Lena Schaefer

Director of Operations · Chief of Staff

I help founders work through complex operating decisions and put them into practice.

I’m a Director of Operations. The role keeps me close to the founders and as hands-on as a Chief of Staff, with the scope of a COO. I can be the sparring partner on questions like where to set up an entity or where to hire, and take the hands-on work from there. I use agentic coding tools to prototype and ship reporting, internal tools and workflows that replace recurring manual work. My edge is seeing how strategy, finance, legal and compliance, revenue, people and business operations fit together – and being able to work across all of them. Since 2019, I’ve worked inside VC- and PE-backed startups and scaleups from pre-seed through Series B.

See what I’ve built Read my writing
Lena Schaefer in a courtyard
Since 2019 VC- and PE-backed companies Pre-seed → Series B startups and scaleups EU + U.S. cross-border operating scope Chief of Staff → Director Ops founder mindset · hands-on build

What I’ve built

These are five recurring problems I got tired of solving by hand. I built something the team could keep using instead – sometimes with an agent, sometimes with an API connection, a scheduled workflow or a small browser tool.

SourcesBanks · accounting · CRM KPI engineNormalize · calculate · refresh Operating viewKPIs · cohorts · decisions

The numbers were spread across too many systems.

Seeing cash, burn, revenue and pipeline in one place meant exporting bank data, accounting reports and CRM records, then stitching spreadsheets by hand. I built a Python cockpit that brings those sources together through APIs and scheduled imports, normalizes data across two entities and currencies, and calculates the KPIs a founder actually uses: cash, burn, runway, ARR, retention, pipeline and unit economics. It also surfaces the business insight behind the headline – for example, when cohort NRR tells a very different story from the blended number.

Python · REST APIs · Streamlit

ContextNotion · Slack · finance Claude + editorSynthesize · lock · review Investor emailLint · render · export

The investor update kept starting from a blank page.

The source material already existed: weekly updates from product, engineering, GTM and ops in Notion and Slack, plus current financial reporting. I built a browser editor that turns a structured intake into a Claude-generated draft, keeps the recurring sections and tone consistent, and renders the result as email-safe HTML. The editor supports inline review, preserves locked sections through another synthesis, and blocks export if the anonymization check catches a customer name. The result is a crisp, newsletter-style update without rebuilding it every month.

TypeScript · Claude API · Netlify

Attio CRMEnd dates · status Scheduled jobQuery · route Slack actionsAE renews · FDE deprovisions

Renewal dates should not live in someone’s memory.

Contract end dates and account status already lived in Attio, but the next step still depended on someone remembering to check. I built a scheduled workflow that queries the CRM and posts upcoming renewals to Slack months ahead, tagging the account executive to start the conversation and assess expansion potential. A separate alert routes churned or non-renewed accounts to the forward-deployed engineer, so the workspace gets deprovisioned. Renewal follow-up and access cleanup run from the same source of truth.

Attio API · Scheduled job · Slack routing

Hiring inputsRole · salary · options Offer logicCap-table snapshot · 409A Candidate PDFLive preview · print

An offer with options took too many manual steps.

Creating an offer meant combining role details, several salary and equity packages, cap-table data and a branded document. I built a self-contained browser tool and placed it inside the Notion hiring and onboarding guide. A hiring manager can configure up to three packages. The tool uses the approved fully diluted share count and 409A values, embedded as read-only inputs, to calculate the ownership percentage and model equity scenarios, update the branded offer live, and print it to PDF.

Browser tool · Equity calculations · PDF export

Customer redlineNew terms Clause libraryStandard · fallback Decision pathAnswer · escalate · sign

Customer contracts kept reopening the same questions.

The same customer legal questions came back in slightly different forms, especially across Germany and the U.S. I built one contracting playbook with standard positions and fallback language that survives customer legal on both sides of the Atlantic. It makes the first answer faster and keeps terms consistent when specialist review is needed.

Legal ops · Clause library · Escalation rules

Notes from the AI Operating Layer

I write about compliance, agentic operations, cross-border decisions and the financial questions underneath them.

All published notes

Why I see it this way

I started with a full banking apprenticeship at TARGOBANK, formerly Citibank’s German consumer-banking business, and graduated in the top 5%. I later helped build the bank’s first end-to-end online car-loan application. Instead of visiting a branch, applicants could complete the application online and receive a credit decision within minutes.

At Deloitte I supported audits of BaFin-supervised banks and insurers. At Productsup I ran finance projects as the company grew from 90 to 450 people, cut DSO by half and led the finance side of a roughly 50-person post-merger integration. I completed an LL.B in banking and capital-markets law while working at Deloitte and Productsup.

In 2022 I joined a VC-backed AI startup as its first finance hire, moved into Chief of Staff and now run operations across the European and U.S. entities. The job spans finance, legal and compliance, revenue, people and business operations. The agentic tooling came later. I taught myself by building – first small “vibe-coded” prototypes, then internal tools I can prototype, test and ship myself. I’m curious by nature and love a steep learning curve; this one has been especially fun.

2011–17
Banking and digital lending
2017–19
Financial-services audit
2019–22
Scale-up finance
2022–now
AI-startup operations

The conversations I’m useful for

Founders and investors

Entity setup, where to hire, operating architecture, compliance right-sizing, finance and AI-native internal systems. I’m often the person who keeps finance, legal, product, GTM and people connected. I speak enough of each function’s language to understand what each team needs, translate between them and turn strategy into work that gets done.

Editors and hosts

Background, commentary and contributed pieces on agentic operations, compliance architecture, cross-border company-building and AI economics.

Let’s talk

If you’re working through one of these questions, send me a note. For founder sparring, publication and media inquiries, or speaking invitations: hi@lenaschaefer.me

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