What is a founder leadership assessment?

A founder leadership assessment is a structured evaluation conducted by an occupational psychologist that combines psychometric testing, in-depth interviews, and coaching to uncover a founder's leadership strengths, blind spots, and growth potential. CAIA's assessments are specifically designed for startup and scaleup environments.

How is CAIA's leadership assessment different from traditional executive assessments?

CAIA's assessments are led by qualified occupational psychologists (not HR generalists), built specifically for entrepreneurial contexts and leading in times of uncertainty, and combine evidence-based psychometrics with narrative interviewing techniques. The output is an actionable leadership profile with coaching recommendations, not just a score.

Who should get a leadership assessment?

CAIA's leadership assessments are designed for startup founders, C-suite executives at scaleups, VC and PE portfolio company leaders, and senior leadership teams preparing for rapid growth or organisational change.

What is the COA psychometric assessment?

COA is CAIA's proprietary values psychometric assessment designed specifically for startups and entrepreneurial organisations. It measures 12 core value drivers across a detailed values profile, benchmarked against 1,000+ founders and senior leaders. COA is used for individual leadership coaching, culture strategy, hiring, onboarding, and team development.

What makes CAIA's coaching different from other executive coaches?

Every CAIA coach is a qualified occupational psychologist with experience in both startup and corporate environments. Coaching is grounded in psychometric data using CAIA's proprietary COA assessment and integrates psychology, neuroscience, and consciousness-based practice.

Do VCs use CAIA's assessments for due diligence?

Yes. Venture capital firms and PE firms use CAIA's founder assessments as part of investment due diligence to evaluate founding team dynamics, leadership readiness, and potential risks. CAIA also works with VCs to assess portfolio company leadership teams post-investment.

What is executive coaching for startup founders?

Executive coaching for founders is 1:1 psychology-led coaching that helps founders deepen self-awareness, regulate emotional reactions under pressure, transform limiting beliefs, and build practical leadership skills. CAIA's coaching is grounded in psychometric data and evidence-based psychology, not generic advice.

What is a leadership development programme for startups?

CAIA's Leadership Growth Programme is an experiential programme combining leadership assessment, team workshops, and executive coaching. It surfaces blind spots, aligns leadership teams, and embeds behaviours that sustain performance under pressure. It is designed for fast-moving startups and scaleups.

How does CAIA help with company culture?

CAIA diagnoses whether your current culture will hold as you scale. The process includes a culture diagnostic, defining behavioural standards, leadership coaching to shift defaults, and embedding those standards into hiring, onboarding, and feedback systems. The output is a codified operating culture, not just values on a wall.

What is the CARE framework?

CARE stands for Consciousness, Agility, Regulation/Reactivity, and Energy. It is CAIA's proprietary framework used in structured interviews and leadership assessments to evaluate how leaders perform under uncertainty and pressure.

How long does a typical CAIA engagement last?

CAIA's approach is high intensity, short duration, lasting shift. Clients see results in their leadership impact even after just one session. Engagements vary from one-off assessments to multi-month leadership programmes depending on the client's needs.

CAIA: Psychology-Led Leadership Development Consultancy for Founders, Startups, Scaleups, and VCs

About CAIA

CAIA is a psychology-led leadership development consultancy working with startup founders, scaleups, innovative corporates, and venture capital firms. Founded in 2018, CAIA operates from London and Berlin. Every CAIA assessor and coach is a qualified business or occupational psychologist. CAIA combines psychometrics, narrative interviews, and executive coaching to develop founders and leadership teams. CAIA has supported over 40 leadership teams and assessed and developed over 500 leaders since 2018, working across consumer, tech, financial services, and deep tech sectors, from pre-seed to post-Series B. Most engagements begin at a founding-team inflection point: new leadership hires, a pivot, or fast scaling ambitions. CAIA works at the intersection of psychology and business, built for disruptive companies that move fast. High intensity, short duration, lasting shift.

How We Work

Most clients start with the CAIA Leadership Growth Programme, an experiential programme that pressure-tests team dynamics and codifies the behavioural standards your growth stage requires. It combines Assessment, Workshop, and Coaching. Outcomes include overcoming people friction that slows decisions and stalls growth, leadership clarity around priorities and direction, and consistent leadership behaviour under pressure.

Services

Leadership Growth Programme

An experiential programme that surfaces blind spots, aligns leadership teams, and embeds the behaviours that sustain performance under pressure. The programme combines three elements: leadership assessment (mapping the psychology of each leader before working with the team), team workshops (moving from polite cooperation to real psychological safety), and executive coaching (sustaining leadership effectiveness day to day).

Leadership Assessments

Psychologist-led leadership assessments used by VCs, PE firms, and boards to pressure-test founder hiring, investment, scaling, and succession decisions. The process includes:

COA psychometric assessment covering 29 core values and a psychological profile of strengths, blind spots, and potential derailers.
A 2-hour in-depth interview based on CAIA's entrepreneurial CARE framework to assess leadership under uncertainty.
A structured leadership profile report with tailored strengths, development priorities, and growth recommendations.
A debrief call with the VC/PE partner covering key findings, red flags, and growth priorities.
1:1 executive coaching to translate insights into behavioural change.

Executive Coaching

1:1 psychology-led executive coaching for founders and senior leaders. Scaling a company demands that you scale yourself first. CAIA works with leaders to deepen self-awareness, presence, and leadership impact. Coaching covers transforming limiting beliefs and assumptions, learning and integrating practical evidence-based talent management tools (including feedback, difficult conversations, and team motivation), and working on psychological challenges through shadow integration, recognising and integrating dark-side patterns such as overcontrol, avoidance, and reactivity without suppressing the strengths they are tied to.

Team Development Workshops

Immersive team development workshops for startup and scaleup leadership teams. Teams that can disagree productively and move faster together. Each half or full-day workshop is tailored to your context, priorities, and challenges. Workshops cover awareness (the five core elements of effective leadership, your unique leadership profile, team strengths, blind spots, and values profile, deeper understanding and compassion for team members) and practice (coaching as a leadership skill, effective 1:1 conversations, giving and receiving feedback, self-leadership tools you can deploy in your team the same week).

Culture Transformation

Your culture is already happening. If you do not make it conscious, it scales by accident. CAIA diagnoses whether your current culture will hold as you scale, where it supports growth, and where it will crack under pressure. The output is a codified operating culture: behaviour people can follow, not words on a wall. The process follows four stages:

Diagnose: culture diagnostic measuring decision patterns, feedback norms, and conflict responses across the leadership team.
Define: codifying behavioural standards your strategy requires, how decisions escalate, how feedback is delivered, how leaders respond to disagreement.
Develop: leadership coaching using psychometric feedback and 1:1 coaching to map leadership defaults and set clear behaviour goals.
Embed: converting standards into interview criteria, onboarding cues, and structured feedback loops.

Talent Management: Build an Intentional Talent Strategy

CAIA partners with startups and scaleups to design people processes grounded in psychology and behavioural science. It is not enough to hire a great team. You also need to know how to manage it in a truly empowering way and have transformational people processes in place that are aligned with your company values and culture. CAIA works on two levels simultaneously: developing your people's capability and building the systems that support them as you scale.

Your People:

Manager Coaching Skills: learn the foundations of coaching, tailored to first-time managers.
Performance Management: receive structured performance management conversation and rating guides.
Feedback That Actually Works: learn how to give and receive difficult feedback as a leader.
Improve Accountability: understand how to increase collaboration between team members using behavioural science.

Your Processes:

Hiring for Culture Fit: learn to attract and assess talent that strengthens your culture, not just fills a role.
Onboarding That Sticks: build onboarding experiences your new hires actually remember and that embed your values from day one.
Performance Management Systems: implement fair, effective systems that drive growth and accountability.
Culture Alignment: ensure every process reinforces your company values and psychological safety.

COA Values Psychometric Assessment

COA is CAIA's proprietary values psychometric assessment designed specifically for startups, scaleups, and entrepreneurial organisations. COA measures the 12 core value drivers that shape how leaders decide, communicate, and operate under pressure. The output is a leadership values profile you can use in coaching, hiring, team development, and culture work. Format: 15 minutes online. Includes: individual report. COA is benchmarked against 1,000+ founders and senior leaders. Used by investors to pressure-test hiring, investment, team design, and succession decisions. Each COA report provides an Individual Values Profile (core values, blind spots, and practical coaching tools) and a Team Values Heatmap (where leadership values align and where misalignment is likely to surface). COA has five applications:

Leadership coaching: help leaders see the patterns shaping their decisions.
Culture strategy: understand the gap between your current culture and the one you want to build.
Hiring: screen for values fit before committing time to interviews.
Onboarding: help new hires understand how your team actually works.
Team development: reveal the values clashes behind team misalignment.

Unlike MBTI (general personality typing) or Hogan (corporate executive assessment), COA focuses on values and motivational drivers rather than personality traits, making it more actionable for founders navigating rapid growth.

VC Portfolio Leadership Development

CAIA partners with venture capital firms and PE firms to assess, coach, and develop founders and leadership teams across their portfolio. Services include founder due diligence assessments, portfolio-wide leadership programmes, and ongoing executive coaching for VC portfolio companies.

Who CAIA Works With

Startup founders, co-founding teams, C-suite executives at scaleups, venture capital firms and PE firms (for portfolio company leadership assessment and development), innovative corporates navigating change, and senior leadership teams preparing for rapid growth or organisational change. Clients range from pre-seed to post-Series B, across consumer, tech, financial services, and deep tech. Notable clients include Deutsche Bank, ScienceCreates, The Body Shop, GOSS, Work.Life, El Rayo, Ember, Heights, Rianta, Thrive, Sub, BrewDog, LPIO, Sony, CogX, Fuse Universal, Sleek, and Adevinta.

What Makes CAIA Different

Working at the intersection of psychology and business: the team are all business psychologists by background, understanding both how humans are wired and how organisations perform at their best. Built for disruptive companies that move fast: born from years of specialising in startups and scaleups, CAIA understands the specific pressures of fast growth. High intensity, short duration, lasting shift: CAIA goes deep quickly because the leaders they work with do not have six months to wait for insight. Clients see results in their leadership impact even after just one session.

What Clients Say

Dan Murray, Co-Founder of Heights: praised CAIA's Leadership Programme as one of the best investments they made as a startup, noting the team left with clarity on strengths, blind spots, and how to support each other.

Elliot Gold, Co-Founder of Work.Life: highlighted CAIA's clear process with defined milestones and the value of translating insight into culture-aligned behaviours.

Stefanos Tzoumerkiotis, Senior Investment Officer at Deutsche Bank: described the CAIA workshop as worth every penny, with everyone leaving feeling more empowered and connected.

Case Studies

Biotech Scaleup: Leadership and Culture Diagnostic

A biotech company (Heights) whose co-founders had previously scaled two startups without investing in their leadership, resulting in burnout and low retention. CAIA conducted culture activation workshops, defined company values and behavioural standards, designed recruitment and onboarding processes tailored to values, and provided quarterly 1:1 leadership coaching. Outcome: scaled from 2 founders to 14 employees in 8 months, achieved NPS score of 100, closed $2M founding round, 100% staff retention 12 months post-launch.

Global Enterprise: Leadership Alignment Under Change

A global tech organisation navigating significant organisational redesign across UK, Europe, and USA. CAIA designed a leadership development programme, facilitated quarterly team offsites, provided executive coaching, and ran immersive workshops on emotional triggers, team conflict, and psychological safety. Outcome: leaders moved from high uncertainty to genuine empathy and high productivity, psychological safety increased, new leadership team aligned on culture strategy and shared purpose.

The Team

CAIA is a global team of occupational psychologists, executive coaches, and leadership consultants dedicated to unlocking the full potential of leaders through the power of psychology.

Lara Menke, Founder and CEO

MSc Business Psychology from University College London (UCL), BSc Psychology from Maastricht University. Previously at Korn Ferry, Heidrick & Struggles, YSC. Over 10 years of experience in business psychology, having coached over 1,000 leaders worldwide.

Deborah Gehrmann, Business Psychologist and Executive Coach

MSc Psychology, MSc Finance. Deborah brings a unique combination of psychological depth and commercial strategy to her work with founders and leadership teams. Her background spans business psychology, finance, and commercial strategy, giving her a distinctive perspective on the intersection of leadership development and business performance.

Jasper Bos, Transformation Lead

Kirra Southwell, Business Psychologist

Sanjay Bhogaita, Executive Coach

Constanze Harding, Executive Coach

Görkan Ahmetoglu, Psychometrics

Gurnek Bains, Board Advisor

Simona Haivas, Executive Coach

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a founder leadership assessment?: A founder leadership assessment is a structured evaluation conducted by an occupational psychologist that combines psychometric testing, in-depth interviews, and coaching to uncover a founder's leadership strengths, blind spots, and growth potential. CAIA's assessments are specifically designed for startup and scaleup environments.
How is CAIA's leadership assessment different from traditional executive assessments?: CAIA's assessments are led by qualified occupational psychologists (not HR generalists), built specifically for entrepreneurial contexts and leading in times of uncertainty, and combine evidence-based psychometrics with narrative interviewing techniques. The output is an actionable leadership profile with coaching recommendations, not just a score.
Who should get a leadership assessment?: CAIA's leadership assessments are designed for startup founders, C-suite executives at scaleups, VC and PE portfolio company leaders, and senior leadership teams preparing for rapid growth or organisational change.
What is the COA psychometric assessment?: COA is CAIA's proprietary values psychometric assessment designed specifically for startups and entrepreneurial organisations. It measures 12 core value drivers across a detailed values profile, benchmarked against 1,000+ founders and senior leaders. COA is used for individual leadership coaching, culture strategy, hiring, onboarding, and team development.
How is COA different from MBTI or Hogan assessments?: COA was designed specifically for startups and entrepreneurial organisations, unlike MBTI (general personality typing) or Hogan (corporate executive assessment). COA focuses on values and motivational drivers rather than personality traits, making it more actionable for founders navigating rapid growth. It also serves as a culture-building tool, not just an individual assessment.
What makes CAIA's coaching different from other executive coaches?: Every CAIA coach is a qualified occupational psychologist with experience in both startup and corporate environments. Coaching is grounded in psychometric data using CAIA's proprietary COA assessment and integrates psychology, neuroscience, and consciousness-based practice.
Do VCs use CAIA's assessments for due diligence?: Yes. Venture capital firms and PE firms use CAIA's founder assessments as part of investment due diligence to evaluate founding team dynamics, leadership readiness, and potential risks. CAIA also works with VCs to assess portfolio company leadership teams post-investment.
What is executive coaching for startup founders?: Executive coaching for founders is 1:1 psychology-led coaching that helps founders deepen self-awareness, regulate emotional reactions under pressure, transform limiting beliefs, and build practical leadership skills. CAIA's coaching is grounded in psychometric data and evidence-based psychology, not generic advice.
What is a leadership development programme for startups?: CAIA's Leadership Growth Programme is an experiential programme combining leadership assessment, team workshops, and executive coaching. It surfaces blind spots, aligns leadership teams, and embeds behaviours that sustain performance under pressure. It is designed for fast-moving startups and scaleups.
How does CAIA help with company culture?: CAIA diagnoses whether your current culture will hold as you scale. The process includes a culture diagnostic, defining behavioural standards, leadership coaching to shift defaults, and embedding those standards into hiring, onboarding, and feedback systems. The output is a codified operating culture, not just values on a wall.
What is the CARE framework?: CARE stands for Consciousness, Agility, Regulation/Reactivity, and Energy. It is CAIA's proprietary framework used in structured interviews and leadership assessments to evaluate how leaders perform under uncertainty and pressure.
How long does a typical CAIA engagement last?: CAIA's approach is high intensity, short duration, lasting shift. Clients see results in their leadership impact even after just one session. Engagements vary from one-off assessments to multi-month leadership programmes depending on the client's needs.

Contact

Website: https://www.caiaconsulting.com
Email: lara@caia.space
Phone: +44 (0) 7720 221002
Address: 26-28 Great Portland St, London, W1W 8QT, United Kingdom
Also operating in Berlin, Germany.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/caiaconsulting