Why We're Bootstrapping CoachNova

There is a question we get from coaches who come close to CoachNova, sometimes asked plainly, sometimes implied. Who do you actually answer to?

It is the right question to ask of any platform you let into your practice. It is the question I would ask in your shoes. Most of the AI products landing in coaching right now were built to answer a board first and coaches second. We built ours the other way around. This post is how we did that, and what it means for you.

What we chose

CoachNova runs on around €350 to €400 a month.

That is our actual monthly burn. Nick and I are not paying ourselves yet. Our beta with 50 coaches wrapped in May. We are now generating revenue and cash-flow positive. The waitlist is healthy.

We have not taken outside investment, and we are not planning to until the model is undeniable and a coach base is in place to set the terms. The reasons are not principles in the abstract. They are choices we make every week so that the platform stays the platform we promised you it would be.

This is my third startup. The previous ones raised millions, because that is what you did back then. You built a deck, sold a slice of the company before anyone had used the product, and called it momentum. We had real money to hire real teams. We also had a cap table that became a co-author of every decision after the third board meeting. The platform that gets built when a fund needs a fast exit is not the platform that holds a coaching practice with care.

So this time we kept it small on purpose.

What that means for you

Every choice we make about capital is also a choice about what kind of partner CoachNova becomes for your practice. Specifically:

• No outside investors means no pressure to monetise your client list. Nobody is asking us to grow faster by squeezing more out of the relationships you built.
• No quarterly growth target means we can say no to features that turn your practice into someone else's funnel. We can decline to build features that promise revenue but cost you control of the conversation.
• Our incentive is your retention. A coach who stays for years on a monthly fee per active client is the business model. A coach who feels squeezed and leaves is not.

Why this gap exists at all

There is a real gap in the market today.

On one side, around 420 million people each week are taking life and work questions to ChatGPT and similar chatbots, and getting back something that looks like coaching but is sycophantic, dopamine-driven, and untrained in the standards of a real profession.

On the other side, executive and leadership coaches deliver work that genuinely transforms people, and at €200 to €400 an hour it is out of reach for most of the workforce.

The middle is empty. Or rather, the middle is being filled by platforms that solve the affordability problem by removing the coach from the equation. That is the wrong trade. It also happens to be the trade that returns a venture fund.

The profession sees this clearly. In May 2026, both ICF and EMCC made AI the headline topic at their annual meetings, with a strong shared call to coaches to build AI literacy and learn how to augment and futureproof their practices.

We took that call seriously. Our answer is a platform that puts the coach at the centre of the loop and keeps the value with the practitioner instead of routing it into a platform layer.

What we are not doing

Others will build versions of this. We discovered a website last week that looks a lot like ours. We took it as a compliment and wished them good luck.

The reason to choose CoachNova is not that we got to the idea first. It is what we have committed to not do.

We will not pay coaches €25 a session to train an AI that replaces them. We will not change the price you pay because a quarterly growth target needs a bigger number. We will not turn your sessions into training data for a generic model that any vendor can sell on.

The reason we can say all of that is because nobody above us is telling us otherwise. That is the part outside money would change.

On the choice itself

This lean version only works because we can choose it. The same freedom we are giving ourselves is the freedom we want for you. A practice that compounds on the coach's terms, not someone else's clock.

When we do raise growth capital eventually, we will raise from a position where coaches still set the terms. Not before. The structural part of that is already in motion. Coaches who put meaningful time and effort into building CoachNova with us are joining our advisory council and a coach stock option plan we are setting up. The people building this with us own a piece of what gets built.

A question back to you

If you are a coach deciding which AI partner deserves access to your practice, ask the same question you would ask a coachee about a new boss.

Who do they answer to?

If the answer is “investors who need this company to be ten times bigger in five years,” you already know what that means for the relationship.

If the answer is “the coaches on the platform, full stop,” that is the test we are choosing to be measured against.

Louise Doorn is co-founder and CEO of CoachNova.