Elev18 is Born. A Letter From Our Founder.

Dear Early Clients, 

Thank you so much for taking this journey with me. And to everyone else, thanks for being here. Now onto the story.  

When the Reverse Merger Met the IVF Needle

November 10, 2020: I'm on my third consecutive Zoom call, camera on, leading several initiatives for Minim's rebrand and reverse merger with an OTC-listed company. It's been a roller coaster since we cofounded the business a couple years ago. I'm pounding coffee and secretly administering IVF injections below the camera line.

My wedding is tomorrow. So is the merger. As CMO, I am in charge of putting the public announcement out the following day. I am getting a crash course in investor relations for public companies. 

My calendar looks like a game of Tetris played at double speed. Management meetings, IR meetings, wedding planning, hormone schedules. Each demanding precision. Each unforgiving of mistakes.

The IVF didn't take. The merger did.

In that whirlwind, one person would enter my life and make an indelible mark: my executive coach. He didn't come with platitudes or advice. He created a new kind of space, a space for me to really think. To put down my battle gear and dig into my weak points. To illuminate blind spots. To recognize patterns in my responses and those around me. To weigh tough decisions. And that's just the beginning.

I became president of Minim the following year and co-led it through an uplist and public offering on the Nasdaq. My executive coach was there each step of the way, and that planted a seed. 

"It's the People" 

What did Steve Jobs, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Eric Schmidt, Sundar Pichai, Sheryl Sandberg, Jeff Bezos, and Ben Horowitz have in common?

Answer: An executive coach by the name of Bill Campbell. 

“The path to success in a fast-moving, highly competitive, technology-driven business world is to form high-performing teams and give them the resources and freedom to do great things,” said Campbell.

Campbell has been memorialized for his incredible career in Trillion Dollar Coach. This book underscored a hypothesis that has been growing over my last 15 years in tech: Companies don't succeed because the timing was just right or their idea was that great. They win because they stretched to see beyond their own fortress walls, and they built the strong team that's hoisting them up. 

The early days of a startup are crazy. Series A checks in the past decade have almost tripled to $18 million. Founders who might have $8,117.21 to their name are now in charge of deploying millions in capital. With ample advice and instinct, founders will invest in the talent, the office, the AWS service commits, the marketing campaigns, the holiday party, etc. 

Yet, they will underinvest, and continue to underinvest, in the one variable that determines whether any of it will amount to success: their own capacity. 

Unless you are Google, and you hired Bill Campbell in 2001. 

As we move to growth and mature stage companies, recent survey data tells us that 83% of organizations say that developing leaders matters, but only 9% report that they do it well.

Leadership development has become an industry of templates. Here's your personality assessment. Here's your 360 review. Here's your leadership framework. Check the boxes, attend the workshop, hope something sticks.

But leadership isn't a competency model. It's deeply personal work. You need someone who can help you navigate the gap between who you are today and who you need to become tomorrow.  

What is Leadership Coaching? 

The International Coaching Federation defines coaching as "partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential."

Leadership coaching (via the Co-Active Coaching Model) is not therapy. It is not consulting, advisory, or mentorship. These are also important roles, but not a coach. Coaching is a thought partnership.

A professional coach helps clients access their own wisdom and blind spots, from new perspectives. Especially when the stakes are high and the path unclear. Coaches accept the fundamental principle that their clients are the experts in their own role and are also naturally creative, resourceful, and whole – not broken and needing to be fixed.

I believe the best coaches are "breakthrough accelerators." They create the conditions for those moments when everything suddenly clicks. When the impossible problem reveals its solution. When small fires fade and the real raging challenge becomes central. When a pattern finally becomes visible. This is the work.

Meet Elev18, a growth accelerant for leaders and their businesses.

Throughout my career, I've operated and consulted several tech startups, from seed to publicly listed. And I've trained in executive coaching at the University of Pennsylvania (ICF-accredited). Today, I am excited to announce Elev18. 

Elev18's mission is to help tech leaders grow into who they need to be so their companies can become what they're meant to be.

The vision is a world where we stop treating leadership development as a nice-to-have and start recognizing it as the highest-leverage investment we can make. Here are a few aspects that make Elev18 unique:

• We serve tech leaders, by operators for operators.
• We offer growth accelerants for leaders and their business in what we call leadership coaching and GTM coaching. 
• Engagements are confidential to the individual, but can be applied and extremely effective for leadership teams to improve their trust, communication, and decision cycles.

• While coaching is fundamentally human work, we're employing and investing in AI and coaching technologies to be leveraged at Elev18.

Our Approach

Two Paths, One Mission

Leadership Coaching

This is the heart of our practice. Having held roles from Co-founder to CMO to CBO (Sales Leader) to President across seven companies, I understand the unique pressures of each seat at the leadership table. Our leadership coaching approach is grounded in values and actions alignment.

What do values have to do with it? A lot.

Eliminate a silent performance killer:  When leaders experience a continuous, grinding friction between their values and actions, it creates cognitive dissonance. It doesn't just feel bad. It actively impairs performance. Studies show it triggers stress responses, clouds decision-making, and erodes the very presence that makes leadership effective. 

Avoid the domino effect. Gallup found that only 23% of U.S. workers strongly trust their leadership. That's not just a morale problem. It's a performance crisis. Workers in toxic environments are more than twice as likely to report poor mental health. They also found 70% of the employee engagement variance is driven by leadership, directly impacting retention rates.

The solution isn't more perks or better communication training. It's leaders who do the inner work to show up fully, authentically, and consistently.

GTM "Coaching" 

After two decades as a CMO, marketing isn't just my expertise; it's where leadership and brand intersect in fascinating ways. Your company's brand identity and your leadership values aren't separate entities. They're entwined. 

Have you noticed some of the greatest brands have a cult following?

It's about creating movements, not just messages. Our GTM "Coaching" is a practice to assist in building and strengthening your brand and go-to-market motions. Through fractional engagements, Elev18 provides diagnostics, strategy, and execution. It goes deeper than campaign planning or growth tactics (though we certainly cover those). It's about aligning your marketing leadership with your authentic voice. Building teams that don't just execute but innovate. 

Pro Bono Work and an Invitation to Coaches

I'm personally committed to pro bono work for early founders and leaders in transition. I've witnessed brilliant people have their confidence shattered by toxic environments. I've watched founders struggle alone with a sea of "networking" but no real support system.

(If you're a coach who shares this vision, I want to hear from you.)

Your Next Chapter 

Whether you're a founder hitting your first real scaling challenge, a CMO navigating a positioning reboot, or an operator-turned-coach looking to expand your impact, Elev18 exists to support your journey.

The question isn't whether you need support. Every leader does. The question is whether you're ready to invest in personal growth that will propagate throughout your business. Ready to explore what's possible? Let's start with a conversation. 

Sincerely,

NZ

Nicole is the founder of Elev18, providing executive coaching and marketing coaching for tech leaders. With experience across seven companies from seed to IPO, she brings both operational expertise and UPenn and ICF training to help leaders transform themselves and their organizations. Based in New York City, Nicole works with founders and senior executives globally who are ready to grow into their next level of leadership.