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

SEACOMP (Displaytech, HDP Power, MH MFG)

Help Innovators Deliver Awesome.

We design, engineer, and manufacture consumer, medical, and industrial electronic devices.

HQ in San Diego, CA. Manufacturing at our wholly-owned factories in Tijuana, Mexico and Dongguan, China.

Strategic Partnerships

Conduit Venture Labs

Conduit is a venture studio focused on enabling founders, inventors, and strategic innovators to focus on solving the problems that face our planet and its inhabitants working at the intersection of the physical and digital.

Fellow

The New Way Inc.

Helping families, that are experiencing homelessness, to find help, homes, & hope.

Executive Director

GTM United

Ambassador of a private community of go-to-market professionals united by a mission to put their development first. Giving feedback, asking questions, practicing self-care, and making real connections.

Content Advisor

Instawork

Our vision at Instawork is to create economic opportunity for local businesses and professionals, globally.

Instawork is the on-demand staffing app for hospitality & light industrial shifts. We quickly and reliably match businesses with nearby qualified workers. We’re excited to enable our Professionals, a new generation of the emerging, diverse workforce, to be a part of the growing gig economy.

Senior Account Executive

Gemini Legal

Gemini is a legal copy service that compels and obtains document evidence for California attorneys representing injured workers.

The will and hope of Gemini is to embrace and meet our clients’ true needs by providing a safe, stable and competitive work environment where employees, clients and vendors enrich their community and themselves personally and professionally. We meet our challenge through principled, personal leadership.

Business Development Manager

Quartzy, Inc

Laid off due to COVID-19
-------------------------
Quartzy is a free web-based platform for managing research labs. It is used worldwide by 360,000 scientists in the academic, biotechnology, and pharmaceutical labs. 

Quartzy saves labs time and money!

As a Business Development Associate at Quartzy, I am responsible for building the supplier relationships and product portfolio that enable Quartzy to be the only free online laboratory management platform offering an extensive lab supply ordering system. 
See our rapidly growing list of supplier partners HERE:
https://www.quartzy.com/suppliers

Business Development Associate

BlueGrace Logistics

Business Development Executive

Sales Director

Senior Sales Executive

Sales Executive

Account Manager

Wolf Creek Brewery

Develop and maintain strategic partnerships with key retailers and restaurants. Assume leadership role in implementing key brewery initiatives with distributors, retailers, and restaurants. Work closely with distributor on new product releases, seasonal releases and pre-orders for brewery. Drive and grow sales. Act as the face of Wolf Creek Brewery within a given territory.

Territory Manager

Wesco Aircraft

Provide pricing analysis for management. Perform margin and pricing analysis in order to support business initiatives. Validate sales quotations for accuracy and profitability; exercise and manipulate data via analysis techniques. Develop a system of communication, documentation and review of internal and external comparative pricing data. Identify opportunities to optimize sales and profitability through pricing strategies. Confer with sales and marketing teams to develop proposals. Prepare multi-year cost and pricing models. Engage suppliers and branches.

Corporate Sales Analyst

We Design & Build Your Hardware

We design & manufacture
Industrial, medical, & consumer electronics
Small enough to fit in an oven

HQ in San Diego, CA. Manufacturing at our wholly-owned factories in Tijuana, Mexico and Dongguan, China.

Connor Bush

Shoutout to industrial designers.
Y’all do cool stuff.

Industrial designers:
Making “why didn’t anyone think of this sooner?” moments happen every day.

Connor Bush 🔋🖥📟

We Manufacture Your Hardware at Scale (USA, Mexico, & China) | Ecosystem, Pipeline & Partner Strategy

Collecting quotes for ID, ME, EE, FW, or product development is a wild ride.

$40k from overseas.
$200k from the Midwest.
$700k+ from Boston or San Francisco.
Sometimes even a $300k and a $900k quote from the same city for the same scope.

At a certain point… the limit does not exist.

But here’s what most founders miss: you’re not just paying for hours or skill.
Hardware development is art, judgment, taste, and manufacturing philosophy baked into one.

So the real question isn’t:
“Why is one quote 10× another?”

The real question is:
What are you actually buying?

• Alignment with the partner who will build or design your product
• DFM baked in from Day 1 (not after three redesign loops)
• Whether incentives are to finish or to bill more hours
• Experience in your specific product category
• How many mistakes you will not have to pay for later

Quotes can go to infinity.
(Or sometimes to $0, which is equally dangerous lol.)

The cost of choosing the wrong partner is very real.

** For the practitioners who live this every day: what’s the widest spread you’ve seen, and what do you think actually drives those gaps?

Founders always ask for the same thing:
“Do you know a partner who can do everything: Engineering, prototyping, low-volume builds, and mass production?”

I get why.
On paper, it sounds perfect:

🔹 One team that knows the product from Day 0
🔹 Smooth handoff into EVT/DVT/PVT
🔹 Manufacturing input baked into early design
🔹 Less friction, fewer vendors, more trust

Totally intuitive.

But here’s the reality almost nobody says out loud:
Those are four completely different skill sets, with different cultures, tempos, tools, and incentives.

And the partner who is world-class at mass production is ALMOST never world-class at rapid iteration.
Because the traits that make you strong at one phase often make you weak at the other.

Mass production excellence =
🔸 Rigid systems
🔸 Heavy validation
🔸 Process obsessed
🔸 Optimized for scale, yield, and stability

Early-stage excellence =
🔸 Fast
🔸 Messy
🔸 Creative
🔸 Comfortable with ambiguity and change

Trying to get one team to do both is like expecting awesome sushi at the italian restaurant. 
(They might try… but should they? 🤢)

Can it work?
Yes, but only under very specific conditions:

✔️ Clear, locked industrial design
✔️ Serious funding
✔️ No long pauses or fundraising gaps
✔️ A straight path from prototype to EVT → DVT → PVT
✔️ A product destined for mass production from Day 1

SEACOMP has done it.
But it takes alignment, timing, and a founder who understands what they are signing up for.

For most teams, the healthier model is a relay:
Expert design ➡️  expert prototyping ➡️  expert CM for scale.

Different people, same mission.

Not shaming anyone. The instinct makes total sense.
The physics of hardware are just harder than the theory.

------
Want to chat on this some more? Come hang with us at #CES.

Link in the comments.

Building 1 of something is hard.
Building 1,000,000 of that same thing is just as hard, but in a completely different way.

One requires creativity.
The other requires discipline, systems, and control.

This is where a lot of innovators get surprised.
They lock the design and think the hard part is over.

But in hardware, the real climb begins when you go from “this works once” to “this works every time.”

A lead came in today.
Source: “LinkedIn, Connor Bush.” (blush / hair flip)

But here’s the part I keep thinking about…

This wasn’t an overnight win.
And honestly, the “LinkedIn, Connor Bush” part was probably the least influential piece of the whole chain.

This one lead took YEARS to show up.

It took:
⭐ A teammate building trust with a customer years ago
⭐ Our engineers and ops absolutely crushing that program
⭐ A happy customer willing to do a case study
⭐ Our marketing manager turning that story into something real
⭐ Me spending four years building a network and posting consistently
⭐ Someone in my network engaging with a post this week
⭐ LinkedIn surfacing it to a stranger who needed what we do
⭐ And that stranger clicking through, reading the case study, and reaching out

It only looks like “a lead from LinkedIn.”
In reality, it was a long chain of small things done well by a lot of people.

There’s that old line: “It takes 20 years to become an overnight success.”
In hardware and sales, sometimes it just takes 20 steps.

Everything you do matters.
And eventually… it all stacks and hits at once.
--------
Anyways 🤷‍♂️ , come hang with us at #CES (link in comments)

Top of funnel has been buzzing. Meetings, leads, energy everywhere.

But I caught myself doing the classic move — sprinting the first lap and forgetting there’s a whole race left to run.

Early momentum means nothing if you drop the baton on follow up and nurture.

So now I am slowing down just enough to time block, calendar, and stay consistent.

Not slowing the pace — just smoothing it out.

Slow is smooth.
Smooth is fast.
And apparently, calendars help too. 🙃

Cancelled my mini camping vacation scheduled for next week.

Not because of grind culture.
Because hardware has real deadlines.

Balance is not always a 50/50 split.

Push now.
Camping in January.
Still balanced.

Goals met <3.

If you want to ship hardware by Black Friday 2026…

Start yesterday.

Love,
Connor

Join us! 

One of many #CES events we are hosting / co hosting. 

Space is limited across the various events. We will do our very best to accommodate all of our friends! 

Check out the link in the comments for the different SEACOMP Las Vegas happenings.

Join us for an exclusive gathering for leaders shaping the future of connected hardware at CES 2026!

We’re bringing together executives, founders, and directors for an elevated networking experience at The Venetian Resort.

This is your opportunity to step out of the show-floor noise and into conversations that will move your business forward - exchange insights on scaling strategies, building resilient supply chains, and what's next in the world of connected hardware.

Connected Devices + Conversations: A Networking Happy Hour
Tuesday, January 6, 2026 | The Venetian Resort | CES 2026
Register here: https://lnkd.in/gEEu2a8q

A special thank you to our sponsors Acorn Product Development, Mesh Systems, and intent for supporting this executive gathering!

Space is limited and attendance is by approval - register to get on the list today!

Our team is heading to CES in January and we want to meet with you!

Let's meet in Las Vegas to chat about your product and how we can help support your goals. We'd love to connect on:

- scaling your production in 2026
- leveraging our Mexico facility for duty-free imports into the US
- improving your speed to market with accelerated NPI

Let SEACOMP be your manufacturing partner in 2026. See all the ways we can connect at CES and request a meeting here: https://lnkd.in/gH5E-bPD

Trying to enjoy the holidays
while also
trying to ship everything before the holidays
while also
trying to prep for CES
while also
trying to plan around CNY
while also
trying to be a human with a family.

It’s a vibe.

If you’re feeling the “festive chaos” today, I see you.
Happy Friday. 🤝

Thanksgiving (yeah, I know I’m late lol) and mass production have something in common:

99% isn’t good enough.

You can have:
- Every side dish perfect
- Table set
- Guests arriving
- Desserts ready to go

But if the turkey is two hours late?
Dinner is two hours late.

Hardware works the same way.

NPI is a chain of perfectly timed steps:
tooling ➡️ components ➡️ tests ➡️ assembly ➡️ packout

You can nail almost everything...
…but if one critical item slips, the entire schedule bends around it.

Great manufacturing isn’t about heroics.
It’s about orchestration.
Dependencies.
Timing.
Flow.

Thanksgiving looks effortless when everything hits the table at once (and when someone else is doing all of the prep lol).
So does mass production.

Neither is an accident.

Happy holidays! And if you're pushing a product toward 2026, now’s the time to start timing your “turkey.” 🦃⚙️

Lost my fantasy football matchup this week by 0.84 points.

And honestly… losing by less than 1 point feels worse than getting blown out by 40.

A blowout is clean. Clear. Obvious.
You shrug, you move on, you fix your roster.

But a tiny margin loss?
That sticks with you.
You replay every lineup choice.
“Should’ve swapped that flex…”
“Why didn’t I check injuries…”
It lingers because it was just close enough.

Hardware is the same.

A catastrophic failure forces you to stop.
Rebuild.
Fix the root cause.
Come back stronger.

But a small, non-catastrophic failure in the field?
A 1% return rate.
A flaky latch.
A charging bug that “only happens sometimes.”

That is the dangerous one.

Because it’s just tolerable enough to live with.
Just cheap enough to avoid solving.
Just annoying enough to hurt reputation and growth
but not painful enough to trigger full correction.

Small problems linger.
And lingering problems compound.

In fantasy football, it costs you a matchup.
In hardware, it can quietly cost you the whole season.

If you're leading teams building connected devices, this is the room you’ll want to be in at CES! 

Meet other CEOs, founders, VPs, and product executives for a thoughtful break from the show. This networking event is designed for high-level discussion, insight sharing, and strategic relationship building. 

Connected Devices + Conversations: A Networking Happy Hour
Tuesday, January 6 @ The Venetian Resort during CES 2026
Please Register Here: https://lnkd.in/g2tjuMsd

Expect meaningful conversations on achieving operational excellence, accelerating speed-to-market, and the evolving landscape of connected devices. Space is limited and attendance is by approval - register now!

Thank you to Mesh Systems, intent, and Acorn Product Development for helping champion this executive community gathering during CES!

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The Battle

William M. Ballance

Connor Bush

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taplio

The Battle

William M. Ballance

Connor Bush

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Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Connor Bush's LinkedIn Performance

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