Hire a Business Sparring Partner*
*who’s built 4 companies and coached hundreds
For over 14 years, Arik has partnered with more than 200 startups, scale-ups, and ambitious SMEs, guiding them to build sustainable and scalable businesses characterized by healthy growth and robust leadership.
- Review/Build your growth plan
- Challenge your business plan
- Review/Build your financial plan
- Plan & prepare your exit
- Perfect your fundraising strategy
- Prepare and dry run your pitch(es)
- Review your business / financial plan(s)
- Improve your management style
- Optimize your processes
- Align stakeholders
For over 14 years, Arik has partnered with more than 200 startups, scale-ups, and ambitious SMEs, guiding them to build sustainable and scalable businesses characterized by healthy growth and robust leadership.
What sets arik apart?
Arik Azoulay is a rare blend of strategist, technologist, and hands-on builder. As CEO of 26lights, he has spent 14+ years partnering with more than 200 startups, scaleups, and ambitious SMEs to unlock their next stage of growth, drawing on the hard-won lessons of founding, developing, and selling multiple ventures himself.
He works at the intersection of business, product, and technology, helping teams shape crisp growth plans, align technical architecture with strategy, and execute with discipline.
His coaching is consistently praised for clear coordination, strong communication, and tangible progress.
ALL ROUNDER
Arik brings deep fluency in tech architecture, product strategy, marketing funnels and sales execution: a rare full-stack strategist who doesn’t just advise but orchestrates.
VISUAL THINKER
Concepts live in your head until you map them, share them, test them… and that’s exactly where Arik excels.
Using visual frameworks developed through hands-on builds, he turns abstract strategy into board-ready clarity.
NO-BULLSHIT TALKER
Arik’s playbook is direct: clear language, zero jargon, measurable milestones.
No vague diagrams, no wishy-washy frameworks, but aligned decisions that create real outcomes.
HANDS-ON BUILDER
When you engage his coaching you’re getting a partner who leaps into your reality: tooling, processes, roadblocks… he tackles them with you until your plan lives and delivers.
Different coaching types
What sets Arik apart is his ability to translate complexity into clarity. His background in psychology sharpens how he reads organizations and decisions, while his “visual mapping” methodology gives leadership teams a holistic, shared view of processes, ownership, and impact across the company, surfacing bottlenecks and inefficiencies fast, and making prioritization obvious. With
1. CO-CREATION WORKSHOPS
1. You explain your business: its goals, structure, and all the processes that defines what you do.
2. Arik then visualizes everything on a shared board, connecting dots across your operations to reveal the full picture.
3. We solve potential issues together.
Every session is built to generate clarity and alignment through active co-creation.
2. ON-CALL SUPPORT
Coaching doesn’t stop when the session ends.
Between meetings, you can reach out directly to Arik whenever you hit a roadblock: a quick message on WhatsApp or any preferred platform.
This ongoing support keeps your momentum intact. If a question, pitch, or execution issue arises, Arik helps you resolve it instantly.
We think that’s the kind of velocity that differentiates a good from a truly winning business.
They've been helped by Arik
“I loved my exchanges with Arik. Beyond his personality, his advice are truly sharp and honest, which is rare. He’s not afraid to say harsh truths, such as targeting a specific persona for fundraising which quickly helped me refine my strategy. He’s capable of quickly adapt to any project with a pragmatic approach. He’s an experimented business coach that totally understands startups’ challenges and knows how to swiftly navigate between tech, marketing and business aspects to reach success.”
Ambre P.
Co-Founder, Simple Reset
I loved this afternoon with Arik, which brought brilliant ideas around a Chrome extension, which truly helped me rethink my strategy. His pragmatic approach and his hands-on coaching gave me loads of enthusiasm and energy to continue my project.”
Alexandre de Clercq
Founder, Jay
Arik’s coaching helped us understand the importance of a clear sales strategy and a rigorous discipline in task follow-up, while bringing a structure to better our collective productivity and team cohesion. His pragmatic approach and his coaching on business processes gave us the impulsion we needed to reach an ultra-performing commercial strategy.
Davy Diamant
CEO, Archetype
“With the Detailed Business Process method, we quickly pointed out processes that could be optimized, and acted on it. This fulfilled my need to get out of the operational aspects of my day-to-day, letting me focus on higher value tasks.”
Stéphane Benaym
CFO, e-maprod
“Arik’s coaching is valued for its pragmatic and founder-focused approach, combining technical, marketing, and strategic expertise, with a strong emphasis on constructive challenge and long-term support to guide startups towards their goals. His method immediately enhances clarity and efficiency in the structuring and execution of projects.”
Adrien Charles
CEO, Lyriks.io
“Arik offers a very pragmatic and concrete coaching, with a hands-on approach that allowed me to better structure and challenge my commercial strategy. It is an rich discussion with someone who understands the challenges of startups well and knows how to adapt to complex situations.”
Sebastien De Grauwe
CEO, HeronTrack
“Arik brings a true product-centered culture, understands every business, technical and marketing challenges, by integrating himself as a true team member to maximize value for each action, which frees me from micro-management and boosts productivity.”
Risvan Asif
Co-Founder, Carden
Arik brings a truly pragmatic and innovative approach, most notably his propositions to automate and ease the manual work thanks to tools such as machine learning. His proficiency in simplifying complex processes became a huge asset for the team”.
Jonathan Shockaert
CEO, Ring Twice
“In only 30 minutes, Arik quickly found out what the true needs of my company were, and I got out with incredible insights I applied the next day.”
Céleste Coez
Co-Founder, Reusses
Choose your package
Choose a plan that best suits your needs.
Need a more custom package? Let’s get in touch!
We Are growth Architects
For over 14 years, 26lights has partnered with more than 200 startups, scale-ups, and ambitious SMEs, guiding them to build sustainable and scalable businesses characterized by healthy growth and robust leadership through a unique blend of Business, Tech, and Marketing expertise.
Business
On-demand Business Coaching
- BUSINESS PLAN
- FINANCIAL PLAN
- FUNDRAISING
- HR
- ORGANISATION
- OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE & PROCESS
Tech
On-demand Tech expertise
- CUSTOM FRONT DEV
- CUSTOM BACK DEV
- VIBE CODING
- DEVOPS
- AI
- AUTOMATION & WORKFLOWS
- ERP
- SOFTWARE INTEGRATION
- UX/UI
Marketing & SALES
On-demand Marketing expertise
- BRANDING
- WEB DESIGN
- PAID
- SEO / SEA
- OUTREACH
- SOCIAL
- CONTENT
Read our Manifesto
Here are the 12 fundamental practices that drive our work at 26lights.
1. No Copy-Paste
Have you ever seen two companies succeed using exactly the same method? We haven’t. While we love drawing inspiration from our experience, we truly believe that your path to success is unique. Let’s discover it together.
2. Human-centric growth
True growth partnership relies on real human contact, not on pure service delivery. A growth partner is a therapist for your company: the more they know about your goals, hopes, beliefs, and fears, the better they can help.
3. Co-creation is mandatory
Co-creation is a powerful approach that leads to superior outcomes: you’re the specialist of your business, we’re the specialists of the core activities (IT, Marketing, Operations, HR, …).
4. Goal-driven partnerships
We’re not just strategists: we’re doers who love to achieve goals. We’ve done it many times before, and we know how great it feels.
5. One team, all skills
A fast growing company’s challenge is to do everything in parallel to make it work. An integrated team helps reduce friction and coordination time, making operations more efficient on your side.
6. Engineering Excellence
Technical excellence and robust engineering practices form the foundation of effective, scalable software solutions.
7. Determination drives breakthroughs
Breakthroughs are forged through relentless determination and effort. They emerge from the crucible of countless failures, demanding persistence and the courage to challenge the status quo everytime.
8. Master the local market
Proximity and market knowledge are essential to provide the support and expertise that startups need to succeed in a unique and complex market.
9. Blending experience with fresh perspectives
A blend of junior and senior profiles will bring you the best perspectives through both youth and experience.
10. Agility across all functions
Being Agile is a must, whether you’re working with development, marketing, recruitment, or anything else. Requirement changes are a part of the game and being reactive to them makes you unstoppable.
11. Embrace Simplicity
Simplicity is key. Take an honest look and maximize what actually needs doing.
12. Transparency builds trust
True growth partnership is rooted in trust and long-term partnership. Trust in the process comes from experience. Trust in your partner comes from transparency.