About
Bruce Eckfeldt is a business coach, author, and speaker who works with founder-CEOs of growth-stage companies to scale faster and exit smarter, with less drama.

Bruce helps founders through the entire arc of building, scaling, and ultimately exiting their companies, and then figuring out what comes next. That next chapter looks different for every founder. For some, it's starting another company. For others, it's investing and advising, pursuing mission-driven work, or stepping back to focus on family and personal projects that got crowded out during the build.

What Bruce has found is that founders who have a clear vision of who they are outside their company and what they want to do after the exit also have a clear vision of what their company needs to do. The time frame gets defined. The goals get sharp. The strategy falls into place. That kind of clarity creates momentum throughout the process and yields far greater personal and professional satisfaction for the owner on the other side.

He is the author of Springboard: A Founder's Guide to Selling Your Company With Purpose, Clarity, and a Vision for What's Next, drawn from his own exit and from coaching dozens of founder-CEOs through theirs. He hosts the From Angel to Exit podcast, where he interviews founders, investors, and advisors on the realities of building and selling growth-stage companies. He has also been a contributing author to Inc.com since 2016.

Bruce has been a Scaling Up Certified Coach since 2017. He is also a Certified Exit Planning Advisor (CEPA, 2025), Predictive Index Certified Consultant (2020), and Flow Research Collective Certified Coach (2023). He brings a systems-thinking lens to coaching engagements, shaped by his architectural training and his early career working with companies including Prada, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Boeing, Kaplan Test Prep, Simon & Schuster, and The New York Times.

Bruce works one-on-one with founder-CEOs and senior leaders, runs strategic planning intensives with leadership teams, and facilitates retreats for executive groups, EO and YPO forums, and CEO peer groups.

Professional Highlights
- BS Architecture and B. Architecture - McGill University, Montreal, Quebec
- Founder and five-time Inc. 500 CEO of a Lean/Agile software development company (exited 2013)
- Entrepreneurs' Organization (EO) member, 2007 to 2019
- Inc.com contributing author since 2016
- Scaling Up Certified Coach (2017)
- Predictive Index Certified Consultant (2020)
- Founder and host of four podcasts with over 1,000 episodes, most recently From Angel to Exit, where founders share the good, the bad, and the ugly of their exit journeys
- Flow Research Collective Certified Coach (2023)
- Certified Exit Planning Advisor (CEPA), Exit Planning Institute (2025)
- Author of Springboard: A Founder's Guide to Selling Your Company With Purpose, Clarity, and a Vision for What's Next

Personal Highlights
Born in Philadelphia, raised in Minnesota, educated in Montreal, Bruce has always been an adventurer and outdoorsman, with deep experience in camping, hiking, trekking, climbing, backcountry skiing, and freshwater and saltwater fly fishing. He's also competed in a wide range of sports, including rowing, nordic skiing, biathlon, triathlon, four marathons, and an Ironman. He summited Kilimanjaro and climbed Ama Dablam, dove the Coral Sea off Australia, and hiked the Tour du Mont Blanc, with travels that have taken him to six of the seven continents. He is a father of four and lives in the New York City area.

Coaching Regions
US - Northeast
US - Southeast
US - Midwest
Canada - Atlantic Region
Canada - Central Canada

Industry of Expertise
Accounting/Finance
Banking/Real Estate
Creative/Design
Customer Support
Education/Training