WINGMAN  ·  C. TULLBERG POULSEN BOARD MEMBER, AIROFIT
A wingman for founder-led hardware & health-tech · 10–100 employees

When the product is fine and the company stalls

Every founder-led company hits a phase where what got it here stops working. Production, sales, certification and the next raise change shape at once, and the hardest calls land exactly where the founder's own experience is least reliable. By the time the consequences reach a board meeting, the cheap options are gone.

I go in as a wingman for that one phase, then step back out. The founder keeps command. What changes is that someone in the cockpit has flown this leg before.

Christian Tullberg Poulsen
0years, prototype to global scale
0units sold across 100+ countries
0company value, zero to three-digit millions
0international clinical studies
0logged in the world's largest breathing dataset

I built Airofit from an early prototype to a global hardware and medtech company, sold in over 100 countries, backed by 14 published clinical studies and the world's largest breathing database. I led it through its MDR transition and into the final stage of CE Class 2a certification, and built its value from zero to a three-digit DKK million figure. Before that, a decade in management consulting. I've made the calls that decide these phases myself, from both sides of getting them right.

Why me

Three things ten years inside one company teaches you

Reads the constraint

Where the real constraint is, and where it is not.

Expert timelines mix genuine hard limits with caution that can be pushed. I have overrun budgets trusting my own optimism, and beaten timelines specialists called impossible. Telling the two apart is the difference between losing a year and losing the runway.

Keeps the founder sharp

The founder stays sharp.

Under pressure from the board, the team, customers and home at once, a founder has nowhere to be uncertain out loud. Exhausted founders start reading investors as adversaries, and bad news stops travelling early. I'm someone to think and argue with in private, so what reaches you is a founder working the problem, not bracing against you.

Catches it early

Small problems stay small.

Most of what damages a hardware company was visible long before the board meeting: a supplier slipping, a channel that never converts, a certification assumption nobody tested. I see those while they're still small, and can act the same week.

Why this, why now

The day the company stopped needing me

The clearest signal came while I was listening to our Head of Sales pitch Airofit to a customer, and realized he knew the product and the vision well enough to sell it better than I could. Not because I'd taught him everything. Because he'd made it his own. Our CFO had built financial structure I couldn't have created myself. Our development team was spotting the next technical step before I did.

That's when it was clear: the company no longer depended on one person, including me. I'd always assumed my job was to build the product, or the company. I was wrong. My job was to build a team that could do more than I could. Once that was true, staying in the CEO seat stopped being the most useful thing I could do.

So I stepped down as CEO in 2026 and moved to the board. What I do now is what the last decade actually trained me for: going in as a wingman for the phase transitions founders hit, from production and certification to financing and culture. The same calls I spent ten years making myself.

How an engagement works

Two rules, kept on purpose

The engagement

Wingman, not advisor.

Three to twelve months inside the company, alongside the founder. We find the two or three things that decide the quarter, close them together, then do it again. I'm accountable for what moves, not for handing over a report.

The first step

Starts with a conversation, not a proposal.

Point me at one or two companies and I'll tell you where I think the risk sits.

Which of your companies is closest to stalling?

30 minutes. My honest read. No strings.

Christian Tullberg Poulsen Board member, Airofit · Founder, AiroQur
+45 6138 0616 cpo@synergi.dk LinkedIn