From Midsize Org to Solo Founder. What I Kept and What I Cut.
February 21, 2026
One week ago, I was the CTO of a mid-size, PE-held SaaS company leading a large IT organization. Today, my team is me, my wife handling bookkeeping and QA, and a growing roster of clients who trust me to help them build what matters.
The transition wasn't years in the making. Ergon Insights came together fast, born out of conviction, not a slow corporate exit strategy. I knew the kind of company I wanted to build. I knew the principles it would run on. And when the time was right, I moved.
Here's what I've learned in the first week.
What I Kept
A decision filter. One of the first things I built for Ergon was a simple operating sequence: Is it clear? Is it aligned? Can we systemize it? Can we deliver it at an elite level? If any answer is no, we pause. When you're a solo founder, there's no team to absorb a bad decision. It's just you and the consequences. A filter like this isn't optional. It's survival.
The discipline framework. Extreme Ownership isn't a corporate program. It's an operating system. Cover and move. Simple. Prioritize and execute. Decentralized command. Those principles work with a large team, and they work with one. The application changes. The principles don't. I'm up at 4:00, in the gym by 4:30. I plan the week before Monday. I own every outcome, good and bad.
The investment in people. Thirty years of building teams taught me one thing above everything else: if you invest in people with integrity, the returns follow you. Not as a transaction, as trust. The leaders I've developed over the years, the relationships I've built, the reputation I've earned. That's the foundation Ergon stands on. None of that showed up on a balance sheet, but it's the most valuable thing I carried out the door.
Technical depth. This was a deliberate choice. Most advisory founders drift into networking and brand-building. Their technical authority erodes. They start relying on reputation instead of current competence. I made a commitment: review at least one architecture in depth every week. Stay in the code. Stay in the systems. If I can't do the work, I have no business advising on it.
What I Cut
The hierarchy. A large organization requires structure. Org charts, reporting lines, skip-levels, escalation paths. Solo founder requires speed. I stripped everything back to direct communication and documented decisions. No layers. No approvals. Just clarity and execution.
Meetings without outcomes. Status updates that don't lead to decisions. Presentations built to impress rather than inform. Any recurring commitment that exists out of habit rather than necessity. If it doesn't produce an outcome, it doesn't get my time.
The safety net. A corporate salary is a powerful thing. Steady income, benefits, the comfort of knowing exactly what next month looks like. I walked away from that, not recklessly, but intentionally. I calculated my survival number, built a runway, secured an anchor client, and then made the move. The safety net is replaced by the work itself. Either I deliver value or my family doesn't eat. That kind of clarity focuses you in a way no performance review ever could.
Scope creep in the offering. When you're inside an enterprise, you try to solve everything. As a founder, I had to cut ideas I loved. Some offerings were too capital-intensive. Others were too narrow to market at scale. Others were too high-touch for where I am right now. Cutting good ideas to protect great ones is one of the hardest things about this transition.
Anything that doesn't align. Ergon operates on a simple principle: collaborative over competitive, integrity over revenue. If a client engagement isn't aligned with how we work, we part ways early. I'd rather grow slower than compromise the standard. That's not idealism. It's how you build something that lasts.
What Surprised Me
The thing nobody tells you about going from leading a large organization to solo founder is how loud the silence gets. No notifications pulling you into someone else's crisis. No escalations. No "quick syncs" that run forty-five minutes. Just you, the work, and the question that matters most: Is this the highest and best use of my time right now?
That question used to get buried under the noise. Now it's the only question.
One week in, here's what I know: the principles that build high-performing teams are the same ones building this company. The difference is there's nowhere to hide. Every system either works or it doesn't. Every decision compounds. Every relationship counts.
That's not pressure. That's proper function.
Ergon Insights helps technology leaders and organizations perform at their highest function through AI transformation, fractional CTO leadership, and executive coaching.