How Wayflyer's CEO Aidan Corbett Stopped Letting Fear Drive People Decisions
February 2, 2026
First-time CEO struggling with people decisions? See how Wayflyer's founder overcame fear-based leadership and built a team that scaled to 270 employees.
About Aidan Corbett, CEO of Wayflyer
Aidan Corbett is the CEO of Wayflyer, a Dublin-based fintech that offers revenue-based financing to eCommerce businesses. Wayflyer is a Series B company with 270 employees and a $1B+ valuation. They've raised $889M in total funding.
Aidan and I worked together for over 8 months. What changed wasn't just how he led at work—it was how he slept, how he showed up at home, and how he made the hardest decisions a first-time CEO has to make.
The Problem: Emotional Hijacking
When Aidan came to coaching, he was stuck in a pattern familiar to many first-time founders. People decisions—hiring, firing, difficult conversations with his leadership team—triggered fear. And when fear took over, he either avoided the decision or made it from a reactive place.
In Aidan's words:
A first-time CEO learns by making mistakes or talking to people who have been through it before. When it comes to people-related problems, you WILL make mistakes because emotions take over. Over the last 8 months, Sabrina has helped me step out of the emotional hijacking of fear and allowed me to make the right decisions.
The stress didn't stay at work. It followed him home. He was on autopilot with his family, not fully present, carrying the weight of unresolved issues.
The Shift: From Fear to Clarity
Our work had two layers. First, I helped Aidan step out of the emotional hijacking—the fear that was clouding his judgment. Once he could see clearly, we moved to strategy and tactics: how to actually implement the decisions he now had confidence in.
One specific example: Aidan and his Chief Legal Officer, Deirdre MacCarthy, were onboarding new executives. They came into a session with me expecting a playbook.
Instead, I asked them a series of questions about what success looked like for an executive at Wayflyer. They wrote down answers separately, without discussing. Aidan admitted they were skeptical at first:
"We were thinking, 'Where are we going with this? Why is Sabrina not giving us answers or a playbook?'"
By the end of the session, they had something better than a borrowed framework. They had clarity on their own expectations—tailored to their organization—and a shared language to communicate those expectations to their leadership team.
What Changed
At work: Aidan became more assertive. Decisions that used to paralyze him started to feel manageable. He described it as building momentum:
"When Sabrina coached me through the fear, I went through with it and realized it was fine. Now I want to try it again and again. I have so much more momentum at work."
At home: The stress stopped bleeding into his personal life.
"I'm more present with family and not on autopilot when I'm going home. I sleep better, it gives me more energy. It impacts everything."
On Working With Sabrina
Aidan described the coaching relationship this way:
"Sabrina has the right balance between asking me questions and being opinionated, which I think is the hardest thing for coaches to do. What's very frustrating is when people are opinionated without the whole context. What's even more frustrating is when people don't give an opinion at all."
"She is the best example of never avoiding the hard comments or the hard conversations, but I still look forward to it every time. I know I can always expect transparency and honesty from her, and I know it will be delivered without judgment."
Aidan's Recommendation
"I would highly recommend first-time CEOs scaling a business once they move into 30-40 people to work with Sabrina. It would be insanely helpful."
Reflections from Sabrina
Aidan's journey is one I see often with first-time CEOs: the gap between knowing what to do and being able to do it. That gap is almost always emotional, not intellectual.
What I loved about working with Aidan was his willingness to name the fear. Most leaders hide it or push through it. Aidan was honest about it, which made the work faster and the changes stick.
Watching him go from reactive to assertive—and hearing that he sleeps better and is more present with his family—that's why I do this work.
Share on Social
Explore Evergrowth Coaching with Sabrina Wang
Evergrowth serves fast-growing leaders to become better coaches and managers to unlock their team’s highest potential.
Sabrina Wang is an executive coach to CEOs, CTOs, and cofounders scaling fast. She grew up in Chengdu, moved to the U.S. alone at 16, and built her career through Big Four accounting, tech sales, and product leadership at Headspace.
She's been an operator and a coach, including serving as Head of Coaching at Mochary Method. She works at the intersection of strategy and inner patterns, because those are usually the same problem. She takes on founders selectively, when she's confident about creating real impact.
