I‘m an executive coach to startup CEOs and executive teams. I help my clients navigate the emotional and practical challenges of building companies and lives they’re proud of.
My clients range from CEOs of companies with ten employees all the way up to executives at companies with several hundred employees and $100M+ in revenue. I love working with founders right when they’re beginning to build a real executive team. Almost all of my clients are building B2B software companies and are usually venture-backed.
I work with 15-20 clients at a time, live in San Francisco, and meet with my clients over the phone or Zoom. I’ve been a coach since 2020, have coached 50+ people, and have coached for 1,500+ hours.
If you’re interested in learning more, head over here.
In my life before coaching, I founded several companies, and amidst the chaos of the pandemic, I decided to change careers and try sitting in an advisory capacity instead of calling the shots.
2016 - 2020: I was the CEO & Co-founder of Holloway. We started Holloway with one question: what if you could ask a book a question? With the rise of things like custom GPTs, this is now entirely possible. We were on to something early, but if I’m being honest we were unfocused and weren’t clear enough on who our customer was. Holloway ended up as a boutique digital book publishing company with a beautiful front-end reading experience, but a far too complicated publishing system without enough payoff to make the friction worth it for authors. I’m proud of our work there, but this one taught me a lot.
2013 - 2016: I was the COO & Co-founder of Mattermark. Mattermark was one of the most fun (and stressful) periods of my life. While fumbling around with a vague idea to start a data-driven media company, we discovered an opportunity to sell investors insights into which startups had momentum using aggregated publicly available information and machine learning. We went from $0 - $5M in ARR in 3.5 years, and we also built a daily newsletter with over 100,000 subscribers. Despite our momentum, we mistook what First Round Capital would now call “developing” product-market fit for “strong” PMF, over-invested in a sales motion we couldn’t afford, and ultimately sold the company. Harvard Business School still teaches a case study about Mattermark.
2009 - 2013: These were my formative years. Still in college in 2009, I convinced a three-man web development shop to take me on as an intern designer to work on their first mobile app. The CEO gave me a front-row seat to the process of building a company, from product to sales and hiring. So in 2012 when I told him I wanted to fly to San Francisco for a YC interview, he fired me. While my two friends and I didn’t get into YC, we did get into 500 Startups. Our company, LaunchGram, was a sort of proto-ProductHunt where you could follow products and things like video games that had yet-to-release but you wanted to keep tabs on. While I still miss LaunchGram, we were in over our heads and ran out of money quickly.
You can find all my past interviews / media appearances here. If you're interested in having me on your podcast, at your event, or similar, please contact me here. If you're looking for a media bio, here it is:
Andy is an executive coach to startup CEOs and executive teams where he helps his clients navigate the emotional and practical challenges of building companies and lives they’re proud of. Previously, he was the Co-founder & CEO at Holloway, a digital book publishing company and the Co-founder and COO at Mattermark, a business data and analytics company. Andy is the author of The Holloway Guide to Raising Venture Capital and writes about work and life at andysparks.co. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, Kate. Andy made up his own degree and graduated from The Ohio State University.
I was born in Denver and lived there until my family moved to the suburbs of Philadelphia when I was eleven. I loved to draw, hated math, and enjoyed helping my Dad with all the projects he refused to hire a contractor for.
When my high school girlfriend chose an art school in Columbus, Ohio, I decided to follow her, ending up at The Ohio State University. While it took me a year or two to warm up to it, I ended up loving my time there and still call many of the people I met there my best friends.
I love to read. My office is surrounded by books, not all of which I’ve read, but I believe the $9 or even $40 price tag for a book is a steal when sometimes they turn out to hold thousands or tens of thousands of dollars of valuable knowledge.
I live in San Francisco with my wife, Kate. She’s an advisor to biotech companies where she helps make life-changing science something we can all use faster. She’s pretty rad.
My favorite movie is Big Fish, my favorite science-fiction author is Verner Vinge, and my favorite band is Ratatat.
I’m a Humanst. That means I believe it’s up to people to give meaning to their lives, and we don’t need to invent a god to do that for us.
Friendship is huge for me. While everyone knows “it takes a village” to raise a kid or however the quote goes, I believe a village full of friendships with real depth is the real stuff of life.
I love a good conversation over a few beers, but I’ll settle for coffee, too.
I love reading (and talking with my friends about what we’re reading). When it comes to fiction, epic science fiction and fantasy novels are my favorites. In 2024, I finished Verner Vinge’s A Deepness in the Sky and loved it.
I’m a huge fan of The Expanse series by James S.A. Corey, Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive, and I’m anxiously awaiting Patrick Rothfuss’s third book. My latest favorite non-epic is Callaghan’s Crosstime Saloon.
As for non-fiction, I’m really into history, human psychology and motivation, and reading about whatever it is I’m struggling with personally. In 2024, I’m reading a lot about “operating systems” for businesses, grand strategy, and becoming a parent.
I also love video games, mostly RPGs and strategy (real-time and turn-based). I can’t wait for Crimson Desert and Civilization VII.
I have cartoon tattoos. One is of Calvin and Hobbes and the other of Merlin from The Sword in the Stone. Both are reminders not to take myself too seriously.
If you read that and think it would be fun to talk, please get in touch!