Eric Grafstrom Email & Phone Number

I founded ExitGuide to help millions of small business owners who do not have access to M&A advisors, business brokers and other resources. Our platform enables owners to create an exit plan and manage the sale process using our online dashboard and services.

I help founders, CEOs and startup executives with all aspects of building and scaling. This includes strategy, creating operating plans, and advice common challenges every CEO will face.

After advising the company (fka BetterCompany) backed by BlueRun Ventures, Eniac and Cervin Ventures. The founding CEO and investors asked me to join the company full time as CEO to lead the company in a new direction.I worked with investors to recapitalize the company with millions in new funding and restructured the team to focus on developing an.

Wheelhouse Partners hired me as Interim CEO shortly after acquiring mobile payment company Flint with the goal of restructuring the company for a new buyer. I lead the company and oversaw the launch of a new mobile invoicing product and helped drive the sale of the company to Due.com in 2017.

Oakland, CA, US

Recruited by the CEO of IAC’s Publishing division to lead business development for a $500M portfolio of properties that included Ask.com, Dictionary.com, About.com, Daily Beast, Investopedia. At IAC, I drove partnerships with facebook at the launch of their publishing platform and tackled the burgeoning issue of revenue lost to ad blocking, negotiating a.

Interim executive for business development and business operations for early stage companies. Developed go to market plans and operating plans for various seed, A and B round companies. (Gengo, TempoAI, Sidebar, Pickmoto)

San Francisco, California, US

• Ran all day to day company operations, managed company P&L and finance, lead operational planning, developed revenue forecasts and worked with department managers on budgets, hiring plans and operational spend.
• Built and managed teams for sales & business development, accounting & finance, HR, customer support and legal (IP, commercial, product, trademark).
• Co-lead company shift to new strategy in 2011 to enable cloud architecture and developed operating model and business strategy offering contact management platform for major carriers (AT&T, Verizon, Sprint) and OEMs.

San Francisco, California, US

• Started as individual contributor just after initial launch of first product and built team handling distribution & user acquisition, enterprise sales, 3rd party product integration and legal (commercial, copyright and.
• Closed product integration partnerships with LinkedIn, facebook, Twitter, Skype, Hoovers and Yahoo that are a cornerstone of Xobni’s Outlook product and lead to deeper relationships
• Managed team responsible for user acquisition deals with AVG, HP and third party distribution providers that generated millions of users for Xobni (free) and premium revenue for Xobni Pro
• Hired sales team to bring Xobni products into enterprise space, built pricing plan and go to market strategy

Worked with several early stage companies as VP of Business Development including developing partner strategy, executing on commercial deals for distribution and product integration and licensing. Clients Boku (Khosla Ventures), Xobni (Khosla Ventures), cooliris (Kleiner Perkins)

Sunnyvale, CA, US

• Responsible for business development team covering several of Yahoo!’s flagship products: Yahoo! Messenger, Yahoo! Voice, Yahoo! Mail, My Yahoo!, Yahoo.com (home page), Yahoo! Photos, Yahoo! Groups and Yahoo! Greetings.
• Lead highly complex negotiations that involve C-level exposure, risk/opportunity assessment and leading cross-functional teams including leading negotiations for groundbreaking consumer IM interop deal between.
• Managed team of three business development people and deals that ranged in value from $250,000 to more than $10 million
• Worked directly with product management and marketing to establish quarterly business objectives and set contract priorities for commercial lawyers supporting business unit
• Business unit lead for litigation, intellectual property and policy/regulatory issues

Sunnyvale, CA, US

• Hired to evaluate and restructure company’s approach to the enterprise market which included complete product re-architecture, outsourcing customer support, overhauling sales model and developing new compensation program
• Grew revenue to nearly $5 million while streamlining operational costs by over 50%.
• Managed team of 15 people consisting of sales managers, inside sales, field sales, channel sales, sales engineering and customer support team selling secure IM to enterprise customers

Sunnyvale, CA, US

Managed channel relationships that drove over $10M in annual sales working closely with partner field sales organizations co-selling streaming video services and corporate portal solutions. & helped launch a secure IM solution that was an alternative to Yahoo’s consumer instant messaging application.

Sunnyvale, CA, US

• Based in London for two years and had pan-European responsibility
• Actively involved with launch of Yahoo!’s Enterprise Solutions division in Europe including hiring sales, marketing and engineering team, developed and managed budgets for sales, PR, marketing and recruitment.
• Managed direct sales team five people in UK, Germany, Sweden and France that sold portal, and video streaming solutions to enterprise customers including Barclays Bank, Shell, Lafarge Brass and Prudential UK.

• Joined company (then AudioNet) as first employee to sell webcasting services and developed pitch, sales process and initial pricing
• Acquired many of company’s first strategic clients including: NASDAQ Stock Market, Motorola, GartnerGroup and BP Amoco, Turner Broadcasting (all were later highlighted in company’s IPO prospectus)
• Top revenue producer out of more than 40 sales representatives for three consecutive years
• Played integral role in developing go to market offering, pricing structure and sales process which was used to train national sales force
• Defined and implemented first hires for inside sales representative, account manager and project manager which lead to increase in revenue per rep. Model was rolled out to national sales organization

• One of three field directors from national office covering New England. Set-up local campaign offices, coordinated volunteer activities and handled logistics for various events including visits by Ross Perot
• Selected to be on the advance team for 1992 Presidential Debates
• After campaign joined the United We Stand America political organization handling various fundraising and membership services duties