Companies
I have been fortunate enough to be a part of building several multi-million dollar online products & services from the ground up, including LeapFish.com, Reply.com, iMotors, AgentConnect, iCastle and others. The companies I’ve been a part of have helped produce hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, several million dollars in profits and served hundreds of thousands of clients, customers and employees nationwide.
Expertise :
- Internet Startups & Innovations
- High Scale Technology Architecture and Infrastructure
- Rapid Product/Concept Definition & Development
- Enterprise Software Engineering
- Agile Software Engineering
- Sales Force Development
- Business Development
- Corporate Infrastructure
- Venture Capital Financing
Companies :
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LeapFish.com
Founder & CEO
6/1/2008 – Present
Team Size : 65 – 100
Responsibilities : Corporate vision & strategy, general management, operations.
Description : LeapFish is the first multi-dimensional information aggregator and search portal in the world. LeapFish’s purpose is to gather, organize and render the most relevant information from the internet’s most valuable destinations for each user search entry, in one single search. Users are empowered with the unique ability to search the internet’s major destinations such as Google, Yahoo, Ebay, YouTube and much more in one single search. LeapFish advertisers are empowered with the unprecedented opportunity to capture search sponsorships, with the added opportunity to resell the sponsorship positions at any time.
Highlights : TBD
Biggest Challenge : TBD
About LeapFish : http://www.leapfish.com
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iHype.com
Founder & CEO
3/1/2008 – Present
Team Size : 8
Description : iHype is a revolutionary new online social marketing platform. iHype delivers a powerful marketing platform that empowers online marketers (advertisers) with the ability to market their products & services in a deep, organic, grass-roots online social approach through an exponentially growing web of individual and institutional web publishers (bloggers). The marketplace allows marketers to leverage the online socialsphere, while providing publishers with an avenue to generate substantial new revenue from their blogs.
Highlights : TBD
Biggest Challenge : TBD
About iHype : http://www.ihype.com
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ePERKS.com
Founder & CEO
2/1/2007 – Present
Team Size : 40 – 65
Description :
Developed the premier online discount local services platform for local service professionals in real estate, automotive and home improvement. Managed the platform to more than $5M in profitable annual revenues.
Highlights :
- Developed the first online marketplace of discount local professional services in real estate, automotive, and home improvement.
- Over $22M in incentives and discounts offered back to consumers.
- Signed on and served over 30,000 local professionals.
- Over $5M in annual revenues.
Biggest Challenge :
The harsh real estate and lending market conditions forced us into substantial layoffs and downsizing and changed the growth trajectory of the company.
About ePERKS.com : http://www.eperks.com
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Reply! Inc./Reply.com
Co-Founder, CTO and Chief of Product
6/1/2001 – 12/1/2006
Team Size : 50 – 200
Description :
Co-founded Reply! at the age of 20 and forged the premier lead generation destination for local service professionals in automotive, real estate, home improvement and lending with multi-million annual revenues.
Highlights :
- Developed over 20 multi-million dollar retail and wholesale lead generation service products in less than 5 years.
- Developed the most sophisticated lead acquisition, validation and distribution platform online.
- Developed the most comprehensive consumer portal online for automotive research and values, Real estate values, statistics and mapping, as well as home improvement and lending research.
- Over $21M in funding lead by BA Ventures.
- Multi-million annual revenues.
- 60,000+ in customers.
- Over 50M transaction calls per month.
- Featured in major publications including Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Red Herring, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and others.
- Parent to CarClub.com, OpenAuto.com, RealtyNow.com, iCastle.com, iMotors.com, AgentConnect.com and the Reply! Lead Distribution System.
Biggest Challenge :
Overall profitability. The key to our profitability was held by the way in which we transitioned from a startup to a mature and stable company. Our biggest challenge was to reshape infrastructure, technology, policies, and most importantly psychologies, to bring about a new found efficiancy that would allow us to shift into the next phase of our vision of becoming a profitable single destination for cost per lead (CPL) marketing. The foundational transition was spearheaded by technology and the inflection point between startup and single vertical infrastructures to a mature company and a unified service oriented infrastructure was quite challenging considering all operational and behavioral changes that needed to take place. The infrastructure was put in place and ultimatley Reply! successfully achieved profitability in 2008.
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AgentConnect.com
Co-Founder & Executive Vice President, Technology
2/4/2003 – 12/1/2006
Team Size : 15 – 20
Description :
Developed one of the internet’s first and most successful real estate lead generation services online. Managed the platform to multi-million annual revenues and integrated the division to Reply! Inc’s suite of lead generation companies.
Highlights :
- Developed a real estate retail/wholesale lead marketplace handling millions of transaction calls per month.
- Built and managed platform to multi-million annual revenues.
- Ranked as one of the highest in quality for real estate leads in the country.
- Signed on and served over 20,000 real estate agents and brokers nationwide.
Biggest Challenge :
Striking a balance between lead quality and quantity. Our biggest challenge was in developing a super efficient system that would strike the best balance between sending our customers quality leads while ensuring the least number of leads (consumers) went without receiving contact from a professional. Our efforts ranked our service as one of the highest in quality within the industry with nearly zero consumers lost.
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iMotors.com
Co-Founder & Executive Vice President, Technology
6/1/2001 – 12/1/2006
Team Size : 15 – 20
Description :
Developed one of the largest automotive lead generation services online. Managed the platform to multi-million annual revenues with profitability and integrated the division to Reply! Inc’s suite of lead generation companies.
Highlights :
- Developed an automotive retail/wholesale lead marketplace handling over 35M transaction calls per month.
- Rapidly developed the automotive retail lead distribution platform and launched company into market in a few short months.
- Built and managed platform to multi-million annual revenues.
- Signed on and served over 5,000 major franchises nationwide.
Biggest Challenge :
Unsold leads. We were generating millions of leads that went unsold. Our biggest challenge was to grow our retail base and wholesale network as quickly as possible while bringing a new found level of sophistication to our marketing and technology so that more leads were generated in the areas that we had coverage. Our efforts resulted in one of the most sophisticated automotive lead distributions system online that maximized every bit of our marketing and wholesale spend, effectively growing our top line as well as our margins very rapidly.
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Adovis.com
Founder & President
12/1/2000 – 9/1/2002
Team Size : 5 – 8
Description :
Developed one of the Internet’s first web hosting lead generation destinations, delivering high volume web hosting, internet security and data center solution leads to small – large size Internet Service Providers nationwide.
Highlights :
- One of the first lead generation solutions connecting hosting prospects to hosting companies nationwide.
- Signed on and served key hosting companies nationwide including Web.com, Verio, RackSpace and EV1 Internet.
- Grew the business to an annual run rate of $1.5M in less then 6 months before transitioning focus to lead generation in the automotive and real estate industries.
Biggest Challenge :
Our office location. Our office was out of Davis California which was limited in its full-time talent pool, making it challenging to recruit full-time talent for our kind of company. Never underestimate the impacts of where you are headquartered.
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KwikKoupon.com
Owner & Webmaster
1/1/1996 – 8/1/1997
Team Size : 1
Responsibilities : Programming, operations, sales and marketing.
Description :
Developed one of the Internet’s first online local coupon services at age 15.
Highlights :
- One of the first search, print and redeem coupon portals on the web.
- Signed on and served hundreds of local businesses in a short period of time before the Internet was mainstream.
- The service was featured as the main story on the cover of the Modesto Bee business section.
Biggest Challenge :
My age. Although much was learned, I was simply too young and inexperienced and didn’t have the resources to really grow the business beyond a certain stage.
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