Open Development and our 3 SaaS products CanIRank, Growth.AI, and Pretarget were acquired by Scorpion, the leading provider of digital marketing technology and services for local businesses. Since the acquisition, I've served as Scorpion's Chief Data Scientist, helping to establish Scorpion as a leading innovator in the use of generative and discriminative AI approaches to improving marketing performance.As a data science team, we pride ourselves on quickly solving engineering challenges while remaining focused on optimizing for business value rather than cool technology for its own sake. This has enabled us to quickly launch 6 successful AI products into production:- AI Chat: award-winning RAG chatbot customized to the needs of local businesses. Over 50% of website visitors who chat with the bot successfully become a lead.- Ranking.AI: AI-powered SEO service resulting in a 102% increase in average organic traffic growth / client, and a 177% increase in SEO attach rate- Delivery.AI: 66% reduction in time to launch websites- Leads.AI: analyze over 1 million customer phone calls / emails / texts to score lead value and call handling- Copilot: save clients time and improve conversion by drafting responses to customer communications- AI Content Service: leverage chains, function calling, fine-tuning, and LLMs to generate customized, grounded, marketing content draftsOur products leverage Azure Machine Learning, OpenAI, DataBricks, Cosmos, Langchain, LlamaIndex, Qdrant, Azure Data Factory, Heroku, AWS, Postgres, Redis, Azure SQL, Python, Ruby, PySpark, Pandas, SciKit-Learn, and other tooling to enable rapid experimentation and iteration on a system spanning terabytes of data distributed across over 100 cloud and legacy on-prem data stores, with predictive and generative models deployed for use within multiple web and mobile applications.

CanIRank is a technology-enabled growth marketing platform combining the best of marketing SaaS and full service agency models.Our software uses machine learning to identify specific, actionable opportunities for growing your traffic. For every opportunity, choose to follow the instructions to do it yourself, or delegate to our team of experienced marketing specialists.Using this more responsive and data-driven approach to growth marketing, we’ve racked up some impressive client wins, such as:✅ Taking a SaaS startup from 0 to 12M+ organic visitors✅ Over 3,000% ROI for a financial services business✅ Adding > $1M in sales for multiple ecommerce stores✅ Landing “boring” businesses press coverage in NYT, USA Today, Inc, Forbes, Entrepreneur, etcAs Founder & Chief Data Scientist, I developed and deployed the machine learning models powering our marketing software, including the SEO industry's most accurate keyword difficulty tool, website categorization, document relevance, opportunity scoring, and a personalized SEO Strategy recommender algorithm.I also recruited, trained, and managed a team of 20+ high-performing marketing specialists to deliver technology-enabled organic growth marketing strategies for Full Service clients, adding over $80M in ARR to clients’ bottom lines.

SaaS.Group is a fast-growing software as a service portfolio company. For each acquisition, I work with investors and operating teams to help SaaS.Group optimize positioning, pricing, acquisition channels, and nurturing to unlock significant additional growth. Developed SaaS Growth Blueprint with best practices for technology stack, site structure, and marketing processes. Assist with evaluating growth potential of new acquisition targets. Manage execution of all marketing functions for SaaS.Group portfolio companies with CanIRank Full Service team.

Open Development is focused on leveraging the power of machine learning to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of digital marketing.As Chief Scientist, I develop and refine our AI-driven marketing software, including designing and implementing machine learning models for all products (Neural Networks, Support Vector Machines, Decision Trees, etc.), and lead a team of 6 software engineers / UX designers in their development, acting as both Product Manager and Project Manager.Launched CanIRank.com, the only SEO software that uses machine learning to make SEO data actionable and understandable even for those without SEO expertise: an "SEO consultant in a box". CanIRank’s ranking models can predict the ordering of Google results with nearly 60% accuracy,Launched Pretarget.com, a predictive analytics platform to identify, score, and categorize prospective customers early in the marketing funnel. All the benefits of bespoke data science consulting, but leveraging a shared infrastructure capable of generating a custom predictive scoring model specifically for your business at 1/100th the cost of building in-house.Launched GrowthAI.com, a recommendation engine that leverages neural network-trained classifiers and scorers to sift through your marketing data and identify your highest potential growth opportunities.

Applied lean startup techniques to evaluate and iterate product concepts using customer interviews, landing pages, and concierge MVPs. Ended up falling in love with machine learning and devouring every book I could get my hands on while getting applied practice and 1-on-1 coaching from Dean Abbott of Abbott Analytics. Also taught myself PHP, Ruby, and Ruby on Rails, developed over a dozen websites and consulted with startups and established companies on product and marketing strategy; the most memorable engagement was designing a quantitative valuation model for intangible assets that could withstand the scrutiny of the courts.

Responsible for the company's global marketing, product, and strategic direction. Managed budget and ~15 employees from 7 different countries, including Marketing, Business Development, and Product Management teams. Cross-functional collaboration with international sales teams to collect customer requirements and devise solutions balancing varying needs of international markets with highly constrained technical resources. Worked closely with CTO and engineering team to build product into a top 100 online media property reaching 40 million unique visitors a month and serving over half a million registered users. Designed and product managed a revamping of monetization analytics tools, an automated valuation system, anomaly-based fraud detection system, and a system that used multivariate testing to automatically optimize page layouts for optimum monetization.

Established Sedo's US subsidiary and grew the company to 20 employees and > 10 million dollars revenue. Devised go-to-market strategy and product managed the launch of a new monetization product that grew to become the company's largest revenue source. Negotiated partnerships and transactions with C-level executives at companies ranging from startup to Fortune 500. Using primarily organic channels, grew website traffic ~10x. Devised and implemented several successful PR campaigns, did lots of media interviews (newspaper, radio, and television), spoke at conferences, organized events with 100+ attendees. Hired, trained, and managed employees, building a warm and supportive company culture that many former employees describe as the best working environment of their career. Particularly proud that during my tenure as CEO we never lost an employee.

Worked my way up from intern to overall responsibility for Sedo's international business, with a particular focus on the US and UK markets. Built partnership with Google from initial cold outreach through negotiation and implementation of a collaboration that ultimately generated over $100M/ year, making us one of Google's largest partners in Europe. Product managed a redesign of monetization product that led to a 50x-increase in revenue. Within a space of 18 months, grew my team from 1 to 10 members to become Sedo's fastest growing division while maintaining profitability.

Web development (XML, HTML, Java) for stealth phase B2B online advertising marketplace. Developed initial marketing plan and go-to-market strategy

Worked in operations at consulting firm focused on helping high-technology clients shorten their product development cycles while simultaneously improving product quality. Designed and coded corporate website.