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

Cofounder Clarity

• Cofounder Coaching: Provide short- and long-term cofounder coaching to cofounding teams of venture-backed and bootstrapped startups to improve conflict navigation, decision-making, and communication.

• Executive Coaching: Provide short- and long-term coaching to founders and executives of high-growth startups, family businesses, and Fortune 100 companies.

• Workshops: Design and implement weekend intensive interventions, retreats, and seminar presentations on topics including cofounder conflict navigation, leadership identity transformation, and leadership team functioning for accelerators, incubators, and high-growth companies.

Startup Executive Psychologist

Dr. Matthew Jones Coaching & Therapy

• Psychotherapy: Provide long-term explorative, insight-oriented psychodynamic psychotherapy to individuals and couples.

• Assessment: Provide assessment services for diagnostic clarification and treatment recommendations for issues ranging from ADHD, Learning Disability, and Personality Disorders. 

• Supervision: Provide developmental and psychodynamic individual supervision to post-doctoral students seeking supervision for licensure.

Founder and CEO

SonderMind

• Psychotherapy: Provided long-term outpatient individual and couple’s therapy for individuals struggling with anxiety, depression, PTSD, ADHD, and identity- and substance-related challenges.

• Supervision: Obtained supervision requirements necessary to attain Licensed Psychologist licensure in the state of Colorado.

Licensed Therapist

Community Reach Center

• Psychotherapy: Provided long-term outpatient individual and couple’s therapy for individuals suffering from severe and persistent mental illness. Developed rapid assessment and treatment recommendations in the Walk-In Crisis Center. 

• Assessment: Engaged in psychodiagnostic interview, assessment administration and scoring, report writing, and feedback session to facilitate the use of comprehensive psychological assessments as treatment interventions.

• Supervision: Provided developmental and psychodynamic individual supervision to doctoral student and consistent informal consultation to team members. 

• Organizational consultation: Designed and implemented data-driven and feedback-informed internal consultation to improve evidence-based outcome measures for therapeutic effectiveness and coach managers to facilitate consistent implementation. 

• Outreach and trainings: Developed and presented empirically-based presentation for families dealing with first episode psychosis to facilitate greater awareness of onset, prognosis, and early intervention strategies. Developed and presented staff trainings on Jungian psychotherapy and authenticity.

Doctoral Intern

University of Illinois at Chicago

• Psychotherapy: Provided brief, short-term psychotherapy for individuals and groups at one of the most ethnically and culturally diverse student bodies in the US. 

• Intake and case management: Conducted one comprehensive intake assessment each week and provided appropriate referrals, advocacy, and systemic interventions. 

• Outreach: Designed and implemented outreach programs to encourage student wellness practices, improve studying techniques, decrease the stigma of mental health, and encourage multicultural dialogues.

• Multicultural supervision and seminars: Attended didactic and self-exploratory supervision to discuss dimensions of identity, power, values, and the meaning of culture in the client, therapist, and their interaction. Participated in professional issues, assessment, psychiatric, and outreach seminars.

Advanced Therapy Extern

Center on Halsted

• Psychotherapy: Provided individual, couples, and group psychotherapy services for LGBTQ identified clients from a wide range of multicultural backgrounds.

• Intakes: Completed intake assessments each week for individuals, couples, and group to determine treatment services, make appropriate referrals, and advocate for client wellbeing.

• Phone screening: Performed weekly phone coverage for the Behavioral Health Services department. Calls ranged from crisis intervention and safety planning to scheduling intake appointments and providing referrals when necessary. 

• Chicago LGBTQ Behavioral Health Training Consortium: Attended intensive weekly didactic trainings addressing the unique challenges of providing multiculturally competent care to the LGBTQ community with trainees from Center on Halsted and Howard Brown Health Center.

Therapy Extern

Sankofa Psychological Services, LLC

• Intakes & Feedback: Performed 1.5 hour semi-structured intake assessments and provided 1 hour feedback sessions reviewing assessment results and recommendations.

• Assessments: Completed administration, scoring, and report writing for clients across the lifespan with a wide variety of presenting issues. The comprehensive psychological assessments included neuropsychological, cognitive, objective and projective personality assessments. Wrote individualized treatment plans containing detailed and personalized recommendations. 

• Outreach: Wrote ten blog entries and became the featured blogger on company’s website. Conducted a literature review and developed presentation on cyberbullying, and then presented to private elementary school faculty.

Diagnostic Extern

Lutheran Social Services of Illinois

• Therapy: Performed individual, anger management and substance abuse group therapy at American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) level 0.5, I, and II.5 for diverse population of underserved, lower socioeconomic status, racial minority clients. Therapy followed a brief CBT model, with an emphasis on psychoeducation and unconditional positive regard. Designed and implemented comprehensive individualized treatment plans, and managed a caseload of 15 clients. 

• Intakes & Evaluations: Performed intake assessments and substance abuse evaluations as a component of court-mandated DUI treatment screening that required the use of IAODAPCA assessment methodologies and criteria. Wrote substance abuse evaluations used in court hearings. 

• Case Management: Directed interface with managed care companies, probation, and parole officers. Wrote detailed notes and maintained peer and company reviewed client notebooks.

Clinical Intern

University of Missouri

Courses Tutored: Human Sexuality Psych, Intro to Clinical Psych, Industrial/Organizational Psych, Drugs and Behavior, Research Methods I, Cognitive Psych

• Taught undergraduate students successful exam preparation strategies.
• Reviewed both class concepts and relevant empirical studies to aid student understanding.

Volunteer Tutor

Freshman Interest Group (FIG) 13 Pro-seminar (Class title: Social Justice Issues)

• Planned and executed elements of the standard FIGs Core syllabus. 
• Lectured on topics including: social inequality, diversity, ethics, and social advocacy. 
• Collaborated in course design and assessment for first year undergraduate students. 
• Maintained an effective co-teaching dynamic with co-facilitator.

Freshman Interest Group Instructor, Department of Residential Life

Social Cognitive Neuroscience Lab. Duties:

• Lead participants through an EEG protocol
• Analyzed behavioral and EEG data through various computer and statistical programs

Sheldon Motivation Lab 1. Duties:

• Memorized and delivered three experimental scripts to participants
• Administered numerous psychosocial assessments to participants
• Coded assessment data into Microsoft Excel

Sheldon Motivation Lab 2. Duties:

• Scored Motive Imagery in Running Text by David G. Winter with greater than 80% reliability
• Scored Picture Story Exercise and Thematic Apperception Task
• Coded task data into Microsoft Excel

Family Assessment Lab. Duties: 

• Read and compiled relevant empirical studies for meta-analysis
• Coded articles with high inter-rater reliability
• Analyzed data in SPSS

Undergraduate Research Assistant

Trusted by companies backed by YC, a16z, Sequoia, Google Ventures, Tiger Global Management, Village Global, and more, I facilitate meaningful conversations for cofounders to streamline communication, increase teamwork, and improve decision-making. 

After working with hundreds of founders the last five years, I’ve noticed the difference between top-performing teams and everyone else is not an absence of conflict—it’s that top-performing teams have learned to navigate conflicts more effectively. 

Using my Cofounder Clarity Coaching Method, a unique blend of depth-oriented therapy and results-oriented coaching, I teach you and your team the skills and frameworks needed to build a resilient leadership culture rooted in trust, self-awareness, and integrity.

My written work has accumulated millions of views online, and appeared in Inc Magazine, The Huffington Post, TIME, Business Insider, Thought Catalog, The Observer, and more. 

For all inquiries related to my coaching services, visit cofounderclarity.com or email me: matt@cofounderclarity.com.

Dr. Matthew Jones

Many founders choose to stay in unproductive cofounder partnerships, despite their dysfunction. They are lying to themselves.

They think their reasoning sounds rational:
- “We’ve already talked about it.”
- “He just gets defensive.”
- “I don’t have the energy for this.”
- “I’ll just push through.”

Every single one of these are lies—defense mechanisms that lead to the very outcome the founder dreads the most.

Quiet disengagement. Compounding emotional debt. Resentment.

Read this article so you can be more honest with yourself and take action before things get worse.

👇

Founder burnout isn't just overwork.

It's building a company that requires you to become less human to sustain it.

One of the cofounders just got back from a trip to his girlfriend's hometown in China. He called it sentimental—a kind of homecoming.

The other founder is traveling through Southeast Asia, mixing customer meetings with a wedding, seeing customers turn into friends.

Both are grinding. Both are also trying to stay human.

There's a version of founder life that treats rest as weakness and personal connection as distraction. But the founders who last aren't the ones who eliminate everything outside the business.

They're the ones who integrate it—who let travel be both work and meaning, who allow relationships to ground them instead of compete with the mission.

This isn't about work-life balance.

It's about not building a company that requires you to become less of a person to sustain it.

The cofounders on this call are learning that lesson in real time. They're not perfect at it.

But they're trying to protect something besides just growth—and that might be the thing that lets them actually get there.

Here’s a thought most founders don’t say out loud:
“I’m done with this person… but I can’t afford to blow this up.”

If you’re oscillating between staying and leaving a difficult business relationship, you need to read this article. 

New piece in Psychology Today. Link in comments.

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The Battle

Nathan Parcells

Dr. Matthew Jones

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