Ryan Vaughn

I coach founders whose ambition goes beyond just success.

I help you build a company that works for you, so you can live the life you were meant to live.

I spent fifteen years building venture-backed companies. Raised $22M, built teams of 100+, conquered a market. I believed a great company demanded all of me, so I gave it.

And it completely consumed me.

Building a company from the middle of everything, somewhere along the way I lost touch with who I was, and what I wanted. My family suffered. My kids. I sacrificed all of it to the company. There was just no room for any of it, in the midst of being the one with all the answers.

Then I broke. I let my team in, and working with my own coach, began to build differently. To build a company that worked for me, so I could win my life back. And for the first time, we began to scale without me.

As an executive coach I've now worked with over 100 founders, including unicorns and some of the fastest-growing companies in tech. These founders have raised over $500M, and built more than $10B in equity value. We build the culture, the systems, the team, and the agents that enable them to scale, while they get out of the day-to-day and into the decisions that carry real weight. And we identify and shift the key unconscious patterns that stop them, and hold their company back.

On the other side, a high performance, low drama company. And something else that surprises every time.

Your health, your family, and the things that light you up are no longer competing with the work.

They are the things that make your best work possible.

You aren’t meant to sacrifice yourself to your creations. You’re meant to build things that change the world, and to be more alive for having built them.

These days I'm building Camerado with my dear friends Derek Haswell and Steve Schlafman. The same work, challenged every day by two of the best founder coaches I’ve ever met. Camerados who hold me accountable both to my potential, and my aliveness.

I've been sober for 19 years and sitting Zen for 15. I’m a lifelong competitive athlete, and am somewhere between drafts of my first novel. I live in Michigan with my wife, Laura, and our boys, Kas and Leo. You can read my writing at leadinsideout.substack.com.