Frank Han Email & Phone Number

Serve as trusted advisor and confidante to Founders/CEOs and help them to navigate the start-up journey and avoid potholes and roadblocks.

San Francisco, Ca, Us

FOG Ventures was created to invest and support innovative founders that are helping create toolbox 2.0 for the modern day operator. We’re backed by the world's top COOs & CFOs at tech’s most prominent startups.

Puzzle.ioFathom RadiantMintedControlHubAirbase (acquired)Gamefly (acquired)MyPerfectSale (acquired)

Innovative remote patient monitoring solution (software and services) for chronically ill elderly patient populations. Sold into medical providers and payers.I was introduced to the first-time founders by the seed round VC and started as a consultant. I transitioned to full-time COO, which evolved into the CEO role. Despite the challenge of COVID, we successfully raised $10 million Series A financing.

Redwood City, Ca, Us

Redwood City, Ca, Us

Tech-enabled food delivery business allowing companies below cafeteria scale to offer their employees fresh, interesting, prepared meals delivered to the office. After an introduction by a seed round investor to the first-time founders, I joined as CEO and employee #11. Grew from $250k to $60 million in ARR and 200 employees. We raised Series A and B financings (August Capital/Trinity Ventures). Major accomplishments included figuring out how to be profitable in the price-conscious world of food delivery, developing a delivery methodology to safely move many thousands of meals, both hot and cold, to hundreds of destinations within a 45 minute window, and scaling from a few hundred to 20,000 meals per day. EAT Club built incredible competency in logistics and tight operations. I departed after 6 years. The company became a casualty of COVID, as workplace food delivery was decimated by office closures.

Redwood City, Ca, Us

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Swoopo.com was a “penny auction” site where bidders competed for merchandise using purchased bids (like arcade tokens). Founded in Munich, Germany, Swoopo.com grew extremely quickly. I was hired by the company to be GM of their just-launched North America business. The company was generating 500k Euro in gross profit at the time I joined and North America represented a massive opportunity.A large number of copycat sites emerged, many of them unscrupulous (imagine a slot machine that never lets you win). There was no regulation and minimal barriers to entry. As a result, customer acquisition costs skyrocketed almost overnight and the business went sideways. I was elevated to CEO by the board after about 6 months on the job. Over the next 18 months, I commuted between California and Munich. In the end, the problems with the market proved insurmountable and I executed an orderly shutdown, protecting the investors.

I served as an EIR at three different venture firms. During this time, I attended pitch presentations and partner meetings, and had many ad hoc discussions with VCs one-on-one. I gained valuable insight into how VCs think and operate, how much of it is opaque to founders/CEOs, and how CEOs can easily end up wasting valuable time.

I joined a company called Cairo.com as CEO, a local shopping search engine. In conjunction with my joining, we closed a $7 million Series A financing with Greylock and Redpoint. An unknown IP issue emerged after my arrival that led us to pivot away from local shopping search.We created Glimpse.com, a visual shopping search engine focused on beauty, fashion and style. At Glimpse, we developed a compelling product experience and point of view that was unique at the time. We were successful attracting name-brand fashion merchants as affiliates. We did not develop class-leading traffic acquisition capabilities and were slow on SEO, which proved to be our miss. We sold to a competitor called TheFind, which had a strong organic traffic engine.

As General Manager, I was tasked with running the $180 million internet retail business of the Home Shopping Network, part of IAC (Expedia, TripAdvisor, Ask.com, Match.com, more). As EVP, I was one of seven to sit on the Executive Management Committee that led the $2 billion revenue company. I managed over 100 employees (product, engineering, marketing, merchandising, finance). Challenged to drive exceptional growth by Barry Diller and IAC management, our team worked to significantly expand the merchandise assortment so that HSN.com enabled HSN customers to buy items that weren’t shown on TV. We developed a successful counter-programming strategy to engage customers who wanted to shop, but were not interested in what was being broadcast. We leveraged the company’s core strength in live video to develop on-demand shopping videos to drive engagement and purchases.We grew from $180 million to over $300 million over 2 years with a substantial improvement in EBITDA margins.

I was interested in online gaming and after being introduced to the CEO of Caesars Entertainment (the largest casino gaming company in the world at the time with 17 hotel-casino properties worldwide), I chose to join Caesars as a member of the executive team in charge of their digital initiatives, including online gambling and online travel bookings. We did a thorough evaluation into the feasibility of starting online gambling operations in the UK, but due to regulatory risk, I recommended against this. Under my guidance, we grew online travel bookings from $16 million to $80 million in 18 months.

In late 1996, Toby Lenk and I got together in my living room and eToys began. We formed a company along with Bill Gross and Idealab in Pasadena. With a $250k seed, we crafted our value proposition – an online shopping destination bringing together popular, mass market products (Barbie, LEGO, Tonka) with specialty/educational products (BRIO, Playmobil, Thomas the Tank Engine). After building our online storefront and fulfillment capability (there was no Shopify or Amazon Fulfillment in 1997), we made our first sales and raised Series A in late 1997. 1998 was a year of massive building across all areas (product, fulfillment, customer service, merchandise assortment). eToys took off and grew incredibly quickly, both revenue and staff-wise. Q4 sales grew from a $680k in 1997 to $22 million in 1998 (37x). We raised a $25 million Series B led by Sequoia Capital.In early 1999, we began preparing for an IPO, as the market was extremely hot for internet companies. We strengthened the management team with a number of seasoned hires and I transitioned to focus on Product Development, managing 100+ people across Product Management, Product Operations, Front-End Coding, Project Management and Content. eToys was recognized at the time by several outlets for having the best-in-class consumer experience, a testament to our product capability. We went public in May 1999 and our stock quadrupling on its first trading day. We continued to grow rapidly, to $150 million in 1999 Q4 revenue. Scaling to this level in 24 months was a tough, but fun challenge.

Mba

Bs, Applied Math