An Archive
Writing & Press.
The list below is the public side of the practice. It is not a press kit — it is the working record of what has been published, recorded, or staged under the A.S. Vaughn name. Every column is linked at its original host. If you arrived here from a column you found useful, the next page worth reading is the Diagnostic.
Harvard Business Review
Working It Out, 2023–2024.
Eleven installments of the advice column, written for HBR’s working-operator audience. The most cited credential on this page.
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11
8 min read
November 14, 2024
When the Founder Should Stop Being the CEO — and How to Know
A column on the moment a founder-led company crosses the line where the operator’s instinct becomes the constraint. Originally written after a diagnostic with a 38-person SaaS company at $14M ARR.
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10
6 min read
September 26, 2024
Stop Calling It a Pivot. It’s a Decision.
On the language operators use to delay commitment. Argues that most pivots are three separate decisions disguised as one, and names them.
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09
9 min read
July 18, 2024
The Price of a Cheap Board
What founder-led companies actually lose when they assemble a board of investors, friends, and former colleagues. A framework for evaluating a board seat the way you’d evaluate a hire.
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08
7 min read
May 02, 2024
Don’t Hire a COO. Yet.
A counterpoint to the most common senior hire in the $10–$30M ARR band. Walks through what founders typically mean when they say “COO” — and the four hires that usually solve it for less.
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07
6 min read
February 22, 2024
A 90-Day Plan Is Not a Strategy
Why quarterly planning has replaced strategy at most founder-led companies, and what to do about it without abandoning the operating cadence the team already runs.
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06
5 min read
November 30, 2023
The Memo That Ends the Meeting
A short column on writing the one-page decision memo well enough to make a follow-up meeting unnecessary. Includes the template the author has used since 2018.
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05
8 min read
October 05, 2023
Two Boards, One Operator: A Defense of the Outside Director
Written after two years on independent boards. On the working discipline of showing up for a company whose payroll is not yours.
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04
7 min read
August 11, 2023
The Senior Hire You Don’t Need
A field guide to the four hires founders request most often, ranked by how often they’re actually the answer. With a closing checklist for the one in five that are.
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03
10 min read
June 01, 2023
How to Read a SaaS P&L Like an Operator, Not an Analyst
A re-read of the standard SaaS income statement through the lens of decisions, not metrics. Coined the now-circulated “gross-margin-by-cohort” framing the column is best known for.
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02
7 min read
April 04, 2023
Your Advisory Board Is Costing You Money
On the informal “advisory board” of three to six operators most founder-led companies assemble between $3M and $15M ARR. Why it usually costs more than it saves, and the three-question audit for keeping it.
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01
6 min read
February 09, 2023
Strategy Is What You Stop Doing
The debut column. A short piece on the difference between a strategic plan and an operational to-do list — the first of eleven written for Working It Out.
Beyond HBR
Features, Appearances & Stage.
Podcasts, profiles, and conference slots. Reverse chronological.
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Conference · Speaking
PEI Operating Partners Forum 2024
A 35-minute keynote on the operator-advisor split inside PE-owned operating companies. Closed the forum on day two. Audio is not public; the deck is not circulating.
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Profile
“The 30 Operators Who Actually Write” — Operator Monthly, 2024
A short profile that ran alongside the magazine’s annual list. Two pages, one quote pulled from a 2019 HBR piece that the editor correctly identified as the source of the column tone.
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Podcast · Episode 142
Operators vs. Consultants — Episode 142
A 78-minute conversation about the line between operator experience and consulting reflex. The episode the show’s producers cite most often when introducing the practice.
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Conference · Speaking
SaaStr Annual 2024
A workshop titled “The 5-Week Strategy Review” — the framework behind the 5.2-week average engagement length. Co-presented with a former client (by name, per the practice’s published-case-study standard).
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Conference · Speaking
SaaStr Annual 2023
Solo talk: “Why Founder-Led Companies Stall Between $8M and $22M ARR.” The 32 slides are still online; the deck has been downloaded 14,000+ times, per SaaStr’s own count.
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Conference · Speaking
SaaStr Annual 2022
Panel appearance on “The Solo Advisor.” The first stage talk the practice accepted, and the reason the current cap of fourteen engagements per year exists.
From the columns.
“A strategy memo is not a plan. A plan is what you can execute on Monday morning without asking anyone’s permission. Most of what gets called strategy in this industry is a plan for someone else’s company, written six months too early.”
— A.S. Vaughn, Harvard Business Review, Working It Out, No. 11, November 2024
Next Step
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