Greatness At Scale
We partner with senior leadership teams who have the ambition to build truly distinctive organizations. Most often you are a VC/PE backed company between a hundred and a few thousand employees with a deep desire for excellence.
We believe great business are built on three principles:
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Simplicity is power. The guiding spirit of all organizations decays as they scale and age. Multiple products, markets, locations and simple influx of new people create complexity from which most organizations never recover. They try to do “everything, everywhere all at once”. The only way to deal with complexity is for senior leaders to actively seek and enforce simplicity.
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Great organizations are distinctive. Excellence isn’t found in best practices—it’s built through bold choices. Distinctive companies operate with a unique logic, often so idiosyncratic it seems obsessive and even crazy from the outside. That’s the point. The exceptional is never generic.
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Greatness takes discipline; Strategy is meaningless unless it shows up in behavior. In great companies, every decision—boardroom or frontline—echoes a coherent, resonant choice. You can feel it in every product choice, every meeting, every customer interaction – there’s a through-line that ties it all together. Customers sense it. Talent gravitates toward it. Competitors can't replicate it.
We help leadership teams identify a handful of essential ideas—an ethos for how the business should operate—and then take those ideas seriously and bring them to life. Not as posters or platitudes, but as daily practice. The result? An organization that operates like a precision instrument rather than a complex machine.
"The chief aim of order is to give room for good
things to run wild."
G. K. Chesterton
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Structure for Greatness
To bring your company's ethos to life, we deliver four core outcomes:
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Clear strategy. A small set of strategic choices deeply understood throughout your business
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Clean accountability. An organization in which every team knows exactly what they own, what they don't, and how success is measured—ending turf wars and accountability gaps
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Distinctive OS. A distinctive way of managing and running your organization, with aligned executive and senior leadership teams
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Continued evolution. A set of internal and external feedback loops to keep refining your structure and design, grounded in real-world outcomes
Working with us is the opportunity to reinvigorate your organization. We’re allergic to bureaucracy. We don’t build systems for their own sake. Instead, we focus on creating the "minimum viable structure" —just enough to support excellence, no more.
What choices are we making?
Strategic
Clarity
How do we organize?
Organization Design
How do we deliver?
Operating
System
Is it working?
Feedback Systems & Triangulation
"First-time founders think competitors are what kills 99% of startups. But 99% of startups die from suicide, not murder. Worry instead about all of your internal problems."
Y Combinator Startup Playbook
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Why Studio? Why Metis?
Studio. We are experts in bringing organizations alive. You are experts on your business. We see our work as an act of partnership and co-creation, and we chose the word “Studio” to reflect that you enter a co-working space when working with us. Like a great recording studio, we’ll hold the space and bring the tools to help you tap into the full potential of your work.
Metis. Metis is the ancient Greek concept of practical wisdom—the ability to know exactly what to do in any situation. When Metis flows through your organization, every employee becomes a strategic thinker, every decision reinforces your core identity, and excellence becomes automatic. Everything we do is designed to enable Metis to take hold in your everyday.
"The leaders we work with don't follow best practices—they become the practices others try to copy."
Jeff Raider, Co-founder of Harry's and Warby Parker
“As Harry’s scaled, we recognized our organization was becoming increasingly complex and we needed to evolve our structure to enable clear ownership and accountability at all levels, leverage our expertise across our brands and maintain the speed and responsiveness to our customers that has helped us to grow in the first place. Darko was our trusted advisor throughout this process, understanding our goals, providing thoughtful perspectives, keeping us focused on the areas that matter most and keeping it simple. It was a meaningful and hugely successful step forward for Harry’s and I’m very appreciative of Darko’s support and partnership.”
Nilam Ganenthiran, CEO and cofounder of Beacon Software, previously COO of Instacart
“Working with Jake has been a game changer. As I navigated my own transition from high-growth executive to first-time founder, he has helped me cut through the noise and focus on how I can build and lead Beacon in a way that is authentic to me. Conversations with Jake bring me clarity, focus and push me to seek excellence via company building. I am extremely grateful for our partnership and believe Jake has been a 'secret weapon' for me and Beacon”
Matt Clifford, Co-founder of Entrepreneur First, chair of ARIA and advisor to the UK govt on AI
“Jake is a truly wonderful coach. His ability to get results comes down to three things: (a) he’s exceptionally smart; (b) he somehow always identifies the most important question; and (c) he’s relentless in pushing me to get to the best and truest answer. Working with him has been a huge unlock: when I think of the work I’m proudest of over the last three years, I know a big chunk of it wouldn’t have happened without him.”
Stu Solomon, CEO of Human, previously president of Recorded Future
"Working with Studio Metis has resulted in the single most impactful advice I have received over a thirty-year career. I now share their ideas with every company I sit on the Board of."
We Want To Provide Value From Our First Call
We invest time to get to know you and your business. We start by learning enough about you and your situation to offer you a detailed perspective on the work ahead and possibilities open to you - and the quality of our scoping should give you a feel for how it will be to work with us.
We are a boutique obsessed with our craft, combining hard business focus and psychological depth. Reach out to us at info@studiometis.co
Jake Bornstein
Decade of coaching over 150 C-suite execs & fund partners, from seed to Series D and exit, PE transitions, M&A, major strategic pivots.
Darko Lovric
Fifteen years of advisory on org issues - built 50+ bespoke operating models for senior leaders executing their strategies. Worked in VC, PE and Fortune 50 environments.
Our Mission Is To Live Up To The Name Of Our Firm
In Greek mythology Metis is the goddess of practical counsel and mother of Athena, source of all civilization. Similarly, through our work we hope to help you lay the foundations for an organization capable of delivering your life’s work and building the world’s next great company.