One to one, online meditation coaching for founders, post-exit entrepreneurs and executives. Sleep deeper, meet pressure with steadiness, and explore the parts of the mind that no dashboard measures.
You built something from nothing.
Somewhere along the way, it started building you.
The 3 a.m. Slack. The board deck in the shower. The quiet after the wire hits, louder than any meeting.
There is another way to carry it.
Like any skill, it is learned fastest with a teacher who can see what you can't. That is what Cinder is for.
Photos: maks_d, Warren, Alexander Krivitskiy, Bruno Dias, Megan Bucknall, Irene Strong, Kate Kozyrka on Unsplash
It usually starts with a practical problem: sleep, nerves, focus. It becomes a way of living with more space inside a very full life.
For the mind that starts running the board deck at 2 a.m. Learn a wind-down practice that lets your nervous system stand down on command.
Read more →Fundraising, layoffs, a hard board meeting. Meditation won't lower the stakes, but it changes how much of you they get to occupy.
Read more →For those who sense there is more to the mind than productivity. Contemplative practice as a serious, lifelong line of inquiry.
Read more →The wire hits and the quiet arrives. Use this chapter to meet yourself without the company as your identity.
Read more →You raised the round. Now the pressure has a number attached to it and a board meeting every quarter.
The deal closed. The urgency that organized your life for a decade is gone, and nobody told you what comes next.
Hundreds of decisions a day, each with consequences. Your attention is the scarcest resource in the company.
No incense, no jargon, no pressure to become someone else. Clear instruction, honest feedback, and practices that fit inside a real schedule.
Tell us what brings you here. Engagements are limited so every client gets real attention.
A 30 minute conversation to understand your goals, your history with practice, and whether this is a fit.
Live 1:1 instruction over video, weekly or biweekly. Guided practice, inquiry, and precise adjustments.
After every session, your portal fills with the recording, transcript, analysis and practices for the week.
“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
Insight fades fast when your next meeting starts in four minutes. Your private portal keeps every session close at hand so the practice actually takes root.
“By week three, I noticed I wasn't reacting to every problem like it was an emergency. That changed how I lead.”
“I thought I needed better focus. What I actually needed was a way to stop carrying the company around in my head all night.”
“The practices are short enough that I actually use them. Five minutes before a hard conversation changes the entire conversation.”
“I didn't realize how much of my day was just tension with a calendar attached to it.”
“After the acquisition, everyone kept asking what I was doing next. Meditation helped me get comfortable not having an answer yet.”
“I'm still busy. The difference is I'm not mentally in six meetings at once anymore.”
“I started because I was waking up at 3 a.m. thinking about work. I stayed because I became noticeably better at work.”
“There's a strange loneliness to being the person everyone brings their problems to. This gave me somewhere to put mine.”
“This is the first meditation practice I've tried that survived contact with my actual schedule.”
Every engagement is private, online, and includes full portal access.
A focused session for a specific moment: a big raise, a hard board meeting, a sleepless stretch.
Ongoing coaching for leaders who want practice woven into how they work.
For experienced meditators ready to go further into the nature of mind.
Ryan Estes co-founded Kitcaster and Wildcast, raised $1M, and led Kitcaster through its acquisition by Moburst in April 2025. He knows the fundraise, the board meeting and the strange quiet after the wire hits because he has lived them.
Ryan is passionate about bringing focus, awareness and kindness into the way companies are built. That is the heart of Cinder: the obstacles high performers meet in meditation are rarely about technique. They are about a mind trained for vigilance, a body that has forgotten how to rest, and an identity built around output. Sessions meet those patterns directly, with warmth, rigor and a sense of humor.
Off the cushion, he trains in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (purple belt) and capoeira, volunteers as a finance mentor, and is the creator of the AI for Founders podcast, newsletter and workshop series. He is a Denver husband and father of two teenagers.
Private meditation instruction vs. apps: an honest comparison of cost, feedback, and results for founders and executives deciding how to build a real practice.
Meditation for sleep works best as a short, repeatable wind-down protocol. Here is a practical routine for executives whose minds keep running at night.
Meditation for CEOs, explained plainly: how attention training helps you notice pressure, widen your options, and make clearer decisions when stakes are high.
A meditation coach teaches you meditation one to one, tailored to your life, temperament and goals. Instead of generic guided audio, you get live instruction, real-time feedback on what's happening in your practice, and a plan that adapts week to week.
Monthly coaching with Cinder is $1,000 per month and includes weekly private sessions, recordings, transcripts and session analysis in your client portal. Single sessions are available for $450. The advanced Inner cosmos intensive is priced by application.
Yes. All sessions are held privately over video, so you can practice from your home, office or hotel room anywhere in the world. Every session is recorded and transcribed for your private client portal.
Within your client portal you receive the session recording, a full transcript, and a written analysis of the session: key themes, insights, specific integration practices for the week, and journal prompts to deepen the work.
Apps are a good start, but they can't see where you're stuck. Private instruction diagnoses the specific obstacle (restlessness, sleepiness, a mind that won't stop planning) and gives you the precise adjustment. Most clients find that progress which took years alone happens in weeks.
No. Clients range from complete beginners to people with years of retreat experience. The work starts wherever you are.
Many people find that meditation helps them fall asleep more easily and relate differently to anxious thinking. Coaching is educational and complements, rather than replaces, care from a physician or licensed clinician for clinical symptoms.
Funded founders, entrepreneurs after an exit, and C-suite executives. People who carry a lot of responsibility, value their time, and want a direct, no-nonsense approach to training the mind.
Coaching is offered to a small number of clients at a time. Share a little about yourself and what you're looking for. If it seems like a fit, you'll receive an invitation to a 30 minute intro call.
Applications are confidential and reviewed personally, usually within two business days.