About Me

Hi, I'm Hamilton! Thanks for checking out my site, and I'd love to learn more about you! In the meantime, here is a little blurb about me.

I grew up in Los Angeles as the son of an entrepreneur. You can read about my entrepreneurial backstory in a feature about me in Los Angeles Magazine.

To summarize, I went to Harvard College (graduating phi beta kappa and magna cum laude with highest honors in Psychology), I worked as an investment banker at JP Morgan in Hong Kong and New York, I then attended Harvard Law School, and worked for the #1-ranked law firm in the nation (Munger, Tolles & Olson). Dissatisfied with being a corporate attorney, I joined MGM as a Business Affairs executive, and still felt unfulfilled.

I then switched to entrepreneurship, running my family's commercial printing business and founding a Y Combinator-funded startup, at last finding true meaning and success in my career.

Five years ago, my tech startups (Paperlinks and PayDragon) raised $1.75 million in seed funding from Silicon Valley's elite investors, including Y Combinator, SV Angel, 500 Startups, Rustic Canyon Partners and more. I learned a ton, recruiting a fantastic team, bringing in huge enterprise clients paying real revenue, building a product with strong customer use, and garnering splashy attention from the national media (Today Show, New York Times, LA Times, Us Magazine, USA Today, MSNBC television, and more).

In 2016, I successfully exited out of my businesses, and decided to give back and provide executive coaching to startup founders. One resource I always yearned for as an entrepreneur was someone I could be honest with and with whom I could talk about anything - not someone who was an investor, a friend or an employee, but an intelligent, experienced and empathetic individual who could just hear me and provide me tactical advice and personal advice to optimize myself and fulfill my potential.

I have now coached more than 200 Y Combinator startup founders, but I also serve as coach to attorneys, college professors, physicians, and many others. I am a coach at Netflix, and I am also the Director of Executive Education and Visiting Professor of Business and Technology at Loyola Law School. I hope this breadth of experience will be useful to you, and I look forward to hearing from you!

Read about me in LA Magazine

Hamilton and his companies have also been featured in the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, MSNBC, USA Today, Los Angeles Business Journal, TechCrunch, Mashable and elsewhere.

My Purpose

I started coaching because I could have used a coach myself when I was an entrepreneur. Being a startup founder is so intensely stressful, from working hard to create a good product, to getting traction with users, to fundraising (and being rejected), to hiring, firing and managing employees, to balancing personal needs.

Being an entrepreneur oftentimes means being alone. And there are conflicts when a startup founder tries to vent to investors, significant others or employees. There is no one to listen to you being honest about your greatest fears and your grandiose visions.

I believe entrepreneurs need huge doses of optimism, encouragement, affirmation, wise feedback, an open heart, and just an opportunity to be completely and thoroughly honest with themselves.

My 6-week Online Negotiations Course

As a Professor at Loyola Law School, I conceived of and launched their Executive Education program, dubbed LLX. Working on LLX kept me close to my executive coaching clients, as I could identify with the joys, the pains and the continued challenge of seeking product-market fit, recruiting, marketing and product design.

My first course, taught by yours truly, was a 6-week fully online course called Negotiating for Success. Loyola Law School offers a certificate for completing this course.

I hope you enjoy the trailer!