Sharpend

I work with startup founders to develop self-awareness, improve emotional intelligence (EQ), learn communication/leadership skills and scale with their business.

Prior to coaching I spent 7 years as founder and head of marketing at Looksharp, and then worked as a marketing executive and advisor to a number of leading San Francisco startups. 

Learn more at https://www.sharpend.co/

Executive Coach

500 Startups

Mentor

Parallel18

Various Companies

Advise, consult, and do marketing work for various venture backed startups.  

Specialties include:
-SEO
-Content Strategy
-Content Development
-Marketing Ops (automation through sale)
-Lead Generation 
-Business Development
-Data and Analytics
-Email Marketing
-PR and Marketing Communications
-Brand Strategy & Creative

Software Expertise includes:
-Google Analytics
-SQL
-Marketo
-Salesforce
-ExactTarget
-Mailchimp
-Optimizely
-SproutSocial
-Trello
-more

Marketer in Residence

Carta

Helped Carta through a critical rebrand, new marketing team hires and growth of demand gen channels that resulted in a 40% lift of net new MQLs.

Demand Generation:
-Managed Carta's inbound marketing efforts including webinars, white papers, and product marketing content. Webinars alone accounted for a 20% increase in monthly marketing generated revenues.
-Collaborated with Carta engineering team to implement site-wide SEO changes that resulted in numerous keywords moving from 50+ rankings into top 3 results and a 70%+ increase in organic traffic.
-Developed and launched Carta's first-ever event marketing series including two large-scale half-day events in New York and San Francisco. Each event was cash-flow positive and resulted in hundreds of net new leads, increased brand exposure and powerful online content.
-Worked closely with Carta's outbound email team to nurture new leads from lead generation through the sales pipeline.

Rebrand:
-Helped develop new brand messaging map, including key messages for press, current customers, internal stakeholders and more.
-Worked with engineering team to develop strategy for domain cutover and technical rebrand implementation.
-Collaborated with marketing, engineering, and design team to help redesign and rewrite content for every webpage on the Carta website and reposition product pages with new brand in mind.

Team:
-Hired and grew marketing team from 1 to 6 people. Led charge in interviewing, hiring and training new marketing hires.
-Used Asana to manage team goals and sync day-to-day work with broader business strategy.
-Developed marketing dashboards and pulled key marketing metrics using SQL, Google Analytics, Looker, and other tools.
-Presented marketing metrics at monthly KPI and leadership team meetings.

Digital Marketing

Looksharp

Founded Looksharp and led the marketing team from idea stage through Series A and beyond. Used an "Iterative Marketing" approach (running rapid fire tests and using data to track and scale campaigns) to drive user and revenue growth.

Overall:
-Grew student audience from 0 to over 10 million uniques annually through SEO, business development, content, press and more.
-Generated over 100,000 inbound B2B leads to support successful sales operation.
-Built reports using SQL and Google Analytics to measure campaigns and drive business strategy.

SEO:
-Worked with engineering and design team to optimize website and gain #1 ranking for over 90% of top keywords in the internship space.
-Developed content strategy and managed team of fifty plus writers to support SEO goals. 
-Used Optimizely to improve conversion rate on SEO landing page by over 50%. 

Content:
-Developed long term content strategy using personas, competitive positioning, and SWAT analysis.
-Managed editorial team of 50+ bloggers to create compelling daily content.
-Invented new recurring B2B content including 'Annual Internship Report' to monthly "College Hiring Webinars" and more that drove thousands of net new leads.

Data​:
-Queried SQL database to develop monthly cohort graphs used to analyze business KPIs.
-Queried Salesforce and Marketo to pull reports and graphs and analyze marketing / sales operation.

Branding and PR
-Developed relationships with top industry journalists and received press mentions in publications including: the WSJ, TechCrunch, WashingtonPost, Mashable and more.
-Managed brand transition from established brand to a parent brand including a number of technically challenging changes.

Founder

Founder -> CMO -> Exec Coach

I coach founders and co-founders from Series B - D. I specialize in co-founder dynamics--helping co-founders build more effective and fulfilling partnerships. 

I believe in a world where leaders have done the work to know themselves, in order to build lasting businesses and a more interesting future.

Nathan Parcells

Ally Sprague Coaching

“Ally gets what it takes to be an executive in a fast-paced, operationally rigorous environment. But she also exudes humanity. I've learned you can't lead well without taking a look at your personal demons. Ally is a brilliant guide through that self-exploration.” 
—COO (60 employees)

Email: ally@allysprague.com

Leadership Coach

The Grand World

The Grand is your partner in navigating transitions at the intersection of work and life. Rather than simply build skills, The Grand’s learning and development platform provides group coaching and a community to support people through change.

Coach & Facilitator

Wesper

Interim Head of Product

Wonder (AskWonder.com)

Head of People

GM, Supply Side

Bloomingdale's

Chief of Staff, women’s RTW

Assistant Buyer, Women's RTW

Hi, I'm Ally. I'm a Leadership Coach helping high-performing leaders find clarity and confidence. 

I partner with CEOs and executives in tech to help them discover who they want to be and what life they want to live. Together, we navigate their most meaningful challenges: finding confidence and voice, clarifying what they truly want, navigating difficult relationship dynamics. 

At its core, my work is about helping you develop a deeper, more honest understanding of your inner world than ever before, and as a result, gain agency to show up in a way you're proud of. 

I arrived at coaching through operating—my pre-coaching career was spent at early-stage companies in product and operations leadership roles. Through building my own teams, I discovered that I gain immense energy from helping someone better understand themselves in service of their own fulfillment.

I'm certified by the International Coaching Federation (ICF) and the Co-active Training Institute (CTI) and have conducted thousands of hours of coaching. I've also trained in Internal Family Systems (IFS), which I use to help my clients understand themselves and drive toward their most meaningful goals. I've undergone extensive coaching & therapy myself—I'm deeply committed to mapping my inner world.

Find my writing here: https://medium.com/@ally_sprague

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The Battle

Nathan Parcells

Ally Sprague

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