Andy Volk Email & Phone Number

Los Angeles, Ca, Us

Mountain View, Ca, Us

Supporting the growth of developers globally on Gemini, and Android, through Google's developer and startup ecosystem programs by working directly with key leads across the company.

Mountain View, Ca, Us

I am the head of Google's Developer & Startup Ecosystem team for Sub-Saharan Africa, managing an amazing team with members on the ground in Google's offices across Africa.Our team's focus is on reaching top startups and developers through scalable, high-impact programs, focused on all stages of the developer lifecycle. Target developers range from writing their first lines of code, to entrepreneurs launching their first startups and apps, and on to the most successful developers on the African continent.I'm a 10x thinker at heart: to support the growth of Google's impact, I enjoy developing new "moonshots" to massively expand my team's impact in Africa. Previous successful moonshots include Black Founders Fund Africa (raised $3m in funding to support black-founded startups across Africa), GFS Accelerator Africa (raised $3m+ in funding and headcount to launch Google's first region-specific accelerator program), the Google / IFC e-Conomy Africa 2020 report (Google's first projection of Africa's Internet economy future), and the Developer Ecosystem report (the first-ever research report series on Africa’s 700,000+ developer population).Projects my team leads includes coordinating and managing scalable developer outreach and support programs across the region (including Google Developer Groups, Google Developer Experts), working with startups and VCs through programs such as Google Developers Launchpad, increasing gender diversity in the professional software developer community with Women Techmakers, and representing Google's range of developer platforms in Sub-Saharan Africa.I've also given talks at a number of software developer events in Africa and beyond, including Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Turkey, Zambia, and and Zimbabwe.

San Francisco, Ca, Us

Investing in promising early-stage founding teams, focusing on emerging markets and disruptive technologies. 50+ angel investments to date, including: Alto IRA, Doola, Klasha, Kotani Pay, Lori Systems, Mood Health, MoonPay, Nestcoin, Paga, Republic, Smile Identity, Subskribe, Syndicate, Termii, and Vurbl.

Lagos, Ng

Sharing my time to support the growth of Talent City: a network of Charter Cities across Africa focused on providing the best quality of life for African technology talent that drives innovation and the digital economy.

Lagos, Ng

Founding Limited Partner (LP) and global advisor with Microtraction, a Nigerian pre-seed VC fund focused on investing in Africa's most remarkable teams with technical founders at the earliest stage of their ventures. Proud to have been supporting this fantastic crew since the beginning.

The Internet, Us

An early stage fund, backing your next favorite thing

Lagos, Ng

Limited Partner (LP) in Future Africa's investment fund, investing in mission-driven innovators building an African future where prosperity and purpose are within everyone's reach.

Stellenbosch, Western Cape, Za

Leading the charge to support and expand Mxit's ecosystem of 3rd-party apps and developers running on the Mxit platform, Africa's first "super app" with an open API reaching millions of users across Africa.I manage the Developer Relations, Provisioning, and Support teams, working directly with premium 3rd-party developers, and defining API requirements / platform strategy.Key activities in 2012 included: - Growth of active developers on the platform increased nearly 3x - Launching a series of API Bootcamps to engage creative and digital agencies with the platform - Creating and managing the largest open-source developer tool ecosystem on any South African platform - Speaking for the Mxit developer platform at events ranging from Tech4Africa to Silicon Cape Academy - Managing and growing an ecosystem of thousands of developers and hundreds of their Mxit appsKey activities in 2013: - Creating the Preferred Developer Program to help surface the best Mxit developers to prospective clients - Creating the Mxit App Store in April, resulting in over 2mm Mxit App installs since launch - Giving the keynote address at the Pivot East conference in Uganda - Product owner for Mxit on the Nokia Asha, J2ME, and Blackberry platforms

San Francisco, Ca, Us

As VP of Product at Kongregate, the top social game site for core gamers, I'm responsible for our online product and user experience. My duties range from managing the User Experience Design team and Product Management teams directly, leading our Agile product development process, managing our long-term product priorities, developing new product ideas and wireframing out the concepts, working with our game developers and community managers to add features that further our game/player ecosystem, and bringing the company together to review and collaborate on major new product features.Beyond just expanding Kongregate's reach and product offering, I also led the product initiatives to integrate strategically with GameStop's offerings, notably their PowerUp Rewards incentive program, and developing Kongregate community features for GameStop's 17,000 employees.And as with any classic startup, my hands-on work ranges from wireframing to writing site content, training new Product Managers, negotiating the occasional contract, and optimizing our content to spread virally across the web.

San Francisco, Ca, Us

Founder and president of a consulting company and incubator based in San Francisco, providing years of Silicon Valley product management, engineering leadership, and design experience to both established and emerging web and mobile companies. In other words, we take our client's ideas and evolve them into excellent products.Organizations we've worked with include MTV, NASA, Craigslist Foundation, SPOTXchange, LOYAL3, LACMA, Gamezebo and the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research.We also incubate our own ideas and launch them as standalone products. Past in-house products include "Is It Safe to Visit?", NiceTips, and Phone Genome.

San Francisco, Ca, Us

On contract to an early stage financial services startup as their Chief Product Officer from seed through the successful closing of their Series A round.Played key roles in managing and building product pipeline, managing onshore and offshore teams, bringing in engineering management talent, and strategic brand development.

Gone Living: an extended around-the-world trip visiting all seven continents. Spending my time living life, figuring out what is truly important, and musing on the next big thing. And blogging it all at https://goneliving.com.

Sunnyvale, Ca, Us

Product Manager leading Yahoo! Video Search from pre-launch through public release and first year of the product's lifecycle. Co-creator of the Media RSS / mRSS specification for including rich media and related metadata in RSS feeds, which is now used as a global standard.Product Manager in charge of Yahoo!'s Streaming Audio/Video player platform and associated products (College Broadcast, SBC Video, and all video players on the Yahoo! Network), and the Yahoo! Platinum VOD product. Product Manager leading digital music products and infrastructure for Yahoo! Music. Projects ranged from acquiring and encoding every CD in the North American catalog of recorded music, to building consumer streaming radio and music video applications, evaluating music technology acquisitions, and integrating with the LAUNCH Music acquisition.

Us

In charge of product management for Scour Exchange, Scour's peer-to-peer media distribution system, and myCaster, Scour's personal audio and video broadcasting system.Invented the myCaster Video broadcasting system.

Pittsburgh, Pa, Us

Co-invented groundbreaking Live365 radio site and product (while Art Director for the company's former product, Nanocosm.com), conducted initial viral marketing efforts to build launch user base, and operated online radio station that achieved significant share of the Live365 listener base for the first year of operation.

Seattle, Wa, Us

Worked on several research projects, including the creation of 3D content to demonstrate the rendering capabilities of a new graphics chipset, and developing a distributed Virtual Reality shopping mall. Created 3D graphics in Alias Studio, wrote interaction scenarios, wrote virtual world transition interface in Java.

Certificate, Venture Capital Executive Program

Bachelor Of Arts - Ba, English