In the fast-moving world of startups, it’s easy to focus on ideas, growth, and the hustle- sometimes forgetting the people behind it all. At Founders500, we’re proud to be part of a community of creative founders who are not only building businesses but shaping a more inclusive and supportive startup ecosystem. Our Founder Spotlight is designed to go beyond the pitch decks and products, giving you a chance to get to know the humans behind the ventures- their journeys, challenges, and perspectives. By sharing these stories, we aim to strengthen connections, spark new ideas, and remind every founder in our community that they’re not building alone. Read the mini interview below!
A bit about Cecilia:
Cecilia Brown is a growth and revenue leader at Pickle, where she focuses on building trusted partnerships and helping ambitious teams scale with clarity.
A mum of three, Ceci has built her career around keeping things, and people, running smoothly. She began as an Assistant to a high-net-worth family before spending five years at Google, working with the London Sales team and supporting the Chief Business Officer. She moved into program management at Google X, where she developed a deep understanding of how commercial strategy, operations, and people intersect.
When her family was young, Ceci began working fractionally, designing a career that could flex around life while still operating at a high level. Her work evolved naturally into sales, where she found she could combine operational insight with commercial momentum. In 2023, she joined Pickle (formerly known as Fyxer) to take over the sales seat, bringing together her operational depth and commercial focus.
At Pickle, Ceci draws on both lived and professional experience to help founders and teams reduce friction, protect their time, and build systems that genuinely work. Having navigated the realities of growing a career alongside a family, she cares deeply about creating structure that makes work more sustainable, calmly, practically, and without unnecessary fuss.
What do you do today- and what’s the story of how you got here?
I’m a mum of three who’s built a career around keeping things (and people) running smoothly. I started out as an Executive Assistant to a high-net-worth family, then spent five years at Google with the London Sales team, before supporting the Chief Business Officer and moving into program management.
When I had a young family, I needed work that could fit around life. I began running my own company and, along the way, started working with FYXER. That role grew quickly, evolved naturally, and eventually brought me back in 2023 to take over the sales seat.
I’m at Pickle because my work and life experience means I understand how people, processes, and priorities intersect, and how much difference the right support and systems can make, whether you’re an individual, a growing team, or a scaling business. Having lived the juggle of work and family myself, I care deeply about creating structure that genuinely makes day-to-day work simpler and more sustainable.
At Pickle, I’m here to help work out what you actually need, and then embed the right person or people in.
What problem do you help solve, and why does it matter to you personally?
The problem we solve is execution. Not strategy, not vision, the gap between knowing what needs to happen and actually making it happen. Most founders I work with are intelligent, driven people who are genuinely building something worth building. But at a certain point, the business outgrows the infrastructure around it. Leadership is stretched too thin. Things fall through the gaps. Not because anyone is careless, but because there’s simply not enough capacity at the level that matters.
Why does it matter to me personally? Because I’ve seen what it costs people when their business is running them rather than the other way around. It’s not just inefficiency, it affects how people lead, how they make decisions, how they show up. When you take that pressure off and replace it with something reliable and well-structured, the whole business breathes differently.
I also care deeply about how this kind of support is delivered. There’s a version of this that’s transactional and extractive, and that’s not interesting to me. We’re building something that actually improves how people work and that feels worth doing.
What was the moment you knew you had to build this (even before you knew how?)
It wasn’t mine to build! When I was offered the role to come back and take over the sales seat I accepted because we’re solving an age old problem – the execution gap.
A hire needs onboarding, context, and managing, which the founder has to provide while already running on empty. A consultant produces a recommendation you then have to implement yourself. Software adds to the stack someone still has to operate.
None of it wrong….just not quite right for the thing that actually needs solving.
What Founders still need is someone who can come in, get up to speed quickly, take ownership of work that’s slipping, and get on with it, without needing to be directed, managed, or chased.
What is the biggest lesson you learned in your first year of building?
That clarity is key.
Most of the friction comes from ambiguity. Unclear expectations with clients. Unclear boundaries around what we would and wouldn’t do. Unclear articulation of what Pickle actually is makes every sales conversation harder than it needs to be.
The temptation is to stay flexible. To not close doors. To say yes to things that are adjacent to what we do because we’re coming out of a rebrand and we need the revenue and we don’t want to be precious about it. And some of that is right, you have to stay responsive to what the market is actually telling you.
But there’s a version of that flexibility that’s really just avoidance. Avoiding the hard work of defining what you are and what you’re not, because once you do that, you’ve also defined who you’ll say no to. And saying no when you’re early feels costly.
The lesson was that the definition is what creates the value. Clients don’t trust vague. Good clients, the ones we actually want, need to understand exactly what they’re buying and who they’re buying it from. The clearer we get, the better the conversations are. The better the conversations, the better the fit. And better fit is what makes the work actually work.
I’d also add in our arena that calm is a competitive advantage. Especially in a service business, especially early on. The instinct is to move fast and react to everything. But the founders we serve are already surrounded by noise. Being the steadiest presence in the room turns out to be one of the most valuable things you can offer.
What is a mistake you made that taught you something that you still use today?
Taking on clients that weren’t the right fit for us. Not because they were a bad business or difficult people but we were managing to a brief that didn’t fully fit rather than doing the work we’re actually good at. And when it ended, neither side felt particularly good about it.
Now we take time before any engagement begins to stress-test the need, challenge assumptions, and make sure the fit is real.
It taught me is that selectivity isn’t arrogance. It’s what makes the work good. We’re not the right fit for everyone, and being honest about that early is a form of respect- to the client, to the team doing the work, and to what we’re trying to build.
What is one decision or change that had the biggest impact on your growth?
Deciding to stop hiding behind the screen.
For a while, most of our business development was digital. LinkedIn, email sequences, content. And those things have their place but at some point I had to be honest with myself about what we actually are. We’re a human service. Real people, embedded into real businesses, doing real work. And we were trying to sell that almost entirely through a medium that filters out everything that makes us different.
The shift was committing to showing up in person. Events, conversations, picking up the phone rather than sending another message. Being visible in the rooms where our clients and potential clients actually are.
The impact was immediate in a way that months of digital activity hadn’t been. Because what we offer is fundamentally about trust. Trust that the people we put into your business will show up, use good judgement, and take genuine ownership. And trust is built between humans, in real interactions, not in someone’s inbox.
It also changed how I thought about what business development looks like for us. The best conversations we have aren’t pitch conversations. They’re just honest conversations with people who are dealing with the exact problems we solve. When you’re in the room, those conversations happen naturally. Behind a screen, you’re always working against friction.
We are not a software product. We’re not something you evaluate on a feature list. The relationship is part of what you’re buying and you can’t communicate that through a LinkedIn message alone. Getting out there was the reminder that the most powerful thing we have is the people, and that includes me.
When things get hard, what keeps you going?
The most immediate one is my three kids. I’m here because I want to create a life where work actually works for me, where I can show up for them properly and also do something I believe in. Those two things aren’t in tension for me, but that balance doesn’t maintain itself. It requires building something sustainable, something with real foundations, not just chasing revenue or saying yes to everything. When things get hard, they’re a very grounding reminder of why the long game matters.
The second thing is that I genuinely believe we’re solving a real problem. When you’re sitting across from a founder who is clearly brilliant, clearly building something worth building, and clearly drowning in the gap between their vision and their capacity to execute ,and you know you can help with that, it matters. And when you know the work matters, the hard periods feel like something to get through rather than a reason to stop.
And then there’s the staying in the room thing. I’ve come to understand that lots of businesses that don’t make it aren’t failing because the idea was wrong. They run out of time or nerve, usually both. Reputation compounds. Trust compounds. But only if you’re still standing when it starts to happen.
So I keep going because of my kids, because the problem is real, and because I’ve decided that not quitting is itself a strategy.
What is one belief or mindset shift that made everything easier (or clearer)?
That calm is a strategy.
I don’t mean that in a passive sense but as an active choice. Choosing not to react to every difficult moment as though it’s a crisis. Choosing not to make decisions from fear or pressure or the noise of a bad week.
Early on I think I believed that urgency was the same as progress. That if I was stressed and moving fast and reacting to everything, I was somehow doing better. What I’ve learned is that the opposite is closer to the truth. The moments where I’ve made the worst decisions – said yes to the wrong thing, moved too fast, compromised on something that mattered, have almost always come from a reactive state rather than a grounded one.
The founders we work with are already surrounded by chaos. They’re making high-stakes decisions in environments that are constantly shifting. What they need around them ,and what I’ve learned to value personally, is steadiness. The ability to look at a difficult situation without catastrophising it. To stay in the room without being destabilised by what the room is doing.
Once I started treating calm as something I was actively cultivating rather than something I’d feel when things settled down everything became easier to navigate. Not easier in the sense that the hard things stopped happening. Easier in the sense that I stopped making them harder than they needed to be.
The steadiest person in the room is usually the most useful one. I try to be that person.
What did you enjoy the most about the Founders500 event?
I loved the atmosphere – everyone was there to learn from each other and walk away with insights.
What advice would you give someone who is one chapter behind you?
Get out from behind the screen earlier than feels comfortable.
I think there’s a version of building a business that can feel very busy without ever being very visible. You’re writing content, refining the website, tweaking the positioning, sending emails. And all of that has its place. But if you’re building something where the relationship is part of the product ,and for us it absolutely is, then none of that replaces being in the room with people.
Thank you to all of our wonderful speakers for taking part in our Speaker Spotlight!
You can watch Cecilia’s session here.