Derek Fredrickson
- Specialism: Fractional COO placement, operational leadership, vision-to-execution strategy, founder-led business scaling, team development and accountability, EOS implementation, systems and process design, people and process infrastructure.
- Track Record: Founder and CEO of The COO Solution, a fractional COO placement firm operating across the US, UK, and Europe — reached seven figures in eleven months. Previously, 15+ years as a fractional COO scaling seven- and eight-figure founder-led businesses across multiple industries, with a focus on operations, marketing, and team development. 20+ years of combined COO experience. 50+ founders served.
- Offer: I work with founder-led businesses generating $1M to $20M in revenue that are ready to scale but don’t yet have the operational leadership to do it. Through The COO Solution, I place embedded fractional COOs as trusted second-in-commands — taking operational ownership so the founder can step back from the day-to-day and focus on leading and growing the business. For founders who are the bottleneck in their own company, I provide the people, process, and structure to change that.
- Derek says: “CEOs make it up. COOs make it real. And the right people and processes make it recur.”
- Try me: thecoosolution.com
I spent over 15 years as a Fractional COO working inside founder-led businesses, and I kept seeing the same pattern: visionary founders who were brilliant at building something but stuck in the day-to-day of running it. The fractional model allowed me to serve multiple founders at once, bring my full operational experience to each, and do it on terms that worked for both sides. I wasn’t interested in a single full-time seat. I wanted the breadth, the variety and the ability to make a meaningful difference across more than one business at a time.
I got started by doing the work. More than 15 years of embedded operational leadership across seven- and eight-figure businesses gave me experience spanning operations, marketing, team development and systems design. Over time, I realised the fractional model wasn’t a compromise; it was a better way to work. That realisation led me to found The COO Solution, where I now place and support other Fractional COOs inside founder-led businesses across the US, UK and Europe.
One of my biggest early successes was taking The COO Solution from an idea to seven figures in just eleven months. Building a firm that could place and manage Fractional COOs at scale, rather than simply doing the work myself, was a very different challenge from anything I had done before. Getting that right, and getting there quickly, proved both that the model worked and that the demand was there.
Along the way, I’ve learned that the hardest part of scaling a business is rarely the strategy. Often, it’s the founder. Many founders become the bottleneck in their own company without realising it. Helping them trust someone else with the operational core of their business requires patience, the right people and a model that genuinely delivers. I’ve also learned that the fractional space rewards operators who can build genuine trust quickly. Expertise gets you in the door; trust is what keeps you there.
It’s working for me now because the model is built around outcomes, not presence. Founders don’t need someone simply occupying a seat. They need someone who takes ownership, thinks clearly and delivers. The Fractional COO model provides that at a cost and level of commitment that works for growth-stage businesses. And because I’ve built a bench of vetted operators and a firm around it, the impact can now scale far beyond what I could deliver alone.
Looking ahead, I want to continue building The COO Solution into the go-to firm for founder-led businesses that are ready to scale, while placing more exceptional operators into businesses where they can do the best work of their careers. Above all, I want to keep proving that the second-in-command isn’t simply a support role; it’s the role that makes everything else possible.