Founders and Start ups
Whatever hour it is right now, you're in the right place.
Building a company puts pressure on everything: your mind, your sleep, your cofounder relationship, your marriage, your sense of who you are. We work with founders on exactly that, confidentially, quickly, and without anything needing to be "wrong with you" first. Completely confidential. You'll hear back within 24 to 48 hours.
The pressure is real. And most of it, you carry alone.
Sound familiar?
You can't show fear to your team. You can't show doubt to your investors. Your cofounder might be the thing you need to talk about. And the people who love you didn't sign up for this. That isolation, not the workload, is usually what does the damage.
The raise is coming, and you and your cofounder are barely speaking. Fundraising splits every founding pair: one pitches, one runs the company. The distance grows exactly when you need each other most.
Every rejection feels like a verdict on you, not the deck. When you are the company, a "no" stops being feedback. That fusion is normal, and it's trainable.
You're hitting your numbers and quietly running on empty. High-functioning burnout doesn't look like collapse. It looks like you, still performing, with nothing left underneath.
3am is when your brain does its worst work. Sleep, anxiety, and the constant recalculation of runway. There are better tools than white-knuckling it.
Someone you love keeps asking when they get you back. The company came home with you. Your relationship is paying for it.
THE WALL
Nothing goes back to your investors. Ever.
If your fund shared this page with you, here is what they will ever know: aggregate numbers, like "six calls this month." Never who called, never who came in, never what was said. Your partner at the fund cannot ask, and we would not answer.
We are a private, cash-pay practice. No insurance companies, no diagnosis required, no paper trail through a benefits system. What you say stays inside a licensed clinical relationship, protected by law, not just by promise.
The legal limits on confidentiality are the same as any therapy: risk of serious harm to yourself or others, abuse of a child or elder, or a court order. That's the whole list.
WHAT WE DO
Built for how founders actually work.
Weekly 50-minute therapy is a poor fit for your calendar and your problems. Ours is structured the way you already do hard things: focused, intensive, and outcome-oriented.
INDIVIDUAL
One-on-one sessions
The pressure, the anxiety, the sleep, the identity questions, the family strain, plus ongoing performance work for founders who want a standing edge, not just crisis support. In person in San Francisco, San Diego and Sacramento, or remote from anywhere in California.
$250 per session
COFOUNDER
Cofounder intensives
Focused sessions for founding pairs, before a raise, after a rupture, or when the same fight keeps repeating. Built on the most researched relationship method in the world, applied to the partnership your company runs on. Every intensive begins with a 90-minute assessment.
One-day $3,500 · Two-day $6,500
PERFORMANCE
Founder Performance Intensive
A half-day Brainspotting session built for the high-stakes moments: performance blocks, board readiness, the pitch that has to land. Brain-based, focused, and fast.
Half-day $1,800
TEAMS & FUNDS
Workshops and onboarding
Founding-team alignment sessions, communication and resilience workshops, and portfolio-event programming for funds that want to back their founders with more than capital.
$1,500 per workshop
WHO YOU'D TALK TO
Senior-led. Not a platform. Not a marketplace.
Dr. Mark Maxwell, PsyD, LMFT #80504. Founder and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. Trained in Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), the most researched couples method in the world, under Dr. Lisa Palmer-Olsen, one of its senior master trainers, and worked directly with EFT's founder, Dr. Sue Johnson, producing her official training materials. Trained in Brainspotting, a brain-based performance method, by its founder Dr. David Grand and senior trainer Lisa Larson. A founder himself, currently building his own company. Specialty: the cofounder relationship under pressure.
Carlota Azpiazu, AMFT #164139. Associate Marriage and Family Therapist, San Francisco, supervised by Dr. Mark Maxwell, LMFT #80504, and employed by Pacifica Group Counseling and Wellness. Advance-trained in both Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) and Brainspotting, Carlota works with founders and early startup employees on the ground in San Francisco, in English and Spanish. She knows the founder ecosystem well, its events, its pressures, its pace, and works with the earliest stage from the inside. If you've met us at an event, it was probably Carlota.
HOW IT STARTS
Three steps. The first one takes ten seconds.
1. Text or call. A sentence is enough. "Saw the page, want to talk" works fine.
2. We reply within 24 to 48 hours and set a short intro call. Fifteen minutes, free, no forms first. You say what's going on; we tell you honestly whether and how we can help.
3. We build the plan together. A session, a series, an intensive, whatever the situation actually calls for. Fees are discussed openly on the intro call.
QUESTIONS FOUNDERS ACTUALLY ASK
Asked quietly, answered plainly.
Will my fund or investors find out? No. They receive aggregate numbers only, never names, never attendance, never content. This is the foundation of the whole arrangement, and it is non-negotiable on our side.
Is this only for when things are falling apart? No, and honestly, earlier is better. Most of our cofounder work is alignment and prevention: building the language and agreements before the high-pressure seasons, the way serious teams prepare for anything else.
Does my cofounder have to come? No. Individual work stands on its own. And if the cofounder relationship is the issue, one person starting is often how the pair eventually gets there.
Is this coaching? No. Coaching is valuable and we respect it. This is clinical work, done by licensed clinicians, with the depth to go where coaching can't: anxiety, burnout, trauma, personal and relational issues, the patterns underneath the patterns. If you already have a coach, we're glad to work alongside them. The two roles complement each other well.
What does it cost? Pricing is listed above and discussed openly before any commitment, no surprises. We're a private cash-pay practice; services, formats, and pricing can be customized for each company or founding team, and some engagements are sponsored by funds.
Not carrying it alone is the edge.
The strongest founders we know aren't the ones without pressure. They're the ones who stopped processing it solo.
If you're in crisis right now: call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline), available 24/7. This page and our phone line are not an emergency service.
Pacifica Group Counseling and Wellness. Dr. Mark Maxwell, LMFT #80504. San Francisco, Sacramento, San Diego. Serving founders throughout California, in person and by telehealth.