About Retrocause
Built by operators, for operators.
Retrocause exists because we believe founders deserve better than hope. They deserve a system — one built from real experience, tested across real companies, and designed to be implemented, not just admired.
Founder
Amos Schwartzfarb is a 6x startup executive, long-time Techstars Managing Director, and best-selling author of Sell More Faster and Levers. He founded Retrocause and created the LEVERS operating system to help entrepreneurs stop spinning their wheels and start building companies that actually work — for their customers, their teams, and themselves.
After working with hundreds of founders over the past two decades, he saw the same patterns repeat: talented founders with great products who had no systematic approach to revenue.
That experience — across 1,000+ startups at every stage and in every industry — is what led him to build LEVERS. Not as a theory, but as a practical 5-step operating system distilled from what actually works.
Amos's core belief is simple: hope is not a strategy. Founders don't need more advice, more networking, or more pitch practice. They need a system.
“Most founders don't have a revenue problem. They have a clarity problem. Once you know your W3, the Map of your business, and your validated assumptions — the path forward becomes obvious.”— Amos Schwartzfarb
By the Numbers
Operating Partner
Brooke Bains is an operator and strategist who helps leadership teams turn complexity into disciplined execution and predictable growth.
She began her career in investment banking before moving into operating roles across finance, healthcare, SaaS, and consulting. Over the course of her career, she has bootstrapped a multi-million-dollar healthcare company and helped build an early generative AI solution that was later acquired by a Fortune 500 technology company.
Her work focuses on intuition-forward, data-led operational strategy — aligning leadership teams, simplifying execution, and building systems that produce measurable enterprise value.
Her core belief is simple: Everything is Turn Aroundable. With the right clarity, discipline, and leadership alignment complex challenges can be reshaped into opportunity.
Beyond Retrocause, Brooke leads Bold Enterprise — working with accomplished women to align their nervous system and business systems so both work. The result: companies that are profitable, wealth-generating, and genuinely theirs.
“Everything is Turn Aroundable. With the right clarity, discipline, and leadership alignment complex challenges can be reshaped into opportunity.”— Brooke Bains
By the Numbers
Founding Members
The people who helped start it all
Retrocause was shaped from the beginning by operators and leaders who believe founders deserve better tools, better systems, and better support.
Cody has been working in high-growth technology since 1999, when he moved to San Francisco and accidentally fell into the dotcom boom with a pre-IPO startup. He's held product roles at StumbleUpon, Yahoo, The New York Times, Sprint, and NBC Internet, and has been supporting startup ecosystems as a career since 2013.
A writer turned serial founder, Trevor has invested in more than forty startups — many through Techstars' first Impact accelerator and as Managing Director of Alexa Next Stage, run with the Amazon Alexa Fund. He is currently at the venture fund Saturn Five.
Our Philosophy
Why we built Retrocause this way
Every decision behind the fellowship is rooted in what we've seen work — and what we've seen fail — across thousands of startups.
Why Capital Efficiency Matters
The era of growth-at-all-costs is over. The founders who win are the ones who build real revenue engines. Capital efficiency isn't a constraint — it's a discipline that forces clarity, prioritization, and better decisions at every stage.
Why Two Years
Mastery takes repetition. A weekend workshop can introduce ideas, but it can't build a system into your operating muscle memory. Year one is learning and implementing. Year two is refining with real data and compounding your results.
Why Community
CEOs need peers — other operators in the same trenches, facing the same scale challenges, and building with the same discipline. Not networking. Not happy hours. Real peer accountability.
Our Mission
Help founders build revenue-rich, capital-efficient businesses
The startup ecosystem has spent years optimizing for fundraising. Retrocause exists to optimize for something different: building businesses that actually work.
We partner with growth-stage companies to establish order and replace guesswork with a systematic approach. We believe that when leaders have clarity on their W3, the Map of how their business actually makes money, and a disciplined approach to validating assumptions, they can build something extraordinary.
Not through luck. Not through hope. Through a system.
Revenue over fundraising
We help founders build businesses that generate revenue, not just raise capital.
Systems over intuition
Intuition is valuable, but it doesn't scale. A repeatable operating system does.
Implementation over theory
The fellowship exists to turn frameworks into action — inside real businesses, with real data, over real time.