Startups
I have substantial experience working in C-level roles at early- and growth-stage startups.
I've primarily played the COO role, supporting founder CEOs as they scale a business from the very beginning (I typically start working with companies when they have just a handful of people and minimal revenue).
I'm an excellent early stage operator because I bring a wide range of skills (pricing, marketing & sales, finance, support, risk and compliance) to the table, and because I think working extremely hard to bring new products to the world is fun.
Today, I continue to help startups on a part time basis, offering fractional CFO, COO, and General Counsel support.
Learn more about how I can help.
Universe
Universe is the fastest & easiest way to build a fully custom website: a link list, an online store or anything in between. Our mission is to help everyone build the web.
Universe is exactly the kind of product I like to help build: it enables small businesses to grow while putting the technological complexity in the background, where it belongs.
I was originally an enthusiastic user of the product, and joined full time after the company raised its Series A led by Google Ventures. As Strategy & Operations Lead (COO), I helped to scale all parts of the company and raise a Series B led by Addition in 2021.
Ask me how I got the Univer.se domain name - it's one of my proudest professional achievements…
Cerego
I spent many years working with the team at Cerego (as first hire, COO/President, and ultimately CEO) to build the world's best adaptive learning platform.
Cerego took well-documented principles of cognitive science (spaced repetition/distributed practice, the testing effect, desirable difficulty) and implemented them with cutting-edge machine learning to help people learn more quickly and remember what they'd learned so they could use it in real life. We also used LLMs before they were "a thing": Cerego's Smart Create platform could create adaptive learning material automatically.
Under my leadership, Cerego built a multi-million ARR B2B business with clients including Elsevier, Cengage Learning, McGraw-Hill, the US Army / Department of Defense, the BBC, over 1,000 colleges and universities, and leading corporate training clients like BNSF and JR West who need "mission critical" training for their staff.
This was an incredible experience: I learned how to build products used at scale, learned how to bring a B2B product to market, and learned a ton about learning science.
Today, the "Cerego mafia" is a formidable group spread around the world!