Waya

Many startup founders hit a critical inflection point as their teams grow beyond 10 employees. Operational complexity increases, culture gets diluted, and the systems that once worked begin to break. At Waya, we’re founders who’ve been through it. We scaled Cheetah—a tech-enabled food distribution company based in the Bay Area—from the ground up to over 350 employees, $150M in annual revenue, operations across multiple states, and $130M in venture funding. We built our systems during hypergrowth and battle-tested them through the crisis of COVID, when we lost over 80% of our revenue overnight and still came out stronger. What helped us endure—and scale—were the frameworks we developed by blending Lean Methodology, cultural design, and personal development. These tools weren’t theoretical. They were forged in the chaos of startup life, in collaboration with our teams, and refined through real-world execution. Now, through Waya, we offer these proven frameworks—what we call WayaFrames—to help Series A to C founders build the operational foundation for scalable growth. Our mission is to equip leaders with the structure, clarity, and confidence they need to grow their companies without immediately hiring a high-cost COO. We’re developing a year-long program and a set of software tools to make this process repeatable, practical, and founder-friendly.