j. ryan williams

fractional sales leader | Certified Executive CoacH | Startup Advisor

An investor friend shocked me when he said he didn’t know why I was trying to help founders through my coaching practice rather than help myself through a high paying sales gig.

It was hard to stomach that comment because if you knew who this was you’d be impressed. An active investor and LP at three once-in-a-generation VC funds.

But he didn’t shake me. I’m driven by creating opportunity for others. And after 12 years as a sales leader, 6 as a certified executive coach and a background in education, the biggest opportunity for me isn’t a VP of Sales role.

The biggest opportunity for me is through supporting founders that want to take their vision to the next level. Often I’m the first outsider helping the founder put together their Revenue Roadmap, or its coming in after sales has been established to help identify what’s working and what’s not.

I first got my taste of leadership development in the startup setting at AdRoll, where 8 of 10 of the front line sales leaders had come up on my team. We were named fastest growing advertising company by INC magazine in 2012 and 2013 and I built a $58M team in 22 months while scaling sales training to serve 350 reps. Later I took a Series A startup from $4-$12M and helped raise a $15M Series B… but it was developing new leaders for my team and working closely with founders that I loved the best.

In 2017 I launched this coaching practice for founders like you. Founders looking for that extra little boost to get to that next revenue milestone and keep going 🚀 and I’ve worked with leaders from generation-defining tech companies like Zoom, Airbnb, Lyft, and Asana and have been recognized by Business Insider and Forbes. I’ve been an invited speaker at Stanford, Berkeley Haas, Salesforce, BCG, Lyft and Adobe and can’t wait to work with you.

I hold a Master’s Degree in organizational administration from University of Chicago and was certified as an executive coach at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.