About Eric Weiss
I’m an executive coach for technical founders and CTOs at Series A and B venture-backed companies. Twenty years as an engineer, product leader, and CTO. Fifteen years coaching the founders building the future. I help technical founders evolve into mature leaders.
Before coaching
Before I coached anyone, I spent twenty years in the trenches: engineer, data scientist, product leader, founder, and CTO.
At Raytheon I built mission-critical defense systems, where one bad release could mean thousands of lives lost.
At Sony I built the PlayStation Network, the first online gaming platform of its kind, and scaled it to millions of concurrent users and $2B in revenue.
At Qualcomm I led the data science team behind a $8 billion technology licensing business, and developed machine learning systems that became the AI we use today.
For the past fifteen years I’ve coached technical founders and executives through the stretch you’re in now: finding product-market fit, leading a real executive team, building an A-player talent pipeline, scaling up operations, and raising capital.
That includes nearly three years coaching OpenAI’s platform team as it went from research lab to the fastest growing SaaS company in history. Remember how it scaled to millions of users without completely breaking? You’re welcome.
as engineer, PM, and CTO
founders and technical leaders coached
helped founders raise
helped teams hire
The work now
I work with founders and the CEOs, CTOs, and CPOs around them, most at venture-backed companies at Series A and B. That is the stretch where the company starts to crack under its own weight, and where the founder’s job changes faster than the founder does.
Board and C-suite dynamics. Executive presence. Fundraising. Hiring, team structure, and a roadmap the whole company can execute against.
I’ve filled nearly every seat myself, from software engineer to product manager to CTO, so when you describe your situation, I’ve lived it. I won’t give you some esoteric thought experiment, we’ll roll up our sleeves and dig into the problem.
Over the past decade I’ve coached leaders at OpenAI, Heap, Sendlane, Tealium, Dialogue, Sempre Health, ecoATM, and dozens of other innovative startups. I’m based in San Diego and work with founders across the US, Canada, and Europe.
What I believe
The technical founders who scale well design the business as deliberately as they design the product. Roles, decisions, cadence, and culture are architecture, like code.
The Stoics had a system for leading under pressure two thousand years ago. Founders resonate with it, because if it worked for emperors fighting wars, it can work for founders fighting with their board.
I run my own company on AI every day. The companies that win with it choose, on purpose, what stays human. I believe humans should own the creativity, judgment, and connection that are the soul of the company, and let AI take away the grunt work.
The books
Above the Chaos is a book to help founders avoid and manage burnout. It’s a Stoic playbook that applies timeless principles to modern leadership. Eight core principles, nine exercises, and a Leadership Philosophy Canvas to help you keep composure in a storm.
Growth by Design is a founder’s operating system for creating product-market fit. PMF is not something you search for, it’s something you deliberately craft. Ten pillars, dozens of exercises, and a Scorecard to help you dial it in.
Beyond the coaching room
For the past 20 years, I’ve been dedicated to building the San Diego startup ecosystem.
I’m the President of the Design Forward Alliance, organizers of San Diego Design Week, and the hub of the design ecosystem.
I’m VP of Startup San Diego, organizers of San Diego Startup Week. We bring together thousands of entrepreneurs across SaaS, life science, defense, and consumer businesses to help them launch, raise, and grow.
I’m also the San Diego chapter lead for VC Village, a national organization with thousands of VCs, family offices, PEs, and LPs.
Off the clock I’m a devoted husband and father, an avid outdoorsman, and a gamer.
“Having Eric as my executive coach has been more valuable than my Harvard MBA.”
Justin WielandFounder and CEO, Reach TechnologiesFounders I’ve coached are backed by General Catalyst, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia, GV, Bessemer, Battery, Menlo, Founders Fund, Y Combinator, and Lux.