Pathfinder CITADEL Cohort 2’s Session 9, scheduled for Thursday, September 24, 2026, from 3:00 to 5:00 PM, is built around a problem most founders recognize intuitively but rarely diagnose systematically, the specific bottlenecks quietly slowing down their startup’s growth. Rather than offering another broad session on scaling or strategy, the programme is narrowing in on identification first, working from the premise that founders often cannot fix what they have not clearly named, whether that bottleneck sits in operations, decision-making, or financial structure.
The session will be led by Abdul Rafey, Executive Director for Corporate Growth and Partnership at Muhammad Abbas & Co., Chartered Accountants, with Ramzan Khan, Supervisor of Assurance and Advisory Services at the same firm, serving as facilitator. Bringing in professionals from a chartered accountancy background rather than a typical startup mentor gives the session a more structured, audit-minded lens on identifying business bottlenecks, an approach that draws on how accountants are trained to trace inefficiencies and risk through a company’s actual operations and numbers rather than relying on founder intuition alone.
Participants are expected to leave with practical perspectives on recognizing business bottlenecks specifically, along with tools for strengthening decision-making processes that often degrade under the pressure and speed of early-stage growth. The session’s framing, treating a stronger foundation as a prerequisite for sustainable growth rather than something to retrofit later, reflects a shift in how CITADEL appears to be sequencing its cohort programming, moving founders through diagnostic and structural sessions before pushing further into scaling and fundraising topics.
For CITADEL Cohort 2 founders, Session 9 offers a chance to step back from the daily pressures of running a startup and examine, with outside financial expertise in the room, where their specific bottlenecks actually sit rather than assuming growth challenges are simply a matter of working harder or raising more capital. More details are available at www.citadelpk.com.
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