About This Episode
Gaby joins Ceci and Bea for a guest-led conversation about the Chief of Staff role itself. Gaby is the founder of Robin, a consultancy that helps founders identify and place the most important hire they will ever make: their right hand. Before Robin she was Chief of Staff at McKinsey, supporting a managing partner inside one of the most structured environments in the world, and then at Codat, the high-growth fintech, where the role was the polar opposite: building the organisational scaffolding from scratch and dipping into whichever part of the business needed help that week.
The episode is the practical, slightly contrarian conversation founders rarely get when they decide they want a Chief of Staff. Gaby walks through her diagnosis process, why most founders are right that they need help and almost always wrong about the title, the test that separates a great hire from an expensive mistake, and how to recognise when a Founder's Associate would actually serve them better. She is also direct about pay: at Series B in London she anchors fair base around £110-130k, plus meaningful equity, with a clear narrative for upside.
What We Cover in This Episode
From McKinsey to Codat: The Conductor vs. The Scaffolder
Gaby didn't plan to be a Chief of Staff. She fell into it at McKinsey supporting a managing partner, and quickly realised the generalist nature of the work suited her. At McKinsey the role was what she calls "the conductor": institutional authority sat behind every decision, the support system around the managing partner was already in place, and her job was to bring the right people to the right room at the right time, keep the leadership team aligned, and stop things from falling through the cracks. Codat was the opposite end of the spectrum: high-growth, no scaffolding, no clear definition of what good looked like. The role turned into building the scaffolding itself, while also dipping into specific functional areas that needed extra firepower. The biggest surprise wasn't intensity, it was risk appetite. She expected scale-ups to be more cautious because every decision has tangible consequences. The reality was the opposite: faster decisions, faster failures, faster learning, and an explicit cultural permission for that to be fine.
Chief of Staff as a Founder Pipeline
Gaby went from Chief of Staff to founder, and she sees this as a natural pattern rather than a coincidence. The Chief of Staff seat gives you proximity to the founder during the hardest moments, which de-glamourises the founder mythology. You see the emotional ups and downs, the bad days, the things that don't make it into the all-hands. By the time you start something yourself, your expectations are calibrated. Cecilia adds the same observation from her own seat at Seqera: the Chief of Staff role strips the mystique away from founding, in a way that paradoxically makes you more ready to do it. The piece Gaby has had to unlearn as a founder is decision authority. As a Chief of Staff you're a thought partner; as a founder, every decision falls to you, and that weight is both draining and energising at the same time.
Why 2026 Is the Year of the Chief of Staff
The role has become trendy, and Gaby is honest that some of the noise around it is hers. But the demand is real and structural. She names three drivers. One: the role of the leader has expanded. Founders are now expected to be strategic operators, culture setters, communicators, crisis managers, and still make 50 micro-decisions a day. That's a structural problem, not a bandwidth one. Two: execution pressure is higher than ever. Startups are leaner, the days of inflated leadership teams are gone, and that environment can't be solved by hiring more specialists. The generalist who can context-switch and hold the whole company in their head becomes disproportionately valuable. Three: AI. AI does a lot of the doing, which makes the judgment, nuance, and connective tissue layer (the parts AI can't do yet) more important. And Chiefs of Staff are usually the ones leading internal AI rollouts because they're the ones operating cross-functionally.
The Diagnosis: What Kind of Chaos Is This?
Founders almost always know they need help. They almost never know in what shape. Gaby's process is to take the title off the table and dig into the actual pain. She runs a structured conversation: walk me through a typical week, where does your time usually go, where do you still need to step in because it materially improves the outcome, where do decisions slow down or lose clarity if you're not in the room. From those answers she's trying to surface whether the gap is capacity, judgment, trust, or execution, because each of those points to a different hire profile.
Her core distinction: there are two types of chaos a founder can be feeling, and each one points to a different person. Chaos in the business, projects stalling, no operating rhythm, things getting 60% done, is an operations problem. That's a Founder's Associate: someone working on the doing, in the business. Chaos in the organisation, priorities unclear, leadership not aligned, vision not translating into execution, is a Chief of Staff problem. That's someone working on the business, with judgment about what should be executed and why.
Values, Behaviours, Skills (in That Order)
One founder Gaby worked with described talent as three things: skill sets, behaviours, and values. For a Chief of Staff, the right model is values and behaviours aligned with the founder, and skill sets that complement rather than mirror them. If the founder is product-led, the Chief of Staff carries the rest of the business. If the founder is more introverted and culture-and-comms isn't a natural lane for them, the Chief of Staff who can build relationships across the business is the right complement. The opposite approach, hiring a clone, doesn't create leverage.
Gaby is candid that Chief of Staff hiring is hard precisely because the values and behaviours are where the candidate has to spike, and they're notoriously the toughest things to test. Skill sets matter less than founders typically think. The case study or live exercise has to be designed around behavioural signals.
The Sparring Partner Test
Her recommended structure: a non-negotiable conversation with the founder upfront (chemistry is the foundation; without it nothing else works), then a live, lightly-prepared whiteboarding session on a real problem the founder is currently facing. Not deep subject-matter expertise, not a take-home that gives the candidate time to over-prepare with ChatGPT. Live, in-person, on something real. You're testing how the candidate thinks, structures thoughts, asks questions, and digs into things they don't know. From there, exposure to other stakeholders the Chief of Staff will work with, because their buy-in matters too. The talent market is competitive at the top, so the founder also has to be selling the company throughout.
Red Flags on Both Sides
Gaby's framing: it's a real working relationship, and the same pattern-matching applies as any other. If you can't ask hard questions in the interview, that's a red flag, because that's what the role will require every day. If the founder isn't willing to share openly during the process, that's a bigger red flag, because the relationship runs on trust and transparency. Bea makes the point sharply: if you can't ask "how do you work, what kind of people create friction with you" before you take the job, you're already in trouble.
Why 80%+ of Chiefs of Staff Are Women
Gaby's observation, from talking to Chiefs of Staff every week, is that more than 80% of them are women. Her read on why: the role rewards a generalist skillset, very high EQ, the ability to build relationships at every level of the organisation, and a willingness to do invisible work, championing other people, taking responsibility quietly when things go right and getting called out only when things go wrong. Those qualities have historically lent themselves to women, and the world of work was structured around men succeeding in different conditions. The interesting question isn't why the cohort skews female today; it's whether the next generation of founders, executives, and C-suite leaders ends up reflecting the talent pipeline that exists right now. If the Chief of Staff role is a launching pad, an 80% female pipeline should produce something the rest of the leadership world hasn't seen yet.
The First 30 Days
The role can fail because of the first month. Gaby's framework splits the work into Chief-of-Staff-side and founder-side responsibilities.
From the Chief of Staff: build trust fast, but don't pressure yourself, trust is earned through reliability. If you said you'd do it, do it. Small habits compound. Then absorb how the founder thinks, decides, prioritises, and operates under pressure, ideally in person. The goal is to become almost interchangeable with their judgment in their absence. Then build relationships across the business through coffee chat after coffee chat, partly to be useful and partly to break the "Chief of Staff as spy" misconception, especially in companies that have never had one before. Communicate relentlessly about what you're working on and why, including to yourself, because in the early days the role is ambiguous and it's easy to confuse busy with productive.
From the founder: over-communicate to the nth degree, end-of-day voice notes if needed. Even if there are no actions, the Chief of Staff is calibrating to your thinking. Give access and authority deliberately, because a Chief of Staff without authority becomes a facilitator. Delegate properly: be clear on the ask, then let go of it. The letting-go muscle is the hardest one for founders to develop, and it's the difference between a good and great Chief of Staff outcome.
What's a Fair Salary?
Gaby's market read for a Chief of Staff at a Series B company in London: £110-130k base, with the median around £120-125k and £130k for an exceptional candidate. The bandings are always broad because the role is so scope-dependent, and she pushes founders to anchor on what the role actually owns rather than title or stage. That base figure is part of the total comp picture. Meaningful equity is expected, and founders need a compelling narrative for why this person is joining this company and what the upside actually looks like. Cecilia's line in the episode: there's too much hush-hush around Chief of Staff salaries, and the people who lose from that are the candidates.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Gaby and what does Robin do?
Gaby is the founder of Robin, a consultancy that helps founders identify and place the right "right-hand" hire — typically a Chief of Staff or Founder's Associate. Before Robin she was Chief of Staff at McKinsey (supporting a managing partner) and at Codat (high-growth fintech). She works directly with founders to scope the role, design the interview process, and place the candidate.
Do I actually need a Chief of Staff or a Founder's Associate?
Gaby's diagnostic: identify the type of chaos. If projects are stalling and the operating rhythm is broken, that's a business problem, and a Founder's Associate (working in the business, on execution) is usually the right hire. If priorities are unclear, leadership isn't aligned, and the vision isn't translating into execution, that's an organisational problem, and a Chief of Staff (working on the business, with judgement about what should be executed) is the right hire.
What's the typical background of a successful Chief of Staff?
There isn't a single typical background, but the most common pattern Gaby sees is consultancy, VC, or investment banking as the foundation, plus one or two years in an operating function (growth, product, or ops) before stepping into the Chief of Staff role. The consistent thread, regardless of background, is tangible impact in prior roles and the ability to point clearly to where they moved the needle.
What's a fair salary for a Chief of Staff at Series B in London?
Roughly £110-130k base, with most placements landing around £120-125k. Exceptional candidates can push to £130k. Base is part of total comp; meaningful equity is expected, and founders should have a clear narrative on the upside.
Why are 80%+ of Chiefs of Staff women?
Gaby's view is that the qualities the role rewards (generalist skillset, very high EQ, relationship-building at every level, willingness to do invisible work) have historically lent themselves to women. The bigger question is whether the resulting talent pipeline converts into the next generation of founders and C-suite leaders.
What's the most common reason a Chief of Staff hire fails?
From the Chief of Staff side: not building trust early, not communicating clearly about scope and progress in an inherently ambiguous role. From the founder side: not over-communicating in the first 30 days, not granting real authority, and not actually letting go after they delegate. When hires fail, it's usually one of these.