Vetted Chief Operating Officers in California

“COO/CFO and startup co-founder (Gratia, Inc.) who has built operational infrastructure end-to-end across finance, contracts, resourcing, and talent management. Has scaled multiple early-stage businesses (<$20M revenue) and supported outcomes including a sale to a private equity-backed strategic buyer, with a pragmatic approach centered on clear processes, stakeholder alignment, and leveraging tools like QuickBooks, Bill.com, HubSpot, and Salesforce.”

“COO of Greenopia (pre-seed, pre-revenue) who has built the company’s operational foundation over the past 18 months—supporting fundraising, SEC/crowdfunding setup, and coordinating app and self-serve business onboarding/assessment systems. Brings a metrics-driven operating approach (OKRs, balancing metrics/unit economics) and has advised other startups (e.g., sports betting) to refocus effort on the highest-value customer segments.”

“Operations/Continuous Improvement leader with 25 years of Lean/Kaizen experience, including roles at Danaher and 10x Genomics. Known for building enterprise operating rhythms (True North + daily management) and developing internal CI certification programs, while delivering measurable quality and cycle-time gains (e.g., NCR/MRB lead time cut 47→14 days and FPY improvements via global test-equipment relocation).”

“Business builder and operator with 15+ years developing new businesses inside larger companies, including joining GIPHY 5 years post-founding and helping drive value pre-acquisition. As Head of GIPHY Studios, led a major org and business-model transformation—converting a non-revenue content team into a profitable, self-sustaining creative agency embedded within the company.”

“Operations and manufacturing leader with experience acting as an internal CEO to build a new business inside IDEX Corp from a $15M budget, owning P&L and a 3-year plan through product launch. At Planet Innovation, used Lean/DMAIC-style value stream mapping to 4x production throughput (400 to ~1600 units/month), exceeding a customer’s 1200/month scaling target. Strong in building teams and operational systems (product development, quality, supply chain) and coaching non-ops founders using structured frameworks.”

“Founder/CEO who built Hometown Heart from the ground up—creating SOPs and standing up hiring, GTM, finance, and investor/government relations—scaling from 6 employees and $100K debt to 350 employees and $40M in annual revenue in 3 years. Led expansion into San Francisco County, proactively managing compliance/licensing and municipal stakeholders to secure early approvals and drive major revenue growth.”

“Engineering/technology leader with experience tying roadmaps to OKRs/KPIs, scaling cross-functional engineering teams, and driving go-to-market execution for Managed IT Services revenue growth. In an early-stage company setting, personally stood up core systems (CRM, lead gen, website) and multi-cloud infrastructure (GCP/AWS) while building investor materials (pitch deck, VDR, financials), resulting in an investor LOI within 8 months. Also led an on-prem deployment architecture redesign for a network monitoring (NPM) product to improve compatibility, scalability, and security.”