Six-time founder helping companies grow with strategies that advance product adoption & revenue.
I'm a serial entrepreneur currently working as CEO of Growth Minded, where I work each day to help startups succeed. Prior to Growth Minded, I founded Velocity Growth and scaled to 7-figure ARR, was Chief Product Officer at Sandboxx and before that, Head of Growth at Upside Travel. I've been a co-founder of 6 companies (4 startups & 2 agencies) and have advised or consulted for close to 200 others. I'm an active startup coach who is well versed in all aspects of startup strategy - including product, marketing, and growth. I've got deep experience helping high growth B2C companies grow, have worked with some of the fastest growing B2B companies, and have deep experience in E-commerce as well. Work I've done has won over 60 web awards, including 3 Webby awards. I'm as comfortable bootstrapping as I am running marketing teams with over $1M in weekly spend. My deep startup experience enables me to look at the big picture holistically and outline core strategies that drive more growth for my companies. My core specialties within growth are retention based growth, activation (driving more people through the funnel), experimentation, and email marketing, but I'm well versed in all aspects of growth.
As a founder I've raised over $2.5M for startups across B2C and B2B. As an advisor I've helped companies raise another few million. I spent some time managing one of the most prominent Accelerator's in the USA (LAUNCH) and as a result vetted and did diligence on dozens of companies. I understand what investors are looking for, how to build a strong and compelling deck, and how to get your company in front of investors. I'm also a small investor myself.
I've bootstrapped 3 companies to profitability and love looking at sustainable, organic growth strategies. If you need help thinking through ways to drive growth, I'm always happy to dig in.
I started my career as an engineer at an Email Marketing company, so I know the industry well. As a growth/product lead, I've: grown an engaged email list by over 650% in 12 months for a B2B company, built an email list from 0 to 50k in 6 months for a B2B company, increased open rates by over 50% through A/B testing for a B2C company, increased CTRs for a B2C company by >300% for a B2C company. I know the ins and outs of deliverability, list growth, activation & more.
I'm well versed in all aspects of growth including the Pirate Funnel (AARRR) strategies around Acquisition, Activation, Referrel, Revenue & Retention. I’ve helped dozens of companies with growth, and have lead teams of up to 15 people. Highlights: Helped a B2C company grow to over 1M subscribers in under 18 months, Helped a Travel company grow their user base by > 700% in 12 months, reduced CAC for a client by over 1000% in 12 months.
I've built and run growth programs for Bootstrapped SaaS companies to Consumer companies with over $1M in monthly budget. I've worked across a wide variety of industries. I can help you maximize your ROI regardless of your budget, and implement the set of tools you can use across all paid channels.
I've built over 100 sites and apps in my 20 year career, and am currently Chief Product Officer at Sandboxx. I'm a regular speaker at Product School events, and run a Product Bootcamp for entrepreneurs looking to get their product to market. I believe great products need great growth, and I tend to look at product development from a growth mindset from the start. I also generally advise on building market testable features, and launching early to get feedback from real users.
Having PM fit is critical before you start trying to scale your business. If you try to grow fast before you have product market fit, you'll likely waste time and money. Or worse - you may never get off the ground. I've learned this the hard way after trying to scale a startup before we had PM traction, luckily figured it out in time, and grew slower but smarter - eventually scaling.
I look at this as more than just SEO, and include referrals, SEO and content marketing as a comprehensive organic plan. Organic channels can be immensely powerful for your company regardless of stage, amount of capital raised, or revenue. I can help you define what levers you can pull to drive more organic traffic, what it takes from a time and team standpoint, and how to determine which areas to focus on first.
Need help building an outbound strategy from scratch? I've built outbound strategies for B2B, B2C and eCommerce companies that have enabled inside sales teams (with some help from marketing) go from zero to millions in revenue. I've built sales lead processes from scratch, and have scaled sales orgs from just me though handing off to a team of sales reps.
As a 6 time founder and advisor to dozens of companies I understand the ups and downs of startup life. If you need an ear to vent into, I'm here to help. Cash flow issues? Team challenges? Co-Founder quit? Market shift under you? Competitor steal your idea? Been there! Happy to be an ear or provide guidance - or both.
I've been using the platform for a number of years, and have run projects ranging from small bootstrapped company work though mid-market and up market planning, roadmapping, and task allocation.
I've been using Google Data Studio for a while, and have experience with Data Studio data pulls, reporting, and integrations with various 3rd party data feeds.
I've used Hubspot a couple times in high growth startups to help with inbound, outbound, and full funnel / CRM based marketing programs. I also understand some of Hubspot's limitations, and areas to steer clear of.
I've been using Looker for a while, and have experience with using Looker for tracking analytics, retention, for data pulls, reporting, and integrations with various 3rd party data feeds and more.
I've been using MailChimp for a very long time and know all about their moves into marketing automation as well. From creating and segmenting lists to running split tests on subject lines, I understand the ins and outs.
I leverage Mixpanel for event tracking, cohort and retention analysis, funnel analysis and more. I've helped both consumer startups as well as gaming companies, and even SaaS platforms scale by leveraging Mixpanel. I'm comfortable setting it up, optimizing it, and creating the reports you need to make sure you're on the right track.
I run a digital marketing agency with clients ranging from small to large across USA, EMEA and other markets. The areas of services include SEO, Performance Marketing, and Lifecycle and Conversion Marketing.
SupporTrends, your Customer Experience Superhero, has grown from MVP to competing with Medallia and Qualtrics in 18 months. SupporTrends easily connects to ticketing platforms like Zendesk, Salesforce, Intercom, and Gladly to automatically deliver the most important themes and insights, and turn them into actions that help reduce churn, increase agent efficiency, and speed up product development cycles.
Groopit replaces the manual, time-consuming process of ad-hoc data collection with #crowdsolving. The enterprise SaaS solution makes it easy for leaders to collect real-time data and accelerate progress. Recognized by Fast Company in the World Changing Idea Awards 2020, learn more here: https://groopit.co/
We are filling a venture building gap in the DC startup ecosystem by empowering senior innovators to build companies at the intersection of technology and regulation. https://www.blacklabvc.com/
Building the Growth Engine for Multi-Location Businesses https://growthminded.co
Velocity Growth provides holistic marketing for high growth companies. We focus on 3 core areas: Performance Marketing Lifecycle Marketing Search Engine Optimization Velocity Growth helps companies grow via industry-leading marketing strategy and award-winning hands-on execution. Learn more at: https://www.velocitygrowth.com
VP7 venture partner at Republic.
Sandboxx connects our military community, making service members and their supporters more mission- ready than ever before. I served as the Chief Product Officer and owned the product vision as well as Growth & experimentation.
I advised the team on initial growth strategy and helped align them to scale across multiple channels. This lead to an early M&A deal and successful outcome.
Founded by ex-Priceline founders, Upside Business Travel enables do-it-yourself business travelers to search, book & manage business trips on their own. I was brought on to help scale the company and build out the growth and marketing teams, as well as provide product leadership. Through experimentation, I was able to drive the company go to market strategy shift from a B2C focus to a B2B focus, where we saw explosive growth.
Votion's industry leading Prediction & Voting Bracket platform, along with it's suite of interactive content marketing products build brand awareness, drive audience engagement, and provide unique and powerful ways to deliver content to customers.
Red Tricycle (LAUNCH Incubator inaugural class, 2015) connects families with awesome things to do with their kids. With over 1 million subscribers in 9 cities we recently launched a double sided events marketplace in San Francisco that is growing rapidly. At Red Tricycle I ran product, growth and ad ops and worked closely with our CEO on company strategy.
Tree Hill Creative is a web strategy and development studio focused on content first, responsive design and development.
Verifeed built a robust platform to help brands, businesses, campaigns and media companies attract and retain targeted, influential and committed consumers – by providing end-users with an innovative way to discover more relevant and accurate information and valuable conversations with other people who share their interests. Our algorithms and processes vet, validate and reward the credibility, relevance and veracity of both original crowd-reported contributions and posts mined from Twitter and other social sources. And we’re just getting started: Our iPhone SDK now in the works is an industry game-changer, and we’re signing some of the biggest names in media, advocacy and advertising as flagship clients.
Temp CTO to oversee development of Racemenu's suite of products during a transition from web to mobile.
Craig provides marketing, strategy, training and technology consultation to New Signature’s clients. Craig has spent the last 14 years helping organizations and businesses create or improve their online presence through strategic use of solutions and technology. Craig began developing Internet-based applications while in college and has been involved in two successful startups, and has also worked for, or consulted with, dozens of larger firms. Craig joined New Signature from UPTHOUGHT, Inc.—a full-service web solutions company focused on delivering high-quality websites and web applications that he co-founded in 2005. Before co-founding UPTHOUGHT, Craig was a lead software architect at enContext Solutions, Inc., a software engineer at e-Dialog, Inc., and a lead application developer at Advanced Media Productions. Starting in 2001 Craig was also a part-time web design and development instructor for Clark College’s Continuing Education departments based in Framingham and Braintree, MA. His areas of expertise include online marketing and strategy, custom website and web application development, standards-based front end development, open source content management systems, and community driven websites. His technical experience includes XHTML, CSS, XML, ColdFusion, J2EE, PHP, Ruby on Rails, JavaScript, AJAX, Drupal, WordPress, Joomla/Mambo, MySQL, Oracle, and MS SQL Server. Craig earned his Bachelor of Science in Information Management and Technology from Syracuse University. Specialties User Experience, Wireframing, Information Architecture, Open Source Content Management Systems, Custom Website and Web Application Development, HTML, CSS, Standards-based Front End Development, Graphic and Interactive Design, Community Driven Websites. Technology includes Drupal, Wordpress, HTML, CSS, XHTML, Coldfusion, PHP, Ruby On Rails, JavaScript, AJAX, Joomla, mySQL, Oracle, SQL Server, among others.
Barrel of Jobs is helping to revolutionize the social recruiting industry through social referrals. The platform uses crowdsourcing along with the power of social media to help employers find a better job candidates faster by incentivizing the referral process. As a technical co-founder I provided product strategy and oversaw technical architecture and development from concept through launch at DEMO.com in 2012.
I was a co-founder and led engineering, product and overall strategy for UPTHOUGHT, a profitable Web Product Development and Solutions Company. Built numerous high-visibility websites for a wide range of clients. Grew the team from 2 to 12 people, and oversaw technical sales, development, product strategy, user experience design, and architecture of websites built in Ruby on Rails, PHP, Drupal and ColdFusion. Notable UPTHOUGHT clients included: Roomorama, Williams College, Bunker Hill Community College, Mass Bible Society, ProctorCam
We build one of the first content management systems using server side Javascript that enabled our customers to "click and type" into content wells that they could publish in seconds. Clients included Elsevier, Boston Institute of Contemporary Art, Athenahealth, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Forum Systems.
Taught a Web Development class for AIC (formerly Clark University's extended campus) that covered ColdFusion, Javascript, SQL & Relational Database Design, e-Commerce and Project Planning. Developed lesson plans and objectives for numerous classes over multiple semesters and taught over 60 students during my time at the college.
Was a lead developer on multiple service-oriented e-Mail Marketing products including Campaign Builder™, a robust Email Campaign Management product with an extensive feature set built on ColdfusionMX, DHTML/Javascript, some Java, and Oracle. Used PL-SQL to speed up millionplus row queries for aggregate reporting. Clients included the NFL, NHL, TJ-Maxx, Avis, Citysearch, and Reuters.
