Collab Fund backs entrepreneurs and ideas pushing the world forward. As Head of GTM Advisory Services, Michael is responsible for helping founders and their teams accelerate customer acquisition, revenue growth, operational efficiency, and time to profitability.

As a strategic advisor for the Collab Fund since its inception, Michael provided guidance, expertise, and judicious insights to help the fund make informed fundraising and investment decisions.

As Industry 4.0 is propelling manufacturers to the next level, the need has never been greater for manufacturers to optimize their supply chains, increase efficiencies of their operations, protect their operations from cyber threats, and drive additional revenue from their service offerings. Servicenow addresses these key digital transformation use cases all on one platform.

ServiceNow makes work, work better for people. Experiences matter and ServiceNow enables the digital workflows that unleash productivity and fuel innovation. And that’s how great companies win for their customers, employees, and partners.

Box is an excellent company but a poor fit for Michael personally, hence the short stay. One mulligan in a three decade career is not too much to ask, right?

Sage Sales Consulting was formed to provide for other sales people what an amazing sales trainer provided for me early in my career. He help transform me from an typical sales person into a professional sales executive who is able to build "trusted advisor" relationships with clients. As a result, he changed my career arc and my life, for which I am eternally grateful. I now "pay that forward" and train a new generation of selling teams on the guiding principles, dynamic methodology, and conversational selling intelligence skills I have utilized with my own selling teams over the last 27 years. As a result, I enjoy the pleasure of watching them achieve their personal and professional goals. Over the years I have had the pleasure of training people and teams at Salesforce, Docusign, SmartRecruiters, Litmus, Teradata, Samanage, RainforestQA, and others.

Samanage is the Service Success Company, enabling organizations worldwide to provide a smarter service experience to their employees. As Chief Revenue Officer Michael owned P&L responsibility for global revenue, sales operations, pre-sales engineering, professional services, and customer success. His team consisted of approximately sixty people.

Over a two-year period, Michael built, scaled and managed a team of 40+ sales specialists and RVP's focused on selling Salesforce's portfolio of customer service & support solutions across all segments of the commercial business unit - MM, GB, HLS, FINS, and Retail/CPG. Since starting, growing and managing this team from inception, Service Cloud revenues have grown aggressively and have become the fastest-growing product line within the company.

Michael managed the commercial business in the Pacific Northwest Region, which also included SF Bay area accounts. His first full year in the role he made President's club and was the #1 RVP for general business in AMER. In year two he finished above plan with 50% bookings growth vs. the previous year. He is most proud of his customer's success (Pandora, Tableau Software, Concur, Tesla, Extreme Networks, Shoretel, Calix, SanMar, etc.) with Salesforce solutions and the growth of his team, some of whom have been promoted to leadership positions.

Michael was responsible for all field sales, inside sales, and channels for Quest Software's Desktop Virtualization Business Unit. Geographic responsibility included the Americas and Asia Pac.

Michael founded StashCast Media with a vision of helping marketers capitalize on two trends in the business; 1. The democratization of video content, specifically user generated content2. Social Marketing - how to leverage Social Media capabilities for marketing initiatives that drive ecommerce.Michael and team brought two SaaS based services to market;1. Studio Suite - A SaaS based service that enabled marketers/brand managers to set up, execute, and manage user-generated video contest campaigns. For example, the most watched commercial in history (A Doritos Commercial) was created via this model and showcased during the Super Bowl.2. Clever Sherpa - A social-based viral recommendation service that enabled marketers to drive e-commerce sales for products and services that matched buyers needs. Accomplishments;1. Having the intestinal fortitude to start a company from scratch and walking away from a secure high paying job to do it.2. Raising $500k in seed money based on a vision.3. Bringing two services to market 4. Hiring a very talented team5. Not letting the word "no" stop usLessons learned;1. How to lead by establishing a vision and executing against it2. How to raise money3. How to manage & be responsible for P&L4. How to manage business operations - personnel, payroll, taxes, insurance, accounting, legal, office space5. How to set up a corporation with equity/convertible note modelMonday Morning Quarterback Lessons;1. Raise 3x more money than you think you need, especially on the front end of a major recession2. Sell consulting services while developing products to drive cash flow3. Don't lose sight of what's most important - your family

I managed large DSP accounts such as TWC and Verizon. I initially started in this position in 1999, then took a management position for a few years, and then back into an individual contributor role (by choice for personal reasons). There are a number of things I am most proud of to date during my time with the company.1. Joining a 40 person start-up in late 1999 when I had a great management job at BMC and doing well. 2. Helping take the company public (July 2000) when many companies died on the vine during the .bomb implosion. 3. Consistency in performance. I have been the Sales Executive of The Year 3 of the last 4 years and 4 out of 6. This has been during a time when the "Enterprise Software" space was down during this post-bubble world.4. Successfully convincing our CEO & CFO (Radha and Brian) to invest in building a specific business unit focuses on the DSP market. This was much more than a vertical sales effort. This included dedicated and focused marketing, product management, and R&D.

Ran North American sales for our DSP business unit. My team drove sales to large Cable MSO's such as Comcast, TWC, Cox, Adelphia, etc. and the large Telco's such as SBC (at the time), BellSouth, and Verizon. Our success resulted in a $60M business, which was over 70% of the company's annual revenues. The 10 person team consisted of sales executives and system engineers (sales consultants).

Left Oracle and moved to Houston to help BMC begin it's foray into the distributed systems management business. Left Houston and was one of first sales reps ever allowed to work outside of Houston. Telecommuted from my house in San Francisco until I helped open a local office downtown. Sold the Patrol product line successfully. During my tenure at BMC, both as a sales executive and sales management, we grew annualized sales from $5m to a $200m business. It was a great ride.

What a great place to start in the technology industry in the early 1990's. I cut my teeth learning about technology, sales, and marketing and was very fortunate to get started at Oracle. I began my Oracle career in finance doing collections as a way to get my foot in the door and work my way into the sales organization. After a few months in finance I was hired by Hilarie Koplow onto the "Direct Response" team. Our job was to outbound and inbound 100 calls per day and qualify the opportunities for the various sales teams. It was a tremendous training ground. Five months into that position and after being promoted to team lead I was able to move up the ladder into PC sales, and then promoted again into Telesales shortly thereafter. I was originally hired by Vinny Smith at Oracle and am very proud and thankful for my time there.