Ops or Die!

She got FDA clearance for a transparent surgical mask in March 2020. Two months later, ClearMask was shipping worldwide — and her four co-founders still had day jobs. Elyse Heob is the founder behind two healthcare exits: a corporate wellness company acquired in 2016, and ClearMask, which she grew from zero to $45M without ever taking outside investment (19 million masks worldwide). Now she coache...

What if the culture problem you keep chasing is actually a signals problem? Nathalie Brochstein has spent over a decade inside Fortune 100 companies untangling the mess that happens when leaders say one thing and teams hear something completely different. Now, as the founder of Karibu, she’s bringing those lessons to startups that are scaling fast and watching their alignment fall apart in real ti...

This week on Ops or Die, Katie Whitcraft and Maria Pienaar sit down with Lenica Stephen, founder and CEO of IBOSS (Interactive Business Optimization Services), to talk about the thing most founders avoid until it’s expensive: operational debt. Lenica spent over fifteen years building and running PMOs inside corporate environments before she started doing the same work for founders directly. Her ta...

Most people think fundraising is the "fun" part of building a company. Christopher Hussain knows it's actually 50% of the job at early stages. He was #1 mortgage originator in the U.S. for two consecutive years. The only person ever licensed as an individual in all 50 states. He brokered for roughly 450 banks, lenders, and credit unions simultaneously. Then he pivoted to founder/ser...

Most people treat operations like a back-office problem. Kerstin Lynam learned the opposite the hard way: thirty-plus years running medical research nonprofits, including a run as CEO of the Lundquist Institute, where the gap between a working ops layer and a broken one decided whether the mission happened at all. She joins Katie and Maria for a conversation startup founders will recognize immedia...

Which comes first—process or roles? It’s the chicken-and-egg question every growing company faces, and most get it wrong. In this episode of Ops or Die, hosts Maria Pienaar and Katie Whitcraft of ScaleSpark sit down with Belle Walker, founder of Belleview Consulting, to challenge the framing entirely. Belle brings a mechanical systems engineering background to operations strategy, and she argues t...

In this episode of Ops or Die, hosts Katie Whitcraft and Maria Pienaar sit down with Sean Flynn, Chief Legal Officer & Co-Founder, and Stacy DeLong, Director of Marketing at SingleFile, to talk about the least sexy topic in startups -and why ignoring it can literally kill your company. Compliance isn’t optional. It’s mandatory, recurring, and unforgiving. And no, AI can’t magically clean up th...

Ready to flip the script on how you think about intellectual property? In this episode of Ops Or Die , we dive into the world of IP with Paul Kallmes—yes, the guy who turns “paperwork” into power moves. Whether you’re a founder navigating patents, a COO wrestling with licensing, or just tired of hearing “IP strategy” tossed around like a buzzword, Paul brings the real talk. He’s sharing how to ope...

Think ops is just paperwork? Cute. In this episode of Ops or Die, Tomika Anderson-Smith sets the record straight: operations isn’t overhead—it’s the engine that turns chaos into compounding growth. She spills what founders miss when they wait too long to get serious about ops, why nonprofits and startups are basically twins (minus the hype), and how weak systems can quietly wreck your company. If...

Your brand isn’t your logo — it’s your startup’s first impression, emotional footprint, and a growth engine hiding in plain sight. In this episode, Maria and Katie sit down with brand strategist Esteban Arroba Del Castillo to talk about why even scrappy, pre-MVP startups need to show up with a clear voice, vibe, and visual identity. We get into: Why branding is a system , not just surface polish H...

Business Operations isn’t some boring back-office buzzword—it’s the backbone of your entire company. In this premiere episode, Katie Whitcraft and Maria Pienaar tear into what business ops really means, why most startups are one chaotic spreadsheet away from imploding, and how ops is the not-so-secret weapon behind scale, sanity, and actual success. From tech stacks to team workflows, expense poli...