CEO @ Aspireship | Helping people get hired in tech sales and customer success

I’ve dedicated my professional career to helping people who want to help themselves. Currently, I’m building Orchard, an AI career counseling platform for K-12 education, and Aspireship, an employee benefits platform for emerging companies that want to stay lean and profitable.

Corey Kossack

There’s a paradoxical challenge facing innovation in schools.

You’ll hear a lot about what’s wrong with EdTech today. Here’s a few common ones I see talked about regularly.

Sales reps are too aggressive, don’t do enough up front research and only care about hitting their quota. The school is just a number on a spreadsheet, instead of a community to invest in.

EdTech companies are charging too much. Schools don’t have the money, don’t get enough hands on support and face serious trade offs with every dollar. Costs must come down.

The scientific evidence of impact isn’t there. Marketing claims are overblown. Impact studies get twisted to support the company’s marketing narrative.

The stakes are too high for school leaders to make bold bets on something new. Better to stick closer to the well established, status quo vendors.

While everything above is generally true, the irony is that much of it inhibits the change everyone wants to see in education.

There are founders out there who want nothing more than to change the future for the better for our children. We see the struggles ahead, and we know it’s more important to pursue this change than most anything else we could focus our time on.

Yet for new EdTech startups, the process of gaining adoption is slow and very expensive, especially without major funding.

Even with an exceptional product that delivers real value, it takes so long to get schools on board, complete the procurement process, roll out to students, create real impact, capture the evidence of that impact, and repeat the cycle to the point where the business remains sustainable and competitive in the marketplace.

The net result? Many of today’s innovators will give up and leave the education market to big companies or startups with mega funding who can withstand these cycles. In both scenarios, prices get driven up, investor growth demands remain insatiable, and schools, educators, parents and students lose.

This is not an easy problem to solve, and this is not a criticism of education leaders who are carefully safeguarding their students from getting exposed to the wrong vendor, or the wrong technology.

This is a friendly note from the other side of the table, on behalf of the many founders who are walking through the fire to help create a better future for all of us.

Have ideas on how to break this cycle? Drop them in the comments or shoot me a DM. There’s a big community of EdTech founders who are ready to listen and take action to make a difference this coming school year.

Founder & CEO @ Orchard & Aspireship | Helping People Climb to Their Goals

Amy Volas

I help SaaS startups hire executive Sales and CS leaders without the cringe ⋆ Personally closed $100MM+ ⋆ 2 Exits ⋆ LP ⋆ Strategic Advisor ⋆ Speaker ⋆ Writing My First Book

I don’t believe in guesswork hiring. And I don’t do transactional anything.

I work with founders, CEOs, and investors who are tired of wasting time, money, and trust on Sales and CS executive hires that don’t stick... or worse, do damage.

Because here's the thing:

A bad executive hire isn’t just a hiccup.
It’s a domino effect that fractures teams, tanks morale, stalls growth, and erodes boardroom credibility.

I’ve seen it all:

▸ CEOs and founders covering for a Sales leader who’s lost the room
▸ Execs spending more time firefighting than scaling
▸ Boards questioning if you can hire while the burn rate screams you can't
▸ Reacting to noise, chasing titles, and hiring before knowing what you’re actually solving for
▸ Watching progress stall, targets slip, and the trust in your decision-making fade

Sound familiar? You’re not alone. 
And, there’s a better way.

I'm Amy Volas, founder of Avenue Talent Partners (ATP).

Since 2015, I’ve helped tech founders and CEOs get executive GTM hiring right the first time, without the fluff, without the guesswork, and without the cleanup later.

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘄𝗲 𝗱𝗼 𝗮𝘁 𝗔𝗧𝗣:

𝗘𝘅𝗲𝗰𝘂𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗦𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵

Intentional, high-impact GTM hires that drive growth while sidestepping expensive missteps. 

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗛𝗶𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗢𝗦™ 𝗯𝘆 𝗔𝗧𝗣

When a search isn’t needed, but clarity is. Our proven hiring system that structures hiring for scale, eliminates guesswork, and arms you with the clarity, data, and process your board expects.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗮𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝗵𝗶𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘀𝘂𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲? 20%
𝗔𝗧𝗣 𝗰𝗹𝗶𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀? 80%+ and a 98% interview-to-hire success rate

Because it’s not just about who you hire.
It’s about why the hire is happening, how the process is run, and whether it fuels the kind of team that scales, not stalls.

I’m not for everyone, and that’s okay.
The founders, CEOs, and investors who get the best results with me:

▸ Prioritize hiring as a core strategy
▸ Embrace real, open communication
▸ Value people over transactions
▸ Think beyond the next quarter
▸ Know asking for help is a strength, not a weakness

Hiring is hard.
It’s supposed to be.

But it’s also the highest-leverage move you’ll ever make.

Let’s make people strategy your secret weapon.

We partner with focused executives who know the best products don’t always win, but the best teams do.

Ready to build one? So are we.

Founder & CEO

Great executives aren't hired on guesswork.

And starting + scaling a business is no joke.

The odds are against you and the people you hire to grow your business can make or break your ability to defy those odds.

The dynamic world of sales in early- stage startups is complex, busy, and ever-changing.

Trying to uncover, engage, and hire the cream of the crop is challenging when your plate is already full and the average tenure is 19 months for a VP of Sales.

That's why Avenue Talent Partners was built…

We help startups hire the right executive revenue leaders to defy the turnover odds to truly grow and scale.

The best part? We do it without the cringe!

With a collective sales experience of 40+ years and $100MM+ in deals closed, ATP's team knows what it takes to win at startup sales.

We're the recruiting firm you should be working with if you...

▹ Want to defy the odds of hiring the right sales leader who will stick around for more than 19 months

▹ Want to hire a high-growth sales leader who will build/lead a team to drive growth for the long haul

▹ Want a recruiting partner who speaks the sales language fluently, knows how to vet the right person for your stage of business, and has the experience to back it up

▹ Want a recruiting partner who truly cares about your success, takes the time to understand what you need, and knows exactly how to help

▹ Want a recruiting partner that celebrates candidate experience while representing your brand well throughout the recruiting process regardless of the outcome

The depth and breadth of our sales and startup experience coupled with our second to none people-centric, process-driven approach is here to help you get sales hiring right the first time to avoid the painful effects of a mishire.

Nothing you do is more important than finding and hiring the right people; we work tirelessly to help you do just that.

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Corey Kossack

Amy Volas

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The Battle

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