Mentoring start-up founders

Negotiated and closed the initial multi-year contract to provide inflight Internet service to Virgin Australia's guests. Solved regulatory, legal, technical and business challenges as they arose, ultimately increasing the value of the deal by 5-10x.

Orchestrated successful executive level strategic planning meetings and offsites which generated improvements in pricing strategy, market messaging, product roadmap, competitive positioning, roles & responsibilities and operational effectiveness. This was the venue to solve the "difficult issues". At the same time, developed the technical architecture and process to allow over the air software updates for the first time in business aviation.

Built Product Management team from 1 to 9 employees to break development logjam and deliver Gogo Text & Talk cellular roaming, Gogo Vision streaming movies, Gogo Cloud aircraft content delivery network, ATG 2000 Internet system for smaller aircraft, UCS 5000 smart router, ST 4300 safety services Iridium platform and my.GogoAir customer & dealer portal. This wave of innovation was viewed by the industry media as "game changing". So many successful new products (as measured by customer adoption) were accomplished by leading the transition to an Agile development methodology and more of a Minimum Viable Product mindset which is unique in our market.

Led & developed team tasked with developing the vision of making Gogo everyone's favorite part of flying. This included developing highly disruptive new services like Gogo Vision (streaming video) and new revenue streams from subscription, advertising and alternate distribution channels. Introduced the concepts of lean development and minimum viable product to accelerate learning cycles.

Developed the requirements for Gogo Inflight Internet. Ensured successful market launch through a focus on the customer experience and usability. Resulted in the fastest adopted in-cabin technology ever - now 1,200 planes and counting. Built a high-performing product management team that delivers solutions in the disciplines of Internet, wireless networking & aviation. The end result was a service launch that received a reception similar to the iPhone, a rave review from Walt Mossberg and best in class customer satisfaction ratings.

In just over a year reporting to the CEO, I co-wrote the business plan and investor pitch for what would ultimately become Gogo, the market leader in inflight Internet valued at $2 billion. This took perseverance and at times delusional stubbornness to continue honing our pitch through multiple investor rejections and a conventional wisdom that there was no way we would win against Verizon. The result of our efforts was roughly $100 million in funding and winning the FCC spectrum action for $31 million.

In a hyper-competitive market, negotiated multi-million dollar telecom B2B deals. Through asking probing questions to understand customer needs and creative packaging became a team leader in terms of close percentage and number of deals worked at over 40 per month. Also, set & managed pricing for new technologies like VoIP and MPLS.

Responsible for marketing budget and identification of attractive market segments for an XML database start-up.

As company was pivoting (before it was in vogue) in search of product / market fit, found new opportunities for a packet sniffing start-up with ability to quickly identify a song being transferred on an IP network.

An on the job education in validating business ideas and making them real. For an incubator of venture funded Internet start-ups, reviewed & recommended investment opportunities. At the same time, helped portfolio companies with marketing and research.

Leading up to acquisition of company, consulted to upper management of 40+ radio, tv & cable stations on technology, inventory management & revenue maximization. Average engagement resulted in over 10% increase in revenue through reduction in missed ads or ability to increase rates for overbooked day parts.