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2014 has been a major year for us here at Ambition. Our sales productivity and analytics software was voted a top 3 product from our Y Combinator batch. We're currently driving employee performance in companies like Clayton Homes, Peek, and Steam Logistics. On top of that, we also were profiled in renowned publications such as:
​These are the team members behind our leading edge product development, customer onboarding, and sales and marketing efforts. We look forward to continuing to serve you for many years to come.
Meet Our Team
Travis Truett is Co-Founder, CEO and fearless leader of Ambition. A tech entrepreneur who has spent his professional career committed to innovation, Travis’s leadership touches every sector of our organization, be it onboarding new customers, answering questions from potential clients, or coding the product itself. His leadership of Ambition is characterized by the core values our software brings to its users: an emphasis on efficient process, personal motivation and accountability, and team cohesion. Travis has been profiled in numerous publications and featured as a speaker at conferences around the country. Follow him on LinkedIn or reach him by email at travis.truett@ambition.com.
Co-Founder, CTO & Chief Product Architect of Ambition, Wes Kendall boasts a Ph.D in Computer Science from The University of Tennessee, and a professional background that includes stints at Google and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The brains behind the Ambition Score’s interactive metric computation and the spearheader of Ambition’s commitment to open-source community, Wes is currently scaling out our engineering operations and building the most dynamic engineering team possible. Email him at wes.kendall@ambition.com. Provide a synopsis of the impact you’ll have during your first month at Ambition, then he’ll get personal.
Ambition’s Co-Founder and COO, Brian Trautschold manages company finances and runs much of our internal day-to-day operations. A disciple of lean operations, Brian’s strategic direction enabled the company to commit the first 15 months of operations almost exclusively to product development. Now an important leader of our Business Team, Brian plays a key role in partnership development as well as syncing and streamlining Sales and Marketing operations. The three-time entrepreneur and Y Combinator graduate is also an outspoken voice in the startup community and harbors a borderline-unhealthy obsession with Memphis Grizzlies basketball. Email Brian at brian.trautschold@ambition.com or find him on LinkedIn.
Jared Houghton is the CSO and Co-Founder of Ambition. A tech veteran and Y Combinator graduate, Jared is an oft-featured speaker and panelist at conferences and other events focused around Sales, Gamification and Entrepreneurship. As the head of our own Sales Team, Jared guides Sales and Marketing operations and new business development. He also runs the Sales Influencer Series on the Ambition Blog and has contributed content to renowned Sales publications like SalesHacker. He can be reached via email at jared.houghton@ambition.com, Linkedin or Twitter.
Rob deCarvalho brings over a decade of data-analysis and programming experience to Ambition. After finishing his Ph.D in Atomic Physics at Harvard, Rob went to work for MIT-Lincoln labs where he concentrated on building signal processing and control software for the U.S. Air Force. He then transitioned to the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he focused on analyzing data for the OSTM mission before turning to the start-up world and building web-based systems for collecting and analyzing sales data. Rob joined Ambition in August of 2014 and currently focuses on bolstering Ambition's metric processing and analytics engine. He can be reached via LinkedIn.
Dan Nice is a SaaS Industry veteran & Sales General who actually began his career in Neuroscience. Fluent in all things technology, Dan specializes in optimizing sales processes, maximizing value propositions & customer ROI, and training new Sales hires. He brings the heart of a lion and the mind of a scientist to our Sales Team -- just ask the industry competitors still recovering from his reign of terror with Picometry, who he propelled from industry newcomer to Alpha Dog in under two years, capturing 60 percent of the top 5 industry members as clients. Dan is ready to do the same for your organization -- he can be reached via email at dan.nice@ambition.com and on LinkedIn.
During his lengthy tenure with Ambition, Jeff McRiffey has built our React UI, Django User Guide, and currently acts as our Front-End Engineering Lead. One of the many members of Ambition with an advanced degree, Jeff holds an M.S. in Computer Science from MTSU and has also been published in WorldComp CGVR '13 and contributed to Google Traceur. (Non-Engineers: Trust us, those are worthy accolades). He can be reached via twitter at https://www.twitter.com/jmcriffey.
Micah Hausler is an original Ambition Software Engineer with a B.A. in Computer Science from Covenant College. In just the past few months, Micah has been featured in numerous PyCoder publications and participated in the annual DjangoCon conference. Micah also acts as the voice of the Ambition Engineering team on social media and various content platforms. Find Micah on Twitter at https://twitter.com/micahhausler or on the Ambition Engineering Handle, https://twitter.com/ambition_eng.
Josh Marlow is a veteran Software Engineer who has worked with Ambition’s founders since obtaining his M.S. from The University of Tennessee in 2010. Josh primarily works on data acquisition and integrations, singlehandedly building Ambition’s Dropbox and Google Docs integrations. He is also the primary architect of our data acquisition/warehousing system. Find Mr. Marlow on LinkedIn or around the city of Chattanooga sporting his famous handlebar mustache and issuing a relentless stream of puns.
Jared Lewis is one of the original Ambition Software Engineers and has spent nearly a decade in the start-up landscape, developing everything from news sites to Content Management Systems to aggregator apps for iPhones. At Ambition, Lewis specializes in back-end engineering, User Interface, and Database optimization. He is a graduate of the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga and obsessive about all things Fantasy Sports and Tennessee Vols football. You can find Lewis on LinkedIn or posting on various sports blogs under one of his many pseudonyms.
Karmon French is the visionary behind all of Ambition’s imagery, branding, product, website, and social media design. A gifted Graphic Designer with a BFA from the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga, Karmon is the creator of everything from the Ambition logo to the product’s User Interface design. You’re looking at her design right now. Can’t get enough of Karmon's outstanding graphics prowess? Check out her website at https://karmonfrench.com.
As Director of Marketing, Jeremy Boudinet has been responsible for crafting the voice and persona of Ambition. A graduate of The University of Tennessee and University of Pittsburgh School of Law, Jeremy devises our overall marketing strategy, specializing in content generation, marketing copy, strategic partnership development, and social media management. Since joining Ambition, his writing has been featured in Time, Information Age, the Daily Muse and Social Media Today. Jeremy also acts as Director of Marketing and Social Media for the Nashville Chapter of AA-ISP. Find him on LinkedIn or email him at jeremy.boudinet@ambition.com.
The premiere Account Executive for Ambition, Noah Cudzilo transitioned from Sales Manager at Ambition's first customer to spearheading sales development efforts. A graduate of The University of Tennessee, Noah is the acting VP of AA-ISP Nashville Chapter and a former Sales Division Leader himself at Access America Transport. Two facts he’s very proud of: 1. He once turned down a (minor) role in a Harrison Ford film to go to work. 2. He’s extremely competitive at Spikeball and other lawn games. The best ways to contact Noah are via LinkedIn and noah.cudzilo@ambition.com.
Wes Okes is a Software Engineer with a B.S. from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Preferring to go by Rico, Wes has been a part of almost everything in the project at some point, playing pivotal roles in readying our Salesforce App Exchange Launch, enabling the creation of custom objects, and just about everything else that doesn’t involve a server. You can find Wes on LinkedIn or dominating the rest of the Ambition office in a game of MarioKart 64.
A talented Data Scientist with a B.A. in Economics from Reed College, Erik Swanson has authored a number of Ambition’s open source libraries, organized our analytics data, and created infrastructure for determining complex analysis on what activities drive customer success. Despite working remotely in Pittsburgh and interacting with the rest of the team primarily via robot, Erik has played pivotal roles in creating the initial design and implementation of Ambition Triggers and central notifications. Check out his website, swansone.com, find him on twitter at @swans_one, or, if you happen to be in the Pittsburgh area, stop by a Pittsburgh Python Users Group meeting.
An Ambition Account Executive and the youngest member of our team, Builder Brock is currently pursuing his B.A. at the University of Georgia. Builder is a UGA Entrepreneurship Program Ambassador and a member of the Men's soccer team. When he’s not on the field or in the classroom, Builder is a relentless advocate and evangelist for Ambition who carries an understanding of sales culture, operations, and processes far beyond his age. Connect with Builder on LinkedIn or email him directly at builder.brock@ambition.com.
Thanks to all of our investors, advisors, family members, and most importantly, our customers for making 2014 a banner year for our Team. As great a year as 2014 was, it's going to be nothing compared to what the next will bring!
Follow our developments on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, and contact us if you're interested in speaking with us directly about bringing Ambition into your organization.
Modern Sales Leaders Drive Growth via Ambition
Ambition is a sales management platform that syncs every department, data source, and performance metric in your organization on one system.
Sales organizations use Ambition to enhance sales performance visibility. Ambition's drag-and-drop interface lets non-technical sales leaders create custom sales scorecards, contests, reports, and TVs with live data.
Ambition is endorsed by Harvard Business Review, AA-ISP (the Global Inside Sales Organization), and USA Today as a proven solution for managing activity-driven sales teams. Visit our AppExchange page. Meet our clients below.
Watch Testimonials:
- FiveStars: Adam Wall. Sr. Manager of Sales Operations .
- Filemaker: Brad Freitag. Vice-President of Worldwide Sales.
- Outreach: Mark Kosoglow. Vice-President of Sales.
- Cell Marque: Lauren Hopson. Director of Sales & Marketing.
- Access America Transport: Ted Alling. Chief Executive Officer.
Watch Product Walkthroughs:
- ChowNow. Led by Vice-President of Sales, Drew Woodcock.
- Outreach. Led by Sales Development Manager, Alex Lynn.
- AMX Logistics. Led by Executive Vice-President ,Jared Moore.
Read Case Studies:
- Clayton Homes: HBR finds triple-digit growth in 3 sales efficiency metrics.
- Coyote Logistics: Monthly revenue per broker grew $525 in 6 months.
- Peek: Monthly sales activity volume grew 142% in 6 months.
- Vorsight: Monthly sales conversations grew 300% in 6 months.
Contact us to learn how Ambition can impact your sales organization today.
