Toby Cox

Technology and Product Leader

Auckland, New Zealand (+12:00 UTC) Englishfrom Takaka, New Zealand
Usually responds in 2 days
Free
Price per hour
30 min
Time Blocks Available
5.00
1 reviews / 1 sessions
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-
Next availability
Not available in the next 30 days

Bio

I started my career as a mobile software engineer. With some friends, working from our kitchen table, we build iPhone apps for some of the world's largest brands. Names like DreamWorks, Time Warner and Nabisco. We started even before the official tools were released. We pivoted that company into a product company called Carnival and build one of the first mobile marketing platforms. Eventually that company was acquired by Campaign Monitor. I spent a few years bumming around in London working with various startups. I even had the title "entrepreneur in residence" for a while. Which is the most extravagant title, but it was a great time! I then joined two friends who had started an agency, and helped them build out the engineering team. We built a hybrid agency and startup studio which is now the premier startup studio in Australia. It's called Paloma. We have around 110 people and specialise in creating early stage B2B and fintech products. We operate both in the early stage, and at scale with millions of users.

Expertise

  • Building a team

    I've built teams in engineering, product, design, sales. From 1 (myself) all the way up to around 100 people. I've learnt (the hard way) how to hire and fire managers, leaders and execs.

  • Idea validation

    Have been involved in startups for a long time. Have been through the early stages of many many things! Nothing is ever the same, but I have some insights!

  • Mindset coaching

    I hope I'm OK at this, having managed a lot of people in my career. I also find this pretty important for myself, so very keen to learn from others too!

  • Product management

    I've never done this with the title of Product Manager, but I've hired and grown product teams. And with my experience with startups, being product minded is absolutely critical.

  • Venting frustration

    I'm extremely here for this, everyone needs to do it! It's also called "staring into the abyss" and it's very healthy. Talking through your frustrations is the best way to unpick them and figure out where your frustrations actually lie.

Toolkit

  • Google Data Studio logo

    Google Data Studio

    6 years of experience

    I've set up a full Data Studio stack for all our company metrics. We pipe everything in, and have dashboards across as much as possible. Love talking about this!

  • Ruby on Rails logo

    Ruby on Rails

    22 years of experience

    Rails engineer from way back. Still write Ruby code for much of our company analytics. I think it's one of the best stacks for building startups still.

Industries

  • FinTech

    I've built a lot of fintech products and ventures over the years. Afterpay, Marmalade, Lendy. From a product perspective and engineering perspective, as well as building the teams.

  • Web Development

    I've built a lot of web products and ventures over the years. Afterpay, Marmalade, Lendy. From a product perspective and engineering perspective, as well as building the teams.

  • SaaS

    I've built a lot of SaaS products and ventures over the years. Afterpay, Marmalade, Lendy. From a product perspective and engineering perspective, as well as building the teams.

Experience

  • Paloma

    General Manager, CTO
    •palomagroup.com

    I help lead Paloma, a world-class product agency which the technology partner behind three unicorns (so far). The products we've created are in the hands of millions of users world-wide. We provide high performing cross functional teams of engineers, designers and product managers who thrive in ambiguity and complexity. Our teams have proven skills in building world-class technology products — we can work from just the early stage of idea, or we can help accelerate and grow existing products.

    Digital AgenciesVenture CapitalFinTechHealthTechB2B

  • Carnival

    Director, VP of Engineering

    At Carnival we developed mobile applications for some of the worlds largest brands. Examples include: - Promotional apps for DreamWorks Animation's films Puss in Boots and Rise of the Guardians. - Official tour app for the group One Direction's North American tour. - iPhone and iPad apps for the New Zealand Herald — New Zealand's largest newspaper. - Grabaseat app for Air New Zealand. I also lead the development team for our core product: the Carnival platform. Our platform was a mobile marketing and analytics platform to allow brands to manage their complete customer lifecycle on mobile. It allowed marketing teams to deliver push notifications and in-app messaging through an easy to use and beautiful UI. We were able to track the efficacy of these campaigns and ensure brands could effectively engage with their customers. Some of our larger customers were Time/CNN, DreamWorks, T-Mobile and Mondelēz International. The platform scaled to handle hundreds of thousands of notifications delivered to tens of millions of devices. We raised $2.4 million USD from an investment team including Google Ventures, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Lerer Ventures in order to build out the platform and scale the team. In 2016 Carnival Mobile was acquired by Sailthru.

    B2BMarTech
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