Executive coaching used to require a title and a budget most people never had. Here's why we built Huckleberry to make it something everyone can own.
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By Aaron Ward, CEO and Co-founder of Huckleberry
Last updated: 2026-06-08
About seven years ago, I was running AskNicely, my last company. The business was growing fast. Honestly, it was growing faster than I was. I needed to upgrade myself to keep justifying the seat I was sitting in as CEO. So I hired an executive coach.
What happened next changed the rest of my career, and I do not say that as a marketing line. I became a better leader. I became a better colleague. I also became a better husband and a better father. One coach. A few months. The whole thing.
What I needed, to qualify for that coach, was to be a 40-something CEO of a venture-backed startup. That was the prerequisite. And that is outrageous.
Where was that coach when I was 25? When I was a first-time manager screwing up team conversations I did not know I was screwing up? When I was trying to figure out my next career move from books and peers and a vague sense that someone, somewhere, must know what they were doing? Coaching was not there because the cost meant it was not going to be.
The math is simple and brutal. Human executive coaching has run at hundreds of dollars an hour for as long as anyone reading this has been working. The companies that pay for it pay for the senior layer. Below that line, you got a course library, a manager whose coaching skills were luck of the draw, and now ChatGPT. The ICF research puts a number on it: only 27% of organizations make coaching accessible to all employees. The other 73% draw the line where it has always been drawn.
Call it the lucky 5%. Call it 10%. The number depends on how you draw the line, but the shape is unambiguous: the people who already had the most career runway got the most career help. The other 95% have been figuring it out alone.
Executive coaching, for everyone. That is the whole idea, and until recently it was impossible.
I sat in the 95% myself for years before that changed. The experience of finally getting the kind of help that should have been there from the start is what made me start building Huckleberry.
Real coaching needs real context. You cannot coach what you cannot see, and most professionals have no honest mirror at work. That is why voice-based 360 feedback sits underneath Huckleberry. A five-minute voice conversation with the people you actually work with, giving the coach real input on how you land.
Voice AI applies real coaching frameworks to the situation you are actually in, with the feedback layer underneath. The coach knows how you land, because the feedback feeds the conversation. Feedback inside coaching is what turns insight into change.
Huckleberry is a different category from traditional coaching, and from most of what is being marketed as “AI coaching” today.
The fix to the access problem is not spending more on traditional coaching. Doubling that budget reaches maybe ten more executives. It does nothing for the layer below. Scaling human coaching has always been the constraint on access, which is precisely why it has never been the answer.
The fix is a different category. Coaching that is purpose-built around what coaching actually does, at a price and accessibility that traditional human coaching can never match. Structured conversations, applied frameworks, persistent memory of the person being coached, and the privacy to be honest.
Most products marketed as “AI coaching” today fall short of that bar. The category is littered with tip-of-the-day apps and text chatbots. Some companies have rebranded survey tools as feedback platforms and called it coaching. They do not apply real coaching methodology. Coaching only happens when methodology meets a real situation in real time, and the rest is just content.
We believe every professional should have access to a real coach. Up to now, that has been a privilege of the few. The technology to change it is finally here.
The old way was scheduled coaching for the senior layer, courses for everyone else. A $500-an-hour coach on the calendar, once a month, if you were one of the people who got one.
The new way is voice in your pocket, with frameworks built in. Available the moment a conversation matters. Three minutes if that is what you have. Fifteen if you need it. Always there, for anyone who wants to grow.
What changed is the technology, and specifically what it makes possible. Voice AI is now good enough to hold a real coaching conversation. AI reasoning can apply established coaching frameworks like GROW, SBI, and Radical Candor to a specific situation in real time. The economics have moved from $500 an hour for one senior leader to $25 a month for one person. The barrier was always the cost, and the cost finally changed. None of that was true five years ago.
The coaching that used to be reserved for the senior layer is now within reach of every person, at every level. What it unlocks depends on where you sit, but it all points the same direction.
For an individual: You no longer wait for a title, a promotion, or someone else's budget to start developing. The coaching that was locked behind a senior role is yours from day one, and it is yours to keep. You own your growth. The coach comes with you, between roles and between companies. For the first time, developing yourself is something you do, not something you wait to be handed.
For a manager: The hard conversation lands because you rehearsed it. The quiet person on your team who never asks for help is getting a real development conversation anyway. You become the kind of manager people stay to work for.
For an HR leader: Coaching stops being a privilege you ration to a few and becomes something every person in the org actually has. The employee experience stops being a lottery of which manager someone happened to get.
For a founder or exec: The org develops itself. Every layer has its own coaching support, and the coaching that built your career is no longer a privilege of the few. It belongs to everyone whose career is still being built.
I am building Huckleberry as the product I wish I had at 25. The coach I needed when I had no idea what I was doing as a first-time manager. The coach a million people in those same shoes need right now.
The mission is to coach the un-coached. To make the support that built me, and the support that builds anyone fortunate enough to get it, available to everyone whose career is still being built. Not the 5% with budget-line access. The 95% who have been figuring it out alone.
If you have ever sat through a 1:1 you did not know how to handle, or walked into a hard conversation hoping it would go well, this is for you.
We don't all have $500 an hour. That is the whole point. This had to be built for everyone, or it was not worth building.
The coaching that used to be reserved for executives is now something anyone can own.
Start for free. No credit card, just your time.
What does "the 95%" mean?
Only about 27% of organizations make coaching available to all employees (ICF). The rest reserve it for the senior layer. "The 95%" is everyone below that line: first-time managers, individual contributors, and emerging leaders who have never had a real coach.
Why has real coaching always been out of reach for most people?
Cost. Human executive coaching has run at hundreds of dollars an hour, so companies bought it only for the senior layer. At $500 an hour, coaching everyone was never possible. At $25 a month, it is. The barrier was always the economics, and the economics finally changed.
Can everyone really have a coach now?
Yes, and it no longer depends on your title or your employer's budget. Individuals can own their development directly, and the coaching goes with them between roles and companies. The kind of coaching that used to be reserved for executives is now something anyone can start.
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