My specialty is the creation and deployment of innovation. I have P&L management experience, have been a Product Manager, General Manager, CEO, COO, Business Development Manager, Marketing Director and top performing Salesperson.
My contracting services include:
- Starting with ideas and figuring out all that it takes to build a product, and building it.
- Working in an existing company and development group to build a product.
- Starting in a later product cycle to come up with a generational advancement of an existing product.
- Developing a market for a product, rolling out sales, establishing new markets and sales channels.
- Developing strategies, writing business plans and acquiring funding.
My unique skill is the combination of developing an idea, or product, while learning the market and building it. In many cases I do pioneering sales and fund raising. The entire product management process is dependent on knowing the target market. I like to try to build relationship with the prospective suitors of the business and develop the sales channel at the earliest point in the process. In every case the process starts with identifying target market and learning what they would buy, how they would buy and accurately characterizing the market.
I am very well versed in legal issues and work close with counsel. As a product manager I have extensive experience with trademarks, patents and intellectual property issues. As part senior business roles I have substantial experience building, creating and negotiating contracts. As an entrepreneur I have first hand experience managing complex legal issues and coordinating with and without counsel — even in the face of litigation.
My approach is sales oriented and very powerful. History shows that customer loyalty trumps technology and even important feature customers swear they need.
My approach of combining early sales with requirements gathering allows me to put together very tight marketing requirements; a critical step to success in product management. The succession of requirements to specifications, into development, to testing, launch and life cycle management, all depend on having a firm understanding of the market and other potential markets.
Most important, following my approach makes sales easier and more lucrative. I am also interested, and capable, of taking on all sales, marketing or business development for a new product or product releases. I like to work the entire product cycle.
I have worked closely with development teams. In prior engagements, I have worked as the engineering project manager. As a scientist with a strong engineering background I am able to generate marketing requirement that flow easily into achievable specifications.
Key Products
- Xaos – nTitle – a UNIX character generator
- Xaox Pendemonium – the basis for Photoshops plug in architecture
- AOLserver – for many years the most used webserver in the world
- AOLpress – the precursor for MS Frontpage
- ThomsonRTQ.com – a website whose quote forms still are present on many major financial websites
- GoWeb Portal – The first web portal ever put on a blackberry
- Retriever Barking – A simplified system for building mobile service application
Skills and Experience
- 20 years serial technology entrepreneur focused on launching products & building teams
- Web marketing pioneer: one of the first 300 employees of AOL
- Web development, design and deployment from small sites to major commercial projects
- Mobile Application market pioneer: developed first web-portal for blackberry. 10 years of mobile applications integration experience.
- Experience managing all aspects of marketing communication and public relations.
- Structuring distribution partner program, finding partners, negotiating and closing deals.
- Business planning, financial modeling, acquisition strategies, acquisition integration and exit strategies.
- Extensive experience in systems integration and hardware design for scientific instrumentation, consumer electronics and networked applications.
- Formal academic training in physical science including digital electronics and optics.
- Consulted to dozens of start up securing major distribution, writing business plans securing early stage capital, and doing pioneering sales.
- 5 years college level science teaching experience including all five sub-disciplines of chemistry and computer systems integration.
- 20 years experience in video and graphic software production from SGI through today
- 28 years experience with UNIX at the command line
- Learned BASIC on paper in 1974 (sixth grade) and Cobal on DARPA computers in 1975
- M.S. Physical Chemistry; published twice in Journal of Physical Chemistry
Corporate Experience
- Director of Content Services, GoAmerica Communications, Closed 25 media deals in 6 months; forced competitor out of business
- VP Corporate Development, About.com Inc. closed deals for over $1.5 MM in one quarter, 20% of gross sales, largest revenue deals in company history.
- COO at Rivalworks, gathered 30,000 registered users in 90 days sold to About.com
- Director of Marketing at Thomson Financial Services: designed, implemented and launched first consumer free real time quotes web site in 90 days (www.thomsonrtq.com); became profitable in less than one year.
- Product Manager for AOL games; launched first multiplayer games on AOL
- Product Manager at AOL for the internal publishing tool and AOLserver
- Director of Marketing at Xaos Tools building SGI graphics tools
