Equity investment, advisory and general management services company with primary focus on early to mid-stage consumer internet/mobile, packaged goods, and delivery logistics.

Metavine is an orchestration application that binds and extends IT assets, enabling increased strategic value to the business. Metavine provides a single point of visibility of business IT assets, allowing: -integration with, and "orchestration" of disparate IT assets; -reduction in the number of technologies used in a company's ecosystem;-alleviation of skills dependencies, by reducing the number of those technologies--delivering solutions 10x faster than previously possible.www.metavine.com

UPDATE: Deliv is now partnered with UPS, via a major strategic investment by UPS in Deliv Feb 2016. Deliv is a logistics company providing same-day delivery service that extends the reach of omnichannel retailers, helping them enhance customer experience by giving customers the choice to receive items whenever and wherever they want. Deliv allows retailers to offer customers a same-day delivery option as they shop from their website, mobile app or from their physical store. By simply adding the Deliv same-day delivery option into their existing checkout process, the retailer preserves the customer shopping experience and fulfills orders from inventory from their local stores--while maintaining ownership and data from each customer transaction. Deliv has partnered with over 400 national and regional retailers, as well as the nation’s four largest mall operators, who manage nearly 800 malls across the United States. Initial seed investors in Deliv were:Operators Fund/Gordon TuckerGeneral Catalyst PartnersRedpoint VenturesPivotNorth CapitalTrinity VenturesMajor expansion investors include:United Parcel ServiceSimon Property GroupGeneral Growth PropertiesMacerichWestfieldUpfront VenturesRPM VenturesSee press coverage for in-depth discussion of Deliv versus Amazon, "The Entrepreneur Who is Beating Amazon at Same-Day Delivery": http://www.fastcompany.com/3042207/strong-female-lead/the-entrepreneur-who-is-beating-amazon-at-same-day-delivery (Go Daphne!)IBM Partnership Announcement: http://on.recode.net/1hESyGkWilliams-Sonoma Partnership Announcement: http://bit.ly/TUmbsM @delivwww.deliv.co

Creator and developer of the concept of Music as a Service (MaaS) Highly innovative company providing a legal streaming solution for websites, games, and app developers to enhance their products with popular music to drive consumer engagement, retention, and revenues.Feed.fm handles all billing, licensing, compliance, and reporting to copyright holders to ensure that Feed.fm clients meet the legal requirements of the music industry.Feed.fm was a Finalist at the TechCrunch Disrupt competition. In addition to Operators Fund, other advisors/investors supporting the Feed.fm team include the former CEO of MTV Networks (also serves as Exec Chair of Feed.fm); a founding exec of CurrentTV; and execs from Electronic Arts, ngmoco, Netflix and Turner Broadcasting.Article link below about increasing customer engagement via the use of music/Feed.fm:http://venturebeat.com/2014/07/09/want-customers-to-stay-engaged-with-your-brand-add-music/www.feed.fm@feedfm

Talkable increases profits of online companies by optimizing customer acquisition through referrals.Social referral marketing is a disruptive method of customer acquisition. Most companies today do not use referral systems at all, or to their full potential. Talkable provides a SaaS referral platform that enables companies to execute, track, and optimize different types of incentivized referral campaigns. Talkable technology optimizes their referral systems using aggregate data.www.talkable.com

Ark.com is a search engine for people. With Ark, you can search for new people, old classmates, new business contacts, and even your friends. With over a billion social network profiles indexed, and using a modern architecture, Ark provides the most comprehensive people search engine in the world.@arkwww.ark.com

Freeform is an application development platform that lets musicians and other digital media creators generate additional revenues by distributing their work much like free-to-play mobile games. By offering a “compelling enough” version of their content for free, artists amass the largest possible audience for their work; Freeform’s platform then makes it fun and easy for consumers to unlock more and better content. Freeform was founded by previous Google/Rhapsody music exec Tim Quirk and former SoundExchange exec Bryan Calhoun, with primary investment from IDG Ventures (Phil Sanderson).Monstrous, pre-acquisition, developed and published user-customizable social games in partnership with major music artists and labels, utilizing their patent-pending game development platform (Soniverse™ Engine). Soniverse automates the intricate mapping of music to game action, allowing users to choose graphics, songs and key game mechanics (including purchased virtual goods) to create and share their own games with Facebook, etc friends.

Board of Directors, AFS International Student Educational Exchange, New York CityWindstar Foundation (Environmental Education and Sustainability Research), Snowmass, ColoradoEnvision Schools (Charter Schools), San Francisco One Heart Foundation (Healthcare in Developing Countries), San Francisco Roots of Peace (Mines to Vines), San FranciscoSpecial Olympics (Boston) Community Development Victory Gardens (Cincinnati)

Congratulations to Neil Day on Blue Bottle Coffee's Feb 2015 acquisition of Perfect Coffee! Very proud to have backed you early as an angel investor, and working together was a genuine pleasure. Press release link below:https://bluebottlecoffee.com/frequency/perfect-joins-blue-bottleWhat/who we are, summarizing from our website at www.perfectcoffee.com:Perfect Coffee invented a fast and extremely simple system that helps you make a perfect cup of the very best and freshest artisan coffees every time in your home, office etc. We source roasted beans from true artisan roasters, grind the beans to a perfectly consistent size specific to that varietal and brewing method (drip, french press, espresso), and package the precise amount of the ground coffee by serving size in oxygen-flushed packets--all with our patent-pending grinding and packaging equipment. We sell Perfect Coffee online via monthly subscription or a la carte orders. See this link for an in-depth discussion of Perfect Coffee by serious coffee geeks: http://sprudge.com/perfect-coffee-startup.htmlwww.bluebottlecoffee.com

UPDATE: Campanja was acquired by customer engagement software company [24]7 in Campbell, CA in Sept 2015Campanja developed next-generation search marketing/advertising software, enabling marketers to significantly improve returns on their marketing investments through real-time bidding on Google keywords.In addition to Operators Fund, Campanja is backed by investors including Ram Shriram (Founding Board Member, Google) and David Axmark (Co-Founder, MySQL).Campanja has offices in Stockholm, Palo Alto and Londonwww.campanja.com

UPDATE Oct 2014: Cube was acquired by Rocket Lawyer, Inc. Cube is a software developer in the merchant payments processing space. Cube's API uniquely allows third-party developers of vertical point-of-sale merchant solutions a fast, easy-to-integrate platform for card-present payments processing.

Series A Investor and Advisor.

Internet media/ecommerce--free digital greeting products to aggregate consumer audience; product retailing; corporate rich-media email services. Deep strategic and content partnerships with major music labels/artists, entertainment companies, and Microsoft/MSN. Grew to 30th largest worldwide Internet audience website. Initial VC and strategic investment from New Enterprise Associates, Vulcan Ventures, Lightspeed VC, Bertelsmann, Universal Music Group, NBC Television and others (appx $50 million). IPO late '99 (appx $55 million raised; peak market cap $500 million). Acquired by largest strategic investor in 2001.

Hired to create and build Excite Studios. Mission was to leverage significant growth in audience traffic generated by Excite's pioneering search engine, building or acquiring and launching new services including ecommerce (comparison shopping, classified advertising, co-branded ecommerce services), social networks, communications (first free web-based email on a search engine portal, and Instant Messaging). Built multiple teams and acquired three companies. Close partnership with lead investor Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (Vinod Khosla) in this effort.

Interim executive leadership/Advisor to CEO for launch of SkyTel 2-Way (originally Destineer Corporation), the world's first two-way paging system. Backed by SkyTel, Inc., Microsoft, Bill Gates, Paul Allen and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (Kevin Compton).

Acting CEO on behalf of VC firm invested in CareerSite. CareerSite originally developed software that Monster, Inc. acquired and later incorporated into the highly successful Monster.com business, and the next rev of that software was targeted to the nascent, broader newspaper online classifieds business.

Turnaround CEO for pioneering developer/publisher of PC graphics software. Acquired by Canadian software publisher Corel Software.

Joined legacy sports footwear/apparel marketer Converse with several other new senior execs during period of serious financial and market share loss. Sought to engineer rapid turnaround while engaging Interco (financial holding company that owned Converse and other major consumer brands) in negotiations for a management buyout, prior to Interco's planned (prepackaged) Chapter 11 filing. Worked closely with the NBA (Commissioner David Stern and NBA Properties Pres. Rick Welts) to repair Converse's damaged working relationships there; reengaged key marketing partners such as Larry Bird and Magic Johnson; and refocused Converse product strategy on the core (highly profitable) Chuck Taylor All-Star business, and on basketball.Aggressive turnaround efforts quickly rebuilt Converse--to profitability in under one year ($35 million turnaround) with revenue run-rate increase of appx +30%. Interco was unexpectedly forced into premature Chapter 11 by outside LBO firm Apollo Management based on continued negative results with other Interco portfolio companies, and Interco's inability to service their overall debt. Converse was acquired by Nike.

Principal operations, sales and marketing executive for public company that created the first, worldwide system to enable wireless mobile asset tracking in cooperation with federal, regional and local law enforcement agencies (now also applied to missing-child location). Joined LoJack as a 10 person, out-of-cash company that had developed a working initial technology--but a business in search of a revenue and operations model and effective sales/marketing strategy that could produce rapid and sustainable results.Revamped product strategy to align with market need; created new distribution and operations system to quickly deliver LoJack directly to customers; built ubiquitous brand presence and high awareness in primary markets via innovative use of "guerrilla" (low-budget...) marketing techniques, involving law enforcement agencies directly in this process; and formed U.S. major market expansion footprint by direct negotiation with key government officials.LoJack is the dominant brand in the world in this business.

Management consulting business formed and led exclusively by six former Procter & Gamble Brand Management executives. ACG had a dual emphasis on consumer products and technology clients, providing business strategy, new product development, sales and marketing consulting. Selection of clients we served: --3M (consumer health care new product development)--Digital Equipment Corp. (personal computers)--Coca-Cola (fountain beverages) --Kraft (strategy for new foods product development)--Sara Lee Corp. (strategy for new foods product development)--Nabisco Brands (salted nuts products sales and marketing) --Haagen-Dazs (launch of first Haagen-Dazs ice cream bar)--Ralston Purina (strategic development behind new pet food technologies)--Alberto Culver (personal care products general strategic planning) --Vie de France (direct store delivery of fresh baked goods)--SmartFood (advisors on sale of the company to Frito-Lay)

Led the relaunch and turnaround of the Pringles Potato Chips business for Procter & Gamble, halting a 40% annual decline rate and generating the first-ever profitability for this business. At that time, the Pringles brand was expected to be discontinued by P&G due to its rapid volume and market share decline rate, and substantial continuing losses. As Brand Manager, I formed and led a high-level cross functional team of P&G managers and outside partners that developed a plan to completely overhaul the brand's legacy business. This bold, major overhaul was recommended to P&G senior management for a national launch without test marketing--a substantial departure from P&G's long-standing approach--and included: a complete product line change and taste improvement, packaging redesign to cut packaging materials in half and enable reduced (and thereby competitive) pricing, new consumer brand advertising that emphasized taste and fun (not packaging), in-store merchandising and direct-to-consumer promotion improvements, and changes to manufacturing and other major cost drivers. After relaunch, revenue and market share grew almost immediately and profitably, and continued to grow as subsequent management teams broadened the product line and increased international distribution. Pringles was later sold to Kellogg in a $2.7 billion all-cash transaction as P&G refocused its core corporate business strategy.

Operated my own business as a freelance photographer and writer until I started my "real" career with Procter & Gamble after college. Work included commercial and photojournalistic photography, in addition to writing for regional newspapers.