William Ballance

Lavender

Lavender helps you write sales emails that convert, faster. (🏆 #1 on Product Hunt • 🔶 9.9/10 on G2)

Lavender has everything a seller needs to get more replies in less time: email assistance, sentence suggestions, prospect research + email verification, mobile optimization, data-driven team coaching and recommendations, and much more. 

Integrates with Gmail, Outlook 365, Outreach, and Salesloft.
Get started at www.lavender.ai

CEO & Co-Founder

Sorter

🏅Winner - Techstars Startup Weekend (Atlanta 2018)

A marketing platform that combines neuroscience, psychology, and data science to build better communication at scale for brands like Yamaha, Gravity Blankets, and KettleSpace.

Sorter’s internal AI, CATIE( Creative Algorithms for Text and Image Enhancement) blends behavioral sciences with cutting edge data science and natural language processing enabling you to easily apply an objective science to the art of communication. 

We help create better content faster.

Fueling the backend of our platforms for healthcare, marketing, sales, and HR, CATIE analyzes and determines what distinguishes top-performing campaigns from baseline and under-performing content within your audiences.

Sorter (sorter.com): 1:Many Communications
Lavender (trylavender.com): 1:1 Communications

Co-Founder & CEO

Dooly

Strategic Advisor

Alum

Born out of a campaign to help save Sweet Briar College, a historic women's college in Virginia, Alum was a mobile app for alumni social networking and mobile fundraising active at over 200 colleges and high schools.

Founder

My Fun Filter

My Fun Filter was the #1 supplier of custom Snapchat filters on Groupon and LivingSocial in the US and Canada. Acquired.

Springbot

Springbot is a Magento Gold and Shopify partner that delivers a marketing automation and predictive analytics software to eCommerce stores ranging from early stage startups to $100mm global companies.

Springbot's awards include TAG Top 10 Most Innovative Technology Company, TiE Silicon Valley - TiE50 Top Startups 2016, and Atlanta Business Chronicle's Best Places to Work.

SDR & AE - US/UK/Australia

Candle Spas

• Co-founded the first digital e-commerce platform for subscription spa services in Atlanta, New York, and San Francisco. 
• Built our spa network to over 200 locations across three cities in 2 months. 
• Developed relationships with local and national influencers to drive sales and customer acquisition. 
• Spearheaded partnerships and advertising opportunities with nationally known brands including Stylecaster, Mercedes-Benz, Lululemon, Rocksbox, HowAboutWe, and Graze.

Employee #1

Loclly

• First permanent sales hire at a startup regional local services and "daily deal" e-commerce store.
• Grew annual revenue over 6,000% in a year and a half, then launched a new brand (Candle).
• Utilized strategic user acquisition, e-mail marketing, and pricing models to capture an active audience of buyers across multiple brands and verticals.

SDR & AE - US/MX

Pinnacle Fête

Pinnacle Fête began as an event and artist promotion company in the college town of Blacksburg, Virginia, representing nationally known acts including Rhêtorik, Tim Gunter, and Super Dopplar.

Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce

Intern - Lead Hampton Roads

👋 Hey, I'm William. My team and I design technology that combines communication psychology with AI. Want to write better emails faster? We built software for that. 👇

1. Install for free to use our AI Email Assistant at https://install.lavender.ai (for Gmail, Outlook 365, Outreach, and Salesloft)

2. Are you a student or unemployed? We give you Lavender for free until you have a full time job.

3. Want to start a startup one day? I write a lot about our startup journey + happy to help if I can.

4. Want to generate passive pipeline on autopilot? We built Ora, Lavender's new intelligent AI sales agent to help with just that. www.ora.im


--

about me:

👨‍💻 I'm a sales rep turned startup founder. 

🇲🇽🗽🍑 I spent a year and a half remote working in Mexico. We built most of Lavender during this. I'm based in New York but we got our start in Atlanta. 

🎨 🏛 I've been designing software since I was a kid, but went to school to study Government and Economics. 

🌍 I'm passionate about entrepreneurship. I wrote my senior thesis on using micro-finance to encourage entrepreneurship and bottoms-up development of emerging economies.

🦊 I'm most proud of starting a series of campaigns to help save a historic women's college, Sweet Briar, from closing. 

👩‍🎓The school was saved by its alumnae, and this experience led me to leave my job and start my first startup: an alumni social chat and mobile fundraising app. 

🧠 Through that I was introduced to the cognitive sciences, met my co-founders, and pivoted. We built technology for marketers that leveraged personality and decision making science.

💜 COVID happened and we pivoted again, applying our communication psychology research to sales.

🙌 Now Lavender helps thousands of sales people around the world write better emails faster.

👉 Learn more about Lavender at www.lavender.ai and www.ora.im

William M. Ballance

Pinkfish

Software Engineer

- **First Full-Time hire at Lavender**: Played a pivotal role in the company's growth, driving it from seed funding to securing a $13 million Series A round.
- Engineered and sustained robust backend systems using Golang and Python, ensuring high performance and scalability.
- Managed databases and data storage solutions with MongoDB and Redis, optimizing for efficiency and reliability.
- Utilization of CI/CD pipelines with CircleCI, enabling seamless application deployments on Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Microsoft Azure. Containerized applications using Docker and ensured robust version control with Git.
- Successfully set up and maintained backend integrations with industry-leading platforms such as Gong, Hubspot, Salesforce, Outreach, and Salesloft. Developed comprehensive email and calendar integrations with Google and Microsoft.
- Implemented a MongoDB + BigQuery real-time bi-directional sync, enhancing data accuracy and accessibility.
- Established and optimized connections with data vendors like Clearbit, Apollo, and Exactbuyer, significantly enhancing profile enrichment features.
- Helped develop a high-performance enterprise dashboard and contributed to the redesign of the extension using React, Redux, and Context API. Managed frontend build processes with npm, Webpack, and Babel.
- Worked with advanced ML and deep learning models, including BERT, to deliver cutting-edge email analysis features. Tested and deployed Stanford's core NLP library with custom-trained data for various inference tasks.
- Adhered to Agile methodologies for efficient project management and practiced Test-Driven Development (TDD) to ensure robust and reliable code quality.
- Gained exposure to prompt engineering and the deployment of AI models, utilizing OpenAI's GPT models and Vellum AI to enhance product capabilities.

Freightgate

Automation tests using the robot framework with Selenium2Library. Visual AI testing using the Applitools python and Javascript SDKs. UI development in Sencha Ext JS and React JS.

Working on a data mining system by using Node.JS, Express, Puppeteer, Python
and MySQL to mine data by processing contents in different formats like
HTML, PDF, CSV, and EXCEL.

Created micro-services for our pdf report generating feature using Java
SpringBoot. DevOps with CVS, GIT, Maven, Jenkins, and JIRA

Exposure to detailed requirements analysis for software design, development,
testing, and deployment.

Assisted the system admin in maintaining our infrastructure at various data centers around Orange County.

Software Engineering Intern

Animesh is a Software/Data Engineering and Machine Learning Enthusiast. He has a background in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics. Most recently, he joined the team at Lavender as a full-time Software Engineer. 

taplio

The Battle

William M. Ballance

Animesh Chaudhry

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