Companies don't stall because of the market. They stall because of the team.
I help founders build the leadership team that carries the next stage of growth — so the company stops running through one person. I did it as CEO of Gett, the Volkswagen-backed ride-hailing company that went head-to-head with Uber: zero to $50M+ a year, 250 people, 30 cities. Since then, for 140+ founders.
30 minutes, no pitch. If I'm not the right person, I'll tell you who is.
What changed for the founders who did this work
Four of the 140+. Names, companies and outcomes as they reported them.
Artem Arakelyan
Came in unable to pull senior product people into an early-stage company.
- Hired a CTO away from the largest food-delivery service in Almaty
- Hired a product manager from the country's biggest flight-booking site
- Built out a senior and mid-level engineering team
"I can now sell the idea of joining my company to almost anyone."
Alexander Korchmarik
Came in wanting to learn how to hire strong executives.
- Hired three top managers in two months, none of them job-hunting
- A CMO, a commercial director and a CFO
Two months from the end of the program to all three offers signed.
Elena Degtyareva
Came in stuck in day-to-day operations, repeating management mistakes she could already name.
- Hired a marketing director using the system
- Handed the method to her — 11 more hires followed
- Put a planning system in place and stepped back from operations
Pavel Ozerov
Came in with a company that had never written its strategy down.
- Finalized the strategy, mission and vision
- Every new idea now gets checked against the vision before it starts
- The clearer story helps in client negotiations — and in recruiting
"Now the team knows what we are working for."
You already know what's wrong. You just can't say it out loud yet.
Everything routes through you.
You are the escalation path, the closer and the final signature. Strategy happens on flights.
The bench isn't strong enough.
Loyal people sit in seats that now need someone bigger. You re-do their work instead of having the conversation.
Growth is a founder skill, not a company system.
Revenue runs on your relationships, your instincts, your hours. That is a business you cannot sell and cannot leave.
None of this gets solved by hiring one more person. It gets solved by rebuilding how the top of the company works.
Four ways to work together
Most engagements start with the diagnostic and continue as advisory.
Founder & CEO Advisory
A standing partner for the person who doesn't have one. Two working sessions a month, plus access in between.
- A 12-month growth plan with owners and numbers
- Clear ownership of revenue — and how you'll know it's working
- A straight read on the two or three executive hires that change the trajectory
Best for $5M–$100M revenue, 30–500 people, founder still in the middle of everything.
Leadership Team Diagnostic
An outside read on what is actually blocking growth at the top of the company. I interview your leadership team one by one and come back with it in writing.
- Confidential 1:1s with every leader on the team
- A written assessment: what's strong, what's exposed, what breaks at 2x
- A 90-day and 12-month roadmap with owners and dates
Often the first engagement. Many clients continue into advisory afterward.
Leadership Intensive
A working session with your whole management team. Not a seminar — 30% frameworks, 70% your company on the table. People leave with decisions written down, not notes.
- A vision your team can repeat, and the strategy under it
- Who decides what, and who carries which number
- Your bar for A-players — how to attract them and how to assess them
- An operating rhythm that survives you being away
Built from the four-part program 140+ founders have been through. English and Russian.
Keynotes
Talks on building high-performing teams and the mistakes founders make between $10M and $100M in revenue.
- The Talent Magnet — why strong people join companies that aren't the highest bidder
- Eight Steps to Hiring Someone Better Than You
- Zero to $50 Million — what actually scaled Gett, and what didn't
Recent stages: Alfa-Conf, a 19-city conference series run by Russia's largest private bank, and Atlanty, the country's largest private business club. English and Russian; travel from North Carolina.
How the work is structured
Four stages, in this order. We start wherever you are weakest — but each one rests on the one before it.
Foundation — the company and the founder
A vision that survives being repeated by someone else, a strategy with numbers attached, and an honest look at what the founder should be doing. Most growth ceilings are drawn by the founder's own calendar.
The A-player bar — building the team
Where to find people who can own revenue, how to assess them, and how to sell your company to someone who already has a good job. The same system I used at Gett.
Retention — making it hold
Tying what your people want to what the company needs: motivation structures, honest performance conversations, and an audit of the team you have.
Operating system — control without you
The meeting cadence, the dashboard, the delegation rules. A company that produces results while you are on a plane.
Twenty years of building the thing I now advise on
All of this was built in Russia and neighbouring markets. Figures come from audited and internal company records — happy to walk through any of them on a call.
Who this is for
A good fit
- Founder-led technology or technology-enabled company, roughly $5M–$100M in revenue
- 30–500 people, with a leadership team that exists but isn't carrying enough
- The founder is genuinely willing to give up control of something
- Growth is the goal — not cost-cutting, not a turnaround
Not a fit
- You want someone to run the hiring for you — I'm not a search firm
- Pre-revenue or pre-product
- The real problem is capital, not the team
- You're looking for validation rather than an outside read
About
I built my career as an operator in Russia — a market of 150 million people where the local Uber, Amazon and LinkedIn are all separate companies, most of them founder-led, all of them scaling fast. Five years of it I spent as CEO of Gett, taking its business from nothing to more than $50 million a year. Before that, Groupon's expansion into the region. After that, two venture-backed companies of my own and a board seat at Delimobil, where I ran the CEO search.
The same thing was true every time: the strategy was rarely the problem. The team was. Companies grew exactly as fast as the group of people at the top could carry, and not one meter faster.
So that is what I have worked on since — 140+ founders and their leadership teams, plus twenty-odd operators I've hosted to break down how they built their own. I'm now based in North Carolina and work with founders in the US and internationally, in English and Russian.
Vitaly Krylov · Founder, Krylov Advisory, Inc.
Frequently asked
Do you recruit for me?
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Let's talk
Tell me what's going on. I read every one of these myself and reply within two business days.
hivitaly@gmail.com
North Carolina, USA