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Founder @ Sherlock Advisors | Coaching CEOs, Advisor, Board Member, Investor
With over 15 years of experience in the technology industry, I am passionate about coaching founders of growth-stage companies to be successful leaders and happy people. I partner with CEOs and executives who have a vision to scale their businesses, innovate their products, and create positive impact in their markets and communities.
As the founder of Sherlock Advisors, I work with a select group of clients who represent $7 billion in market cap and have an average value of $750 million. I help them navigate the challenges and opportunities of leading high-growth teams, developing strategic partnerships, and raising capital. I also leverage my expertise in design tools, data analytics, and strategic partnerships to advise and invest in multiple tech companies, such as Crossbeam, Runway, Segment, Framer, and Nylas. I serve on the board of Eat App, a leading restaurant reservation platform in the Middle East, as well as the Pacific Primary School in San Francisco.
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Sherlock Advisors · Part-time
I coach founders of growth-stage technology companies to be successful leaders and happy people.
Working with CEO on product & business strategy to scale company
I joined Famous to work with a former Facebook colleague as well as to solve distribution problems and create industry support. We were going to solve the difficult and major mobile web problems. I managed a team of engineers to execute on customer / partner feedback, and also led a developer marketing team to increase awareness and trust. Results: Scaled product reach from niche developer community to ~50% of the web through a multi-tier partnership with the jQuery Foundation and jQuery plugins. Validated core technology with major industry partners (Google, Facebook, Intel, Mozilla) publicly supporting Famous. Famo.us partnership with the jQuery Foundation
CEO needed help pivoting product to optimize for social networks
Was brought in by VC firm to help define early product and business model
Advised CEO on early product decisions and led discussions with early partners.
Around the time we hit 400M users, I was brought on to improve effectiveness of some of Facebook’s largest partnerships (e.g. Microsoft) as well as identify any growth partners. Worked closely with Instagram’s founders, Kevin and Mikey, to build the initial Facebook integration and the beginning stages of the Facebook partnership. This partnership led to one of the most success acquisitions in social media history. Launched several key products with major partners: Facebook Video Calling (Skype), Bing social search (Microsoft), Social driving (Waze), and Facebook Group file sharing (Dropbox).
Joined when company had ~80M users. Responsible for the early foundation of Facebook Photos as a platform, which grew from a handful of partners in 2008 to thousands by 2013. Part of the early mobile expansion – Brought on to drive mobile operator partnerships as the company was starting to rapidly grow outside the US. Got 40 new partnerships with international operators to facilitate user growth. Guided the largest SMS provider to recognize Facebook as a top mobile operator, which locked in pricing that saved company $5M / year — a significant amount to Facebook in 2010.
Wrote initial product specs to monetize Local Search and integrate 3rd party content sources into search (e.g. Yelp). Led effort to educate teams and influence execs on importance of monetization within local space. Wrote key whitepaper for MSNBC Board that argued for deeper integration of MSNBC (a Microsoft joint-venture) content into algorithmic News search results; it was approved by MSNBC board and implemented into product.
Led the product launch for major release of MSN.com, the 2nd largest website in the world -- coordinated global team across 14 countries.
Built and presented competitive analysis for Bill Gates. Identified and executed on $30M revenue opportunity in Hotmail.
Activities and societies: TechMedia Club, Westrek planning committee Harvard Business School case titled, "Daqi", published in 2009 by Harvard Business School Press. Co-authored with Robert Pozen, chairman MFS Investments, and Tony Zhang, HBS 2009. The publication focuses on the state of intellectual property in China circa 2008 and the set of tradeoffs a Chinese startup must make in growing its business.
Activities and societies: Special Olympics, Sigma Chi * Engineering research focus on memory bandwidth and computer architecture * Ran one of largest campus organizations, Special Olympics — which was largest student-run Special Olympics games in the US
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