Austin Hughes, CEO of Unify, on how coaching helped him grow ARR 5.5×

Austin Hughes, Co-Founder and CEO of Unify, in conversation with Titan. Lightly edited for clarity.

The company vision

Hey, I'm Austin. I'm the co-founder and CEO here at Unify, and we're building the future go-to-market. Our vision is to build the world's first system of action for growing revenue. The ways that companies drive their own growth is changing. The ways that companies look at a CRM and a system of record in their space is also changing. What does it look like when 95% of the work that humans do today is done by AI, is done by agents, but humans still plug into that equation meaningfully? That's the platform that we want to build. We want to leave a dent in the universe, and this is our way of doing it.

The leadership scaling challenge

I think a big challenging moment for me was the moment when we had to stop having everyone report to the founders. There's a point probably around 20 or 25 people where you just stop being able to do that in an effective way. You get this challenge of trying to motivate people that maybe don't operate the same way that you do, and I think I started to really struggle with that.

Why Titan coaching fit

And so I ended up going to a Titan dinner and met Brian, who's now my coach of almost a year. And for me, it was about finding someone that I felt was really credible on a lot of the problems that I worked through. Helped that my coach also at one point was a founder in the space that I was in.

So before Titan, I met coaches that I just didn't click with and I didn't feel like I was going to learn a lot from. Coaching is a big time investment, and so it just didn't feel worthwhile to me. But after Titan, I met a coach that I really connected with. I felt was actually a true thought partner for me in moments when it was hardest to be a founder. Having that trusted resource is such a big propellant for the company overall.

In matchmaking, it was more validation exercise of: is there anything else out there for me? And for me, it was just a clarifying experience that this was the style of coach that I really wanted to work with.

How the coaching relationship works

We're both pretty direct. I think we're both pretty open-minded, and I think we're both just generally curious people. And I think Brian matches that energy a lot. Brian and I meet once every two weeks, so we meet twice a month. And what I really find valuable is working with him on just the most important strategic problems for the business.

Growth with Brian's guidance

I didn't really know what a good coach was, and I didn't really believe in coaching. But after that, after meeting Brian and getting to work with him, that perspective completely changed.

The problem space that used to feel so challenging to me around how to grow, how to scale, how to hire in leaders, how to lead leaders, et cetera, I feel like I've really accelerated my own personal growth in working with Brian, just being able to work through those problems. Somebody who's been there, someone who's done that. So I think it's just accelerated my ability to help lead and scale a company that we are today.

Brian's been able to help drive a lot of success in the company over the last year. I think in 2025, we grew ARR something like five and a half times to being eight figures of ARR, a company that people widely recognize as a leader in our space. But certainly my relationship with Brian played an important role in helping us to achieve those results. So it's hard to imagine what that would look like without him.