About
The humans behind Afoot.
We can all feel it. Now that AI has made execution fast, the slow part is us. We spend more time than ever re-aligning, clarifying misunderstandings, chasing context and waiting for everyone to agree.
We started Afoot because we saw this coming. And because we believe the same technology accelerating our confusion can also fix it. Successful coordination is an observable system with predictable failure modes. Predictable, because the same failures repeat team after team, and spotting patterns is exactly what AI is good at. High-performing teams engineer the conditions to make real alignment the path of least resistance.
Founders
Vanessa Meyer
Co-founder, CEO
John Sjölander
Co-founder, CTO
We build operational infrastructure for high-performing teams.
We come from inside the problem: years spent watching exceptional teams lose speed, quality, and momentum to coordination drag that everybody could feel but nobody could see.
We sit at the intersection of GTM leadership, product execution, venture capital, and real-world AI adoption, leading AI products commercially as far back as 2016.
We also come from the engineering side, designing the operational backbone of startups and the interfaces between teams the way developers design APIs between systems: simple, barebones and built to reduce ambiguity. When coordination is engineered well, small teams can move with extraordinary speed. It’s just very hard to build, because most organizations treat coordination as a soft skill instead of something that can be intentionally designed.
Advisors
Johanna Lindquist
Director of Leadership Development at BTS. Global leader with 15+ years in the education industry, specializing in transformation, leadership development and facilitation.
Joel Kall
Software engineer and exited founder, now building his second AI-first business, Mimicate. 15+ years in AI research spanning swarm intelligence, deep clustering, and generative AI.
Åsa Norell
Certified program designer and facilitator. Neuroscience-informed leadership and collaboration advisor. 30 years in leadership, executive teams, and board roles.
What we believe
Productive tension creates real alignment.
Ownership should be explicit, not assumed.
What we reject
Fake agreement
Silence is not alignment. Nodding is not commitment. Too many teams confuse the absence of conflict with clarity.
Passive compliance
Afoot works best with teams that want shared accountability and active ownership, not teams that wait to be managed.
Micromanagement
When coordination breaks down, most organizations add oversight, process, and management layers. That makes the system heavier, not better.
Productivity surveillance
Afoot does not track keystrokes, monitor activity, or score employees. We care about whether the team is on the same page, not about policing it.
Rigid process culture
Teams need clearer conversations and a way to carry decisions forward, not another framework.
Who Afoot is for
Afoot is for teams pursuing excellence: people willing to embrace accountability, productive friction, and visible ownership if it means less confusion and more time doing meaningful work. It works best for leaders who refuse to become the human glue holding everything together. If your culture depends on constant supervision and decisions flowing strictly top-down, we are probably not the right fit.
Afoot will soon be live. Join the waitlist for early access.
Join the waitlist