John Dobharchú otter markJohn Dobharchú

Every engagement starts with the Diagnostic

One way in. Two ways forward. The real problem, found and fixed in the right order.

John Dobharchú offers three engagements for founder-led consumer subscription and mobile app companies: the Alignment Diagnostic (a 4–6 week readout that locates the real constraint capping growth), Fractional Alignment Leadership (embedded CMO/COO at roughly ten hours a week with a three-month minimum), and the Strategy Sprint (a 6–8 week self-directed plan).

Every engagement starts with the Diagnostic. From there, two ways to act on what it finds: I drive the fix from the operating seat, or I hand your team the plan to run themselves. Same work either way, name the constraint, sequence the fix, leave your company more investable than it was.

You're not buying my time. You're buying a faster path to the answer.

START HERE · THE ENTRY

Alignment Diagnostic

4–6 weeks

A focused diagnostic for founders who know growth has stalled but can't yet name why, built to find the real constraint before you make an expensive bet against the wrong one.

A structured seven-layer examination of your business I call Oscension. You come away with one diagnosis, not a deck of observations, and the foundation every later engagement is built on.

What you leave with

  • A clear answer to "what's actually capping our growth?", the real constraint named, not a list of symptoms.
  • A written diagnostic readout your leadership team can act on, not file away.
  • Full credit toward fractional leadership if you bring me in to fix what we find, within 60 days.
Then choose how to act on it.
Recommended

Fractional Alignment Leadership

~10 hrs/week · 3-month minimum

Embedded fractional CMO or COO leadership for founders who want the constraint fixed, not just diagnosed, me in the operating seat that owns it.

Embedded CMO or COO leadership at roughly ten hours a week. I take the seat that owns the constraint, drive the plan with your team, and build the capability to hold it after I'm gone. The Diagnostic already located the constraint, so I open by sequencing the fix and putting it in motion: no second audit.

Between engagements, I can step down into light monthly advisory, one meeting a week, until the next Pulse.

What you leave with

  • An operator in the seat, diagnosing and doing, not advising from the sidelines.
  • A team that builds the muscle to run the work without me.
  • A company that's measurably more investable by the time the engagement ends.
Self-directed

Strategy Sprint

6–8 weeks

The self-directed alternative: for founders who want the plan and have the team to run it. Built thorough enough to execute without me in the seat.

A 6–8 week working engagement that turns the diagnosis into a 90-day plan, upstream before downstream, with owners attached. For founders ready to move, not still deciding whether to.

Optional weekly advisory support while your team runs the plan.

What you leave with

  • A written 90-day plan with sequencing and owners, concrete enough to start on Monday.
  • A decision-rights framework, so the calls that bottleneck at you start moving without you.
  • Alignment across your leadership team on what changes first, and why.
The Alignment Cadence

The recurring way the work compounds over time.

Six months after any engagement we reconvene, first as a free check-in, then, if it's time, as a lighter re-score.

Included with any seat or Sprint

6-Month Pulse

A free check-in call six months after an engagement, a verbal read on how the fix held and whether a re-score is worth running.

Lighter re-score · ~2 weeks

Alignment Check

Re-runs the survey, adds a short round of interviews, and delivers a re-scored layer map plus updated, prioritized recommendations.

How an engagement works

01

Diagnose

Slow, structured work across the seven layers of your business. Interviews, document review, pattern-matching, the goal is precision, not speed.

02

Sequence

Working sessions with you and your leadership team. The diagnosis becomes a plan with owners, sequence, and the hard trade-offs already negotiated.

03

Lead

Where it makes sense, I step into the seat that owns the constraint and drive the plan with your team. I stay until the capability holds without me.

John at a whiteboard, mid-thought, in the room

In the room

Who this is not for

You're pre-revenue or pre–product-market-fit. There's no system to diagnose yet, you need customers first, not a constraint map.

You want a pair of hands to execute a plan you've already locked. I'm here to find the right problem, not to run someone else's answer to the wrong one.

You want someone to agree with you. If you're looking for validation instead of the truth, we'll both end up frustrated.

Common questions

What founders ask before they book.

Constraint mark

Every engagement starts with the Diagnostic. The fastest way to find out whether that makes sense for where you are right now is a straight conversation about what you're actually seeing.

Book a constraint call