I believe in the power of entrepreneurs to change the world around them for the better. More than ever, we need entrepreneurs to thrive across technology, business, community, non-profits, and government. I wrote this book to help entrepreneurs lead innovative teams more effectively and to lower their barriers to entry and success. High-performing entrepreneurial teams don’t just innovate toward mission; they also create sustainable engines of innovation in the behaviors they cultivate and the people they hire, develop, and retain. And that’s what this book is about — the people and culture needed to create, innovate, and solve problems repeatedly and better over time.

Startup advisor, board member, and fund advisor. Work directly with founders, CEOs, and executive teams on strategy, product, and culture. Domains span gaming, social networking, music, film, and general entertainment.

Instrumental leverages data and machine learning to improve hardware manufacturing yields and efficiency. The industry is rapidly changing due to increased automation and competitive pressures to reduce costs, improve quality, and increase speed. Instrumental builds core technology to inject critical feedback loops that help engineering & ops teams rapidly converge to stable higher-yield lines, and reduce the release of subpar units outside the factory. 
 Instrumental is a team of smart, hard-working, good humans, committed to our mission and our customers.

Responsible for the end-to-end product, engineering, and technical operations pipeline. Built the product org from a single product manager, a few designers, and two analysts to a 30-person data-driven team. Developed a culture that ties projects to mission, strategy, and long-term objectives. Established core processes, including annual planning and quarterly OKRs. Formalized the idea of distributed autonomous teams, including engineering, product, design, and analytics.Spearheaded the 2015 growth effort across all product pods, focussing on mobile first. Developed a holistic product-wide plan that included FTUE, discovery, developer insight and incentives, and game server global distribution. Achieved about 85% of plan to help propel us into 2016, one of the strongest growth years in Roblox history, ultimately hitting player and revenue year-over-year growth of 300-400%. (This was one of a few contributing factors).Delivered the Roblox Xbox app to market. The first of our apps built on our proprietary engine to deliver a seamless 2D/3D integrated experience. The first app redesign in a few years, and the first to target a specific user persona to drive UI/UX design. Also, our first app to have a structured onboarding experience, which substantially improved new-player retention. The Roblox Xbox app has dominated the Top Free category, and is the longest running #1 Top Free app in the Xbox store.Transitioned to SVP Product & Engineering in mid 2014, and promoted to Chief Product Officer in early 2015.

Led all engineering teams responsible for the ROBLOX gaming platform: web, scalability, rendering, networking, physics, Studio, and our 3D apps on mobile and desktop. Organized the team around small entrepreneurial pods, and drove continuous improvements, throughput, focus, agility, self-organization, and iterative development as the team scaled. Guided the web team from bi-weekly to daily releases, and the core client team to weekly releases from 3-4 week cycles. Helped shape culture and core values.Additionally, oversaw all aspects of our infrastructure: physical & virtual web stacks, distributed gaming cloud, network layer, content delivery system, security, disaster mitigation, 24/7 monitoring & response. Built and maintained our provisioning models, negotiated contracts, and managed all vendor relationships. Leveraging extensive automation and real-time analytics, managed an extensive and growing system with a small team. Established a track record of rapid response, efficiency, and cost cutting.Consistently reduced data center year-over-year costs while improving reliability and scalability. Moved the data center twice, ultimately to a self-managed facility.Transitioned to Engineering Operations in 2009, and then to Engineering & Operations in 2011. Promoted to SVP in Fall 2013.

First hire to lead all areas outside of engineering. Responsible for developing and implementing revenue & growth strategies, and for scaling operational capacity. Areas of responsibility included ad sales, online advertising, server procurement, product management, customer service, game/community moderation, recruiting, insurance, regulatory compliance, and business modeling. Created analytical models for much of the above.Launched our virtual goods business, starting the transition from membership revenue to micro-transactions. Created the first economic models for price sensitivity, and developed a production pipeline across all asset types.Scaled out CS/Mod from a handful to a metrics driven team. Led our first experiment with direct sales; hired salespeople, created products and pitch decks, developed regions and comp plans.Promoted from Director of Operations in Summer 2008.

Enfold was an early stage company developing a platform to help manage the health of chronically ill patients. The platform facilitated the creation and management of electronic health records, and leveraged those records to help patients maintain care plans through email and mobile notifications. Responsible for defining the strategy and scheduling of Enfold's products and services, working with business and technology stakeholders. Provided operational support for product launch, including development of internal processes for managing milestones, measuring progress, and assessing quality. Improved the delivery success of an outsourced engineering team in Bangalore, India by (a) reducing product scope to focus on core intellectual property, and (b) introducing a three-week iteration schedule that distributed technical risk and increased measurement and feedback opportunities.

Board of SupervisorsMay 2006 – August 2006The Office of the Legislative Analyst examines existing and potential policies, programs, and regulations for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Analyzed and recommended public policy. Examined statistical trends, economic impact, and administrative and legal constraints and opportunities. Investigated election and voter turnout, wellness incentives for the city’s employee health program, citywide family-friendly policies, and business improvement districts (for the Controller’s Office). Provided staff support to members of the Budget & Finance and Rules Committees.Mayor's Office of Policy & FinanceJanuary 2006 – May 2006Mayor Gavin Newsom created the Task Force for Transitional Youth (2006) to develop recommendations for better serving youth aging out of public institutional care. Co-authored a policy analysis report for the newly formed Task Force. Identified service gaps for youth aging-out of foster care, juvenile justice, and other institutions. Recommended housing policy alternatives and an analytical framework for assessing them.

Progio Mobile made the Progio handheld fitness device, which provided mobile audio and video fitness instruction and tracked performance. The idea was ahead of its time: Progio was a two-sided market of coaches and athletes, that distributed user-generated workouts to mobile points of engagement, and that created a handheld device dedicated to fitness.Led the development of an Internet application for sharing multimedia content among mobile devices. Guided development from inception through market deployment; responsible for full development lifecycle, including requirements, project plan, design, development, testing, and deployment. Programmed all aspects of our back-end platform, from SQL schemas to Web Services. Created testing tools that increased product quality and stability, and decreased the release cycle. Patent co-author, U.S. patent “Communication System and Protocol for an Interactive Device”. Managed the information technology (IT) network infrastructure.

REPLICUS was developing a distributed data storage network based on peer-to-peer networking technology and commodity servers. Led the design and development of the REPLICUS Administrative Console, a web application enabling administrators to monitor and manage a geographically-distributed network of peer-2-peer storage cells.

Dealix is a marketing lead-generation and lead-processing web service for the automotive industry.Developed reporting tools to monitor business metrics. Assessed data-mining tools for the next-generation reporting infrastructure; formulated the business metrics. Redesigned a real-time lead-processing module that increased performance by up to 4 times.

8NN was developing a telephone and messaging service for the consumer market.Developed a telephone services business model, including sales, resource, & cash flow projections. Recruited by the Chairman and lead investor to deliver a “go/no-go” decision within 2 months. Responsible for market research and analysis, operations, and legal and financial services. Established dialogs with potential partners, including Sprint and MCI.

Waterfall Networks was developing a telecommunications hardware product for Internet and telephony service providers; the "softswitch" shared voice, video, and applications among multiple users.Led a bicoastal team to design and implement a software security framework for real-time multimedia Internet communications. Delivered the framework within 4 months of project conception. Principle architect of the security design that led to a patent application. Developed white papers and was the resident security expert.

ShortCycles was developing a collaboration website for marketing and sales professionals in large companies.Co-developed a sales-marketing web portal for Hewlett-Packard and other enterprise clients. Project lead for “publishing” and “mobile” components. Co-led the most client-appreciated release in the software’s history: responded to customer concerns by initiating a software redesign that improved performance and usability.

Knowledge Revolution developed desktop simulation software for mechanical design engineers. The company was acquired by MSC.Software in late 1998.Managed the design and development of a mechanical engineering software product with annual revenues of approximately $800,000. Retained by MSC in its acquisition of Knowledge Revolution and promoted to manager during a post-acquisition reorganization, while the second-most junior member of the group. Salvaged a strained relationship between MSC.Software and CoCreate, a client; overcame ill will, converting a 1-week turn-around ultimatum into a trusted relationship. Managed business partnerships, provided technical leadership, and mentored junior engineers.