Launching Petrus Labs: Your Startup’s Co-Pilot

In the summer of 2025, I queued up a concise email:

“The company releases all signatures from escrow concurrent with the buyer’s release.”

After a confirmation from our M&A attorney Andy Hecht, I hit send and Tobiko’s three year journey had come to an end.

I hit send and Tobiko’s three year journey had come to an end.

Bringing Tobiko to life and helping steer the ship has been the most rewarding experience and highest density of learning in my professional career. The startup journey contains so many lessons that can only be learned by living them.

One particular highlight for me was the startup ecosystem. Founders of early companies all face a particular set of stresses and problems, and having someone who gets you and can lend a compassionate ear is particularly therapeutic. Even if you know the answer, reframing the idea can give you the clarity and confidence you need to go forward.

The Next Chapter

Today, I’m excited to announce the launch of Petrus Labs: your start-up’s co-pilot for everything and anything. While we’re more than happy to listen and provide perspective, we can provide tangible help in a few ways.

Product positioning and GTM support

Building is hard. Positioning and selling are harder, and rarely a technical founder's first language. Toby, Iaroslav, and I along with help from our investors Tomasz and Andy at Theory Ventures discussed Tobiko’s positioning for months at a time, and it was a constantly evolving project. We felt blind building our enterprise sales team but fortunately had amazing support from Rafa. Advice from someone who’s done it before can be critically helpful, and so we’re here for you whether it’s a sanity check, figuring out your sales stack, or making your first GTM hire.

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Navigating the fundraising gauntlet

Second, fundraising is draining. As a founder, you seldom raise money while the investors across the table do this dance every day.

At Petrus, we'll help you craft your story, make warm introductions, and help you navigate the gauntlet so you can get back to building. Things like the size of your ESOP seem like mechanisms for your hiring plan, but in reality are also negotiation levers with your investors.

We’ll be on your side explaining why.

Operational support so you can focus on building

And finally, founders get weighed down by operational toil. It has to be done, but your mind is better spent on the product and the strategy. We can help you understand the trade-offs between the choices that arise and if you want to offload your toil, we provide direct support hours so that you can focus on what matters.

I deeply admire everyone who takes the leap and pursues their own company. Tobiko was a transformative experience, and I’m hopeful that by sharing our lessons, we can help the next wave with their own journeys.

Please reach out to us if you think we can help or if you’d just like to chat!