WHERE AMBITION MEETS mastery.
the leadership studio for ambitious founders.
Arc Studio helps founders turn instinct into structure by designing the leadership, decision, and performance systems behind high-performance companies.
For over a decade, we have worked behind the scenes at some of the world’s most successful companies, including Meta and Stripe, and partnered closely with founders across wellness, luxury, and travel.
Founder instinct builds authentic companies. leadership systems scale them.
Arc Studio helps founders translate instinct into explicit leadership systems, people strategy, and decision logic, so momentum no longer depends on pressure.
As your company matures and scales, leadership has to become more deliberate, without losing what got you here.
Together, we design a tailored system that allows the company to scale with clarity and confidence, instead of depending on you to hold everything together.
We design the conditions for leadership to work.
We have a point of view.
One shaped by 14 years working inside global, high-growth companies alongside senior leaders.
Arc Studio is the partner you want in your corner.
The one who tells you when you have spinach in your teeth.
The one who says the presentation does not make sense.
The one who names when you are being a jerk and stays to help you fix it.
You get honesty without theatre. Judgment without ego.
And recommendations grounded in what actually works under pressure.
We partner with founders and executive teams to build:
sustainable, self aware and grounded leadership
clarity and high-performance systems
explicit decision logic and ownership
people strategy aligned to the company’s real stage
communication structures that hold when pressure is high
This is not about adding process.
It is about removing strain.
Our Core Beliefs
A founder’s behaviour becomes the organisation’s operating rhythm.
Leadership is always louder than intent.Leadership is judgment, practiced under pressure.
Not intuition. Not manifestation. Judgment.Clarity is the leader’s primary responsibility.
Everything else follows from it.Growth does not create problems. It exposes them.
What is avoided early becomes costly later.Most organisations stall because people decisions are delayed, diluted, or avoided.
These decisions shape performance whether they are made consciously or not.Intentional leadership means choosing what to protect as deliberately as what to pursue.
Focus is as much about restraint as ambition.
TRUSTED BY EXECUTIVES, founders and investors
leadership decisions and brand integrity are inseparable.
Most founder mistakes are people decisions in disguise: who you hire, how you lead, and what you allow to persist.
Arc Studio works with founders building in tech, luxury, and wellness, where leadership decisions and brand integrity are inseparable.
We help make goals, expectations, ownership, and consequences explicit, before they compound into performance drag or friction.
arc studio work is aimed to sharpen leadership judgement at moments of consequence:
Before growth introduces friction.
Before people decisions dilute the brand.
Before instinct replaces intention.
This is not mindset coaching.
It is thoughtful, disciplined leadership work grounded in organisational clarity and long-term brand integrity.
We fix the real constraint before it compounds. Fast. So you can lead the company at the level it actually needs.
Ways We Partner with extraordinary founders
Arc Studio works with founders at different depths, depending on what the company needs right now. All engagements focus on the same thing: turning instinct into structure so the company can scale without getting heavier
founder Clarity Intensive
Quick Diagnostics
When the next decision feels foggy and the stakes are rising, speed without clarity becomes a liability.
The Clarity Intensive is a 90-minute deep-dive to diagnose where leadership, decisions, and execution are getting stuck as your company scales, and what needs to change next.
Includes clarity on decision rights, role/accountability, and any immediate people moves required.
the GROUNDED LEADER
Ongoing Founder Advisory
A founder’s behaviour becomes the company’s operating system.
As the company evolves, leadership must evolve with it.
The Grounded Leader™ is an ongoing advisory partnership focused on evolving how you lead and decide as the company grows in complexity, so you don’t become the bottleneck.
We work through the calls you are avoiding: performance standards, leadership expectations, exits, resets, and how to communicate them cleanly.
Leadership & Organisational Architecture
Outcome-based Embedded Partnership
A focused engagement to design and install the leadership, decision, and performance systems your company needs to scale without depending on you for everything.
The work combines close advisory with selective embedded support, aligning leadership judgement, decision-making, and organisational rhythm around what the company actually needs next.
Scope often includes org design, leadership team operating cadence, role clarity, and performance system foundations that match the stage.
Waitlisted until Q2 2026. We work with a very small number of clients at this level.
arc studio founder, Federica
Federica De Cillis is a Leadership & Operating Systems Architect, trusted by funded founders navigating the most complex and emotionally charged moments of building a company.
Her work removes emotional fog and operational noise, helping founders see clearly what is actually happening inside their leadership and organisation, often before issues fully surface.
With over a decade of experience in high-growth companies, Federica specialises in moments where leadership decisions, performance, and team dynamics begin to compound in the wrong direction: from leadership friction and performance breakdowns to communication misalignment, cultural drift, and scale-induced instability.
She blends behavioural insight, emotional clarity, and organisational judgement to stabilise leaders, restore momentum, and build conditions for sustained performance.
Having seen both excellence and the quiet mistakes that cost companies millions, Federica now works with founders to turn pressure and ambition into clarity, direction, and decisive leadership.
Thought provoking Leadership insights from our Journal
“At a certain stage, companies stops running on founder instinct and start demanding a leadership system.
When decision rights are unclear, standards are implied, and people issues linger, progress slows in ways that feel personal but are structural.
Arc Studio helps founders and executives build operating clarity and people strategy that holds under pressure, so momentum returns without chaos.”
