Align and Accelerate

Founder

SciMed Consulting

Clinical Research Consultant

The CLINICAL TRIAL Company (ANZ) Pty Ltd

General Manager and Director

The Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson

Local Trial Manager, Early Developement and Clinical Pharmacology

Novartis

Project Manager, Local Studies

Mundipharma International Limited

Clinical Study Manager

Clinical Project Manager, Medical Affairs Operations

Roche Pharmaceuticals

Study Manager

We help stagnant professionals fast track their careers for more impact, influence and income. DM me for a complementary strategy call.

I fast-track the careers of professionals who want to make more impact, influence, & income with a focus on authentic leadership with integrity.

✏️𝐓𝐫𝐲 𝐦𝐲 𝐟𝐫𝐞𝐞 𝐧𝐞𝐰𝐬𝐥𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫- The Career Coffee Ledger. Kick off your week with essential tips, clever hacks, and lessons from my own missteps to fuel your journey to career success- minus delay. (It gets better with a hot chocolate or coffee :) https://bit.ly/48UZf2c

🔎 See how my 𝐅𝐚𝐬𝐭 𝐓𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐂𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐫 𝐀𝐜𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐦𝐲 𝐌𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐝 can help you: https://bit.ly/3MK89GP

A certified RAPID Results coach with over 20 years of corporate experience who 𝐡𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐝, 𝐛𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐭 & 𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐝 𝐡𝐢𝐠𝐡 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐦𝐬 𝐚𝐜𝐫𝐨𝐬𝐬 15 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬, I graduated with a Doctorate in Science before entering the corporate world. 

𝐈 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐨𝐧𝐥𝐲 𝐬𝐞𝐜𝐮𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐦𝐲 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐫𝐨𝐥𝐞 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐬𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐚 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐨𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐛𝐞𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐦𝐲 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐝𝐚𝐲 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞! Using the same techniques, my career moved fast, managing international teams within 2 years, and eventually served on the Board of Directors in an international organisation. During this time, I discovered my passion in helping people achieve their career goals through mentoring and championing their aspirations. 

Today, I consult for the corporate world and founded Align and Accelerate, a coaching business that helps many to achieve their goals at their own pace through a successful ‘rinse and repeat formula’ that helps secure and retain the role you have been coveting.

💬 𝐃𝐌 𝐦𝐞 𝐢𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐮𝐧𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐨 𝐠𝐞𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐫 𝐮𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐮𝐜𝐤- 𝐧𝐨 𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐝 𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐥.

Ei-Ling Tan, Ph.D.

Fractional CFO | Helping Founders Scale Beyond $2M ARR with Strategic Finance & OKRs | Founder @ FounderFirst

I didn’t grow up pitching VCs or building apps.

I grew up in Dimitrovgrad, Bulgaria, where I didn’t speak a word of English and didn’t know anyone in tech.
But I knew how to spot opportunity, adapt quickly, and keep going.

At 17, I taught myself English. At 19, I earned a scholarship to study in the U.S. 
I came with a suitcase, less than $300, no backup plan, and did whatever scrappy thing it took to stay afloat.

Then on April 15, 2015, something clicked.
The startup world found me. And for the first time, I felt like I fit.
The chaos, the creativity, the responsibility - it was mine to carry, mine to shape.

What started as a leap into the unknown became a decade of building behind the scenes.

Since then, I’ve worked with more than 20 early- and growth-stage startups, both VC-backed and bootstrapped, across B2B SaaS, Fintech, and Edtech. 
I’ve helped scale revenue from $500K to $20M, grow teams from 10 to 200, and build finance and ops functions from scratch.
I’ve navigated pivots, layoffs, down rounds, near-bankruptcies, exits, and helped founders get to the other side.

In 2024, I launched FounderFirst to do exactly that: support founders and leadership teams with the structure, clarity, and tools they need to grow sustainably.

What I Do:
- Finance: Fractional CFO support, modeling, forecasting, and investor-ready reporting
- Strategy: OKRs and operating models that don’t die after kickoff
- Coaching: For founders and finance leads navigating the messy middle

When I’m not working with founders, you’ll find me planning my next national park hike or deep in a great book (suggestions always welcome).

Curious what's possible on your scaling journey?

Don't be a stranger. Book an intro call: https://shorturl.at/kjU5J

Mariya Valeva

At 34, she rang the Nasdaq bell, holding her toddler in her arms.
A $1.6B valuation.
Katrina Lake had just taken her company, Stitch Fix, public.

A company she built from her apartment floor, while pregnant. Twice.
She didn’t come from a family of founders.
She didn’t have a network of angels or tech mentors to call.
Her mother was a teacher who immigrated from Japan.
Her father, a transplant doctor who believed deeply in hard work and quiet sacrifice.

She grew up straddling two worlds - Japanese at home, American at school.
Learning early that success didn’t come from confidence, but discipline.

Years later, Katrina found herself in business school, surrounded by future bankers and VCs.
But she had no interest in finance.
She wanted to build something… useful.
The idea started simple:
What if busy women could get clothes picked out for them - based on data, but curated by a human?

She used SurveyMonkey to collect style preferences.
Tracked feedback in spreadsheets.
Packed boxes from her apartment floor.
And mailed them one by one.
This wasn’t a “tech company” in the traditional sense.
No SaaS margins. No app. No virality.
Just a belief that personalization - done right - could scale.

Most investors didn’t get it.
Too operational.
Too slow.
Too… retail.
And maybe, too female.
So she ran lean.
Proved retention.
And let the numbers speak.

By 2017, Stitch Fix was ready.
She took it public, and made history.
The youngest woman to IPO a tech company.
A new kind of founder.
One who didn’t “fit the mold.”
She just built her own.

A second-generation immigrant founder, raised to keep her head down -
who ended up showing the world what leadership can actually look like.
Quiet. Relentless. Human.
And maybe that’s what more of us need to see right now.

She cashed out her 401(k) to sell scrubs.
Ten years later, FIGS went public at $4.6B.

At the time, Trina Spear was “living the dream” on paper: 
• Harvard MBA 
• Wall Street pedigree 
• A high-paying job at Blackstone 
• Everything her Cuban refugee parents worked for

But success that looks good on the outside hits differently on the inside. She wanted meaning, not prestige. Then came the call that changed everything. A mutual friend connected her with Heather Hasson.

She had an idea, simple, but radical:
“What if we made scrubs people actually want to wear?”
Heather had seen her best friend, a nurse practitioner, wear the same boxy, uncomfortable uniform day in and day out.
Cheap fabric. No pockets. No pride.
No one had thought to make scrubs better.
Because no one had thought healthcare workers deserved better.
That single insight lit a fire.
Trina couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Within a few days, she booked a flight to LA.
Met Heather in person.
And said the words that would change both of their lives:
“I’m in.”

They didn’t have funding.
They didn’t have supply chains.
They didn’t even have a product line.
But they had purpose.
So they started small.
Selling scrubs out of the back of a car.
Showing up at hospitals during shift changes.
Swiping credit cards on the sidewalk.
Shipping orders from their own apartments.

Investors didn’t get it.
They said the market was “too niche.”
That doctors didn’t care about style.
That nurses wouldn’t pay for comfort.

They were wrong.
Trina and Heather didn’t just sell scrubs.
They built a community.
They made healthcare workers feel seen, celebrated, and respected.
And they did it profitably, sustainably, and on their own terms.

In 2021, FIGS became the first company led by two female founders to IPO on the NYSE.
$4.6 billion.

If you're building something the world doesn't understand yet..
This is your reminder:
You don't need permission.
You just need one "yes."
Maybe it's yours.

You don’t truly understand a business until you’ve had to clean up the mess.

It’s easy to give advice when you’re not the one dealing with the aftermath.
Easy to sound smart when your strategy lives in slides - not in systems, team dynamics, missed targets, or investor pressure.

But business isn’t built in theory.
It’s built in the uncomfortable.
The tradeoffs.
The reworks.
The silent pivots.
The “we thought this would work” moments.

That’s where real insight comes from - not from watching, but from staying.
From living the consequences of your decisions and iterating through them.

Because until you’ve felt the problem, your solution is just a guess.

*Video credits: simplyougrow insta

One viral thread. $2.4M in ARR.
Sounds like the dream, right?

You post. It hits.
Traffic, users, momentum - all from one channel.
That’s exactly how Copy. ai took off.
No “multi-channel strategy.”
Just one thing done exceptionally well: Twitter.
One thread. $2.4M. Done.

Meanwhile, most founders are still doing content gymnastics across five platforms… and wondering why nothing’s landing.
The difference?
Focus that compounds.

→ Merit Beauty skipped TikTok and podcasts. IG only. $100M+ in sales.
→ Lenny Rachitsky started with one Substack - now brings in $500K+/year and runs a top business podcast. → Glossier? One blog built a $1.8B brand.
→ Physics Wallah? YouTube only. Now $2.8B.

You don’t need to be everywhere. You just need to be undeniable somewhere.
I break it all down in today’s newsletter, check it out here → https://lnkd.in/ej3GB8dc 

🦃 Happy Thanksgiving - enjoy the pie, and the newsletter!

How do you raise $350M, hit a $2B valuation…
and still crash hard?

Remember InVision? The design darling that disappeared.
They had everything:
✔️ A killer brand
✔️ 7M+ users
✔️ A market hungry for collaboration tools
✔️ And yes, $350M in capital and a $2B valuation

So what happened?
They made the same mistake too many founders do after a Series A or B:
They scaled hype instead of substance.

Here’s where it went off the rails:

🚩 They stopped listening to the market.
While Figma doubled down on real-time collaboration and cloud-native speed, InVision clung to its old prototype model and released Studio years too late with bugs, missing features, and poor adoption.

🚩 They over-invested in sales, under-invested in product.
Massive sales teams. Endless marketing pushes.
But behind the curtain? A tool users didn’t love and that teams outgrew.

🚩 Their tech stack couldn’t scale.
Studio and Freehand weren’t just late, they were unstable.
Performance lagged. Collaboration broke. Teams jumped ship.

🚩 They misread their edge.
Instead of doubling down on what made them valuable, they spread themselves thin trying to be everything, while Figma was becoming essential to modern design workflows.

🚩 They burned money chasing growth, not resilience.
Headcount ballooned to 1,200. Revenue fell by 50% in a year.
They sold Freehand in a fire sale to Miro.
They went from market leader… to a cautionary tale.

→ Product-market fit isn’t static.
→ Capital can amplify dysfunction.
→ Growth only works if your foundations are solid.

And guess what?
You might already be heading toward an InVision moment.
It won’t look like a crash, until it does.
Ask yourself:
- Are we evolving, or just expanding?
- Do we actually know our operational weak points?
- Is our product irreplaceable, or just familiar?

taplio

The Battle

Ei-Ling Tan, Ph.D.

Mariya Valeva

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taplio

The Battle

Ei-Ling Tan, Ph.D.

Mariya Valeva

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Mariya Valeva's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreMariya Valeva's LinkedIn Performance