Meet the Experts Hosting Founder Office Hours at Startup Boston Week 2026
- Stephanie Roulic
- 5 hours ago
- 7 min read
What if you could bring one of the problems keeping you up at night to someone who has already helped solve it? That's the idea behind Founder Office Hours at Startup Boston Week 2026.
On Wednesday, September 16 from 11:30am–1:30pm, we're bringing experienced founders, operators, executives, investors, advisors, and subject-matter experts together at Boston University to help startup founders work through real challenges.
Maybe you're struggling to turn founder-led sales into something repeatable. Maybe you're questioning your ICP. Maybe you need another set of eyes on your fundraising strategy, product roadmap, hiring plans, financial infrastructure, or leadership approach.
Bring the question you're actually wrestling with and find someone who can help you think it through.
Here are some of the experts you'll be able to meet during Founder Office Hours. And don't forget to get your FREE ticket for the 10th Annual Startup Boston Week right here!
Growth, GTM & Sales
Sean Sweeney — Growth + Commercial Strategy
Trying to figure out how to turn early traction into a more repeatable growth engine?
Sean Sweeney is a Boston-based operator, advisor, and founder who helped grow ClearEdge Partners from less than $6 million in revenue and fewer than 15 employees to more than $28 million and 116 employees before its acquisition by Accenture.
During Office Hours, Sean can help founders pressure-test go-to-market strategy, pricing and packaging, sales processes, customer discovery, retention, positioning, and product-market fit. He's particularly useful for founders moving beyond founder-led selling or trying to understand where revenue may be leaking.
Bring Sean questions about: GTM strategy, pricing, sales, PMF, customer discovery, retention, positioning, and building a repeatable commercial motion.
Allison Snow — Early GTM Strategy
Early GTM decisions have a way of getting made whether you intentionally make them or not.
Allison Snow of Salacia Go-To-Market Advisory helps founders get sharper about which problem they're organizing around, which buyers deserve their attention, why those buyers should act now, and why they should choose one solution over another.
Bring Allison a specific moment where your GTM feels murky—a launch you're struggling to position, a sales conversation that isn't converting, or a pitch that keeps changing depending on who's in the room.
Bring Allison questions about: early GTM strategy, buyers, positioning, sales conversations, launches, differentiation, and sharpening your pitch.
Mo Castillo — Technical Sales + GTM
Selling a technical product comes with an entirely different set of challenges.
Mo Castillo can help founders think through how sales engineering fits into a growing sales organization, build more repeatable POC and demo processes, sharpen their ICP based on technical fit, and troubleshoot stalled technical evaluations.
He can also advise on hiring early AEs or sales engineers and improving customer discovery, demo storytelling, and objection handling.
Bring Mo questions about: technical sales, sales engineering, demos, POCs, ICP, technical hiring, stuck deals, discovery, and objection handling.
Jeff Kubick — B2B Marketing
If your product makes sense to you but isn't quite clicking with the market, bring your marketing questions to Jeff Kubick of Refactor Marketing.
Jeff's expertise spans B2B marketing, go-to-market strategy, positioning, messaging, value propositions, market research, ICP development, and demand generation.
Bring Jeff questions about: B2B marketing, positioning, messaging, value propositions, ICP, market research, demand generation, and GTM.
Product, Technology & Growth
Michael Gusefski — Product + Growth Strategy
Michael Gusefski has led product management teams at two startups and experienced company growth from Series A through Series D, including working with boards along the way.
He can help founders think through product-market fit, growth strategy, launch strategy, business planning, and complex business problems. He can also provide perspective on business infrastructure, incentive structures, and financial modeling.
Bring Michael questions about: product-market fit, product strategy, launches, growth, business planning, scaling, and complex problem-solving.
Konstantin Breysler — Product + Technical Decisions
Have an MVP that's becoming too complicated? A roadmap that's three times longer than your team's capacity? Not sure whether you should build something internally or buy it?
Konstantin Breysler helps early-stage founders make better product and technical decisions.
Bring him your MVP, roadmap, architecture, team, or delivery problem. He can help you cut scope, identify your biggest risks, think through build-vs.-buy decisions, and determine practical next steps.
Bring Konstantin questions about: MVPs, product roadmaps, architecture, technical scope, build vs. buy, delivery, engineering teams, and technical risk.
Fundraising, Finance & Investor Readiness
Arif Padaria — Fundraising + Venture Strategy
Preparing to raise—or wondering whether you're actually ready?
Arif Padaria of Faris Capital brings experience as an investor, ecosystem architect, and co-founder to conversations around venture-building, fundraising, and go-to-market strategy.
Founders can bring Arif their pitch narrative or deck, investor targeting strategy, market sizing, competitive positioning, business model, or even questions around how a VC might underwrite their round. He can also provide perspective on SAFE and note terms, cap tables, deep tech commercialization, and expansion into MENA/GCC markets.
Bring Arif questions about: fundraising readiness, pitch decks, investor targeting, market sizing, idea validation, venture strategy, deal terms, deep tech, AI, robotics, and emerging markets.
Byran Cohen — Startup Finance + Accounting
As your startup grows, your finance function eventually needs to grow with it.
Byran Cohen, a partner in Cherry Bekaert's outsourced accounting service line, can help founders think through accounting and finance infrastructure, outsourced accounting, month-end close, financial reporting, budgeting, cash flow, processes and controls, and when it makes sense to expand your finance function.
He also has particular expertise with organizations receiving or pursuing government grants and contracts, including allowable costs, timekeeping, cost allocation, reporting, compliance, and audit readiness.
Bring Byran questions about: startup accounting, cash flow, budgeting, financial reporting, outsourced finance, government grants and contracts, compliance, and audit readiness.
Leadership, Teams & Scaling
Nazma Rosado — Executive Leadership
The problems you're solving as a founder change as your company grows—and so does the way you need to lead.
Nazma Rosado of Avion Consulting can advise founders on executive coaching, leadership, executive presence, organizational design, and fractional CHRO or COO needs.
Have an investor pitch or board meeting coming up? She can also help you think about how you're showing up in the room.
Bring Nazma questions about: leadership, executive presence, board meetings, pitches, organizational design, and scaling yourself as a leader.
Colleen Donahue-Bean — Scaling Leadership
At some point, the leadership style that got your startup here may not be the one that gets it to the next stage.
Colleen Donahue-Bean of CDB Global Partners works with tech founders and executives navigating growth from post-Series A into hypergrowth.
With more than 25 years of experience leading businesses, developing executives, and building high-performing teams, Colleen can help founders think through questions like: How do I get out of the weeds? Who should my next leadership hire be? How do I create accountability without ruining the culture? What do I do when a loyal employee isn't growing with the company? And how do I navigate a difficult co-founder or board relationship?
Bring Colleen questions about: scaling as a leader, executive hiring, accountability, organizational change, difficult people decisions, co-founder relationships, board relationships, and moving from operator to strategic leader.
Farhan Quasem — Onboarding + Training
Hiring people is only step one. You also need to get them productive.
Farhan Quasem of Commudemy helps founders and early-stage operators build onboarding and training systems without needing a dedicated learning and development hire.
He can help you structure a first 30/60/90-day onboarding plan, integrate training into everyday workflows, and explore how AI tools can help a small team upskill more quickly and affordably.
Bring Farhan questions about: employee onboarding, 30/60/90-day plans, training, L&D, team upskilling, and using AI for employee development.
Sunil Bhagtani — Customer Experience + Delegation
Scaling means figuring out what you should continue owning—and what you shouldn't.
Sunil Bhagtani of WeSage BPM can help scaling startup leaders think through customer experience and the art of delegation.
Bring Sunil questions about: customer experience, delegation, and scaling your startup.
Research, Evidence & Impact
Kirsten Olander — Research + Impact
If you're building something designed to create measurable impact, figuring out what to measure—and when—can become its own challenge.
Kirsten Olander of Olander Research Consulting works particularly with founders building EdTech products and programs for children and young people.
You can bring Kirsten questions about whether you're measuring the right things, what evidence you actually need at your current stage, whether it's too early to evaluate your product, what you can legitimately say about your impact, or how to collect useful data without creating another full-time job for your team.
You don't need a perfect dataset or polished theory of change. Bring the research question your team keeps circling around and use the conversation to identify a realistic next step.
Bring Kirsten questions about: research, evidence, impact measurement, EdTech, evaluation, data collection, outcomes, and communicating impact.
Healthcare + Biotech
David Almeida Cardoso — Healthcare + Biotech
Building in healthcare, biotech, or pharmaceuticals brings scientific, commercial, regulatory, partnership, and funding questions together very quickly.
David Almeida Cardoso can advise entrepreneurs developing healthcare-, biotechnology-, and pharmaceutical-focused startups on commercial and scientific strategy, investor readiness, partnerships and business development, corporate expansion, operations, contracts, and funding acquisition through both grants and investment.
Bring David questions about: healthcare, biotech, pharmaceuticals, investor readiness, commercialization, scientific strategy, partnerships, business development, grants, investment, and expansion.
Don't Come With a Pitch. Come With a Problem.
Founder Office Hours isn't designed to give you enough time to solve every challenge facing your company. That's not the point. The goal is to give you access to someone who can help you get unstuck.
Come with a specific question. Explain what you've tried. Share what's not working. Ask the thing you haven't been able to figure out on your own.
You might leave with a different way of looking at the problem, something to stop doing, a question you hadn't considered, or one concrete next step to try. Sometimes that's exactly what you need.
