, the current COO of Curebase and previous founder of a YC-backed diagnostic company. Way back in 2018, Curebase had patiently helped us set up a clinical trial to measure the efficacy of our breathalyzer for weed. Way back then, Hannah Gittleman² was our Project Manager, and I was always incredibly impressed by the service they provided. They were doing something that felt like a no-brainer to me, running decentralized clinical trials. Standing in contrast to the typical flow of driving to a hospital to receive treatment, the idea of being able to participate in studies through your phone or laptop seemed like an obvious improvement. I noticed they had a business operations position open on a job board, and, driven by my enthusiasm for the mission, my delusion about how good I was at excel³, and the positive experience I had during our project, inquired.
To cut a long story short, I ended up going through a formal interview process with Storm & Tom (the CEO and founder of Curebase) to evaluate my capacity to take on this role. For some reason, Tom & Storm saw past my obvious inability to write paragraph-long google sheet macros and extended an opportunity. The compensation was right, the work was entirely remote, and while they were not willing to give me the business operations title⁴, I worked to support Tom and Storm with miscellaneous deliverables that no one else had the capacity to take on. I helped recruit research-naive⁵ urgent care sites, I helped facilitate an in-person manager retreat and I overhauled our sales collateral.
Fortunately, I proved myself quite useful to the team. To be fair- I had A LOT of catching up to do with regards to clinical trial expertise, and to this day I’m still no expert. But I started shadowing project managers, relied on in-house Curebase experts⁶, and googled acronyms a lot.
After all of this, I’ve come on here to share with you all that I’m officially taking on the role of Chief of Staff at Curebase. I feel honored, privileged, and full of gratitude to all those who helped make this happen.
Now, let’s get down to business. I face a steep learning curve ahead and plan to really lean on my network. I’ll try to share as much as possible of what I’ve learned and what I plan to learn⁷, but I want to extend an open invitation to anyone reading this, to reach out if you want to chat! I’m keen to build more professional relationships, and if what I write about doesn’t quite answer your burning question, maybe a quick chat would! That being said, here are the broad strategic pillars I plan to work on over the next few months:
Helping Curebase Learn
- Running live “retrospective” sessions to review client feedback and brainstorm potential improvements for each project we run at Curebase
Keeping Curebase Informed
- Leading our bi-weekly all hands and improving engagement for each of these meetings
- Coordinating decks for both the Curebase Board of Directors as well as our Formal Advisory Board
Optimizing Curebase Execution
- Launching V2 for our OKRs and increasing adoption of the process
- Conducting regular pulse-checks with leaders and individual contributors to identify gaps and places that need more resources
If any of my priorities resonate with you, I’m open to a chat! Thank you for reading and please if you have questions about Curebase or if you happen to know someone who has done this Chief of Staff role, please introduce me… I have a lot to learn.
Cheers to a new chapter!
[1]: It was more than 3 if you count our time at Y-Combinator; we briefly considered selling loans for tiny homes, and figuring out whether expensive wine was corked before it was opened.
[2]: Not only is Hannah still at Curebase, but she’s now the Head of People!
[3]: You would think that after fundraising millions of dollars, managing a company P&L, and filing taxes for 3 years you’d be able to keep up with a CPA — I thought this, and I was very wrong.
[4]: Rightfully so. Shout out to Nancy, the person that got that role, that CAN write impressive macros.
[6]: Jane if you’re reading this, I continue to be amazed by your clinical trial wisdom, thank you for patiently explaining to me what a “CTMS” really is (multiple times).
[7]: You can sign up for more of these updates using this link.
