VP Product Marketing, Advertising | Exited Founder
Former co-founder and COO of LeagueSide. We built a sponsorship marketplace that connected brands with youth sports organizations. Hyper local marketing at scale + giving kids the opportunity to play = win-win. In growing LeagueSide, I, at some point, ran every department (happy to provide my perspective here). At the end, I focused on product, software, operations, and finance. At the company that acquired us, I own product marketing and sales enablement for the advertising business. Here's some of the highlights from my time building LeagueSide: - Gave over 5 million kids the opportunity to play - Worked with some of the best brands on the planet including Cigna, Verizon, Comcast, AT&T, HCA, New York Life, Uber, Visa, Truist, and McDonald's to name a few - Grew to 8 figures of ARR, nearly doubling every year for the last 4 years, while maintaining profitability - Raised $4m from incredible advisors/investors including funds, entrepreneurs, and professional athletes - Grew team from 14 to 40 people with 85% employee retention. We invested heavily in our team and they invested heavily into us to which I'll forever be grateful - Sold to PE-backed saas/fintech startup in the youth sports space. Owned due diligence streams for technology/product, supply side of marketplace, finance/accounting, and HR/benefits I am excited to give back to the entrepreneurship community and support others in their professional and personal development!
Raised small amounts of funding along the way, but otherwise bootstrapped our startup to 8 figures of ARR, doubling each year, while maintaining profitability.
We invested heavily in our team and they invested in us back. We grew to 40 people with low voluntary turnover. We often hired who some would call "under qualified" candidates, but deliberately invested in our people to level them up into rockstars.
Owned the GTM for the highly-fragmented youth sports side of our marketplace. These users were low-tech and often volunteers, which presented several interesting challenges. At the company that acquired us, I own product marketing and sales enablement for the entire advertising business focusing on the GTM for new and existing digital and sponsorship products.
I am a strong believer in the scientific method, but at early stages you need as much art as you do science. I can help ask the questions for you to decide whether you should or shouldn't pursue an idea.
Launching, running, and working in a startup is hard. Sometimes you need an outside perspective, someone to vent to, or reassurance that this is/isn't the status quo. I get it, and I'm here to lend an ear!
I have launched a lot of successful and unsuccessful products. Each product launch is different and the role you play often changes. I can help you with project management and figuring out what is and isn't important in a launch.
Product market fit is a hard concept to nail down. You can also have product market fit at different stages. I can help you determine if now is the time to go fast or now is the time to be patient and get more validation
Product marketing is a very versatile and complex role that sits at the center of many departments. I can help you navigate your organization and align your strengths and weaknesses to your role, while helping you brainstorm where to strategically focus.
I am an Asana power user! I organize projects, teams, and my own personal life in Asana. That said, Asana is just a tool and before figuring out how to best leverage it, you need to build your own theories of the best (and worst) ways to manage projects.
Led the decision to choose HubSpot as our CRM instead of Salesforce and believe firmly that was the right decision. We also leveraged HubSpot as our inbound and marketing automation platform.
I wrote a lot of code over COVID when we went through a downsizing of our engineering team. I mostly worked on our React app which had both javascript and Typescript.
I've been a Rails user for a long time and seen the many iterations the framework has gone through. Despite all the criticisms and the dying down of popularity, I love this framework and think it's opinionated nature lets you focus on code instead of configuration.
Build relationships with families in the moments that matter through youth sports sponsorships and digital media. TeamSnap's network of 25 million authenticated users and 20k+ youth sports organizations makes it easy for brands to reach families at the field, at home, and on the go. Learn how our sponsors including Dairy Queen, Gatorade, Johnsonville, Marriott, and Panda Express use TeamSnap to reach the "Chief Household Officer".
LeagueSide makes sponsoring thousands of youth sports organizations as easy as creating a Facebook ad campaign. We work with clients including Verizon, McDonald's, and Boston Children's Hospital to help them accomplish their marketing goals and support the local community.
Fellowship that places talented graduates in emerging cities across the country to work for a startup or early stage company for two years. VFA provides fellows with the experience, resources, and network to become successful entrepreneurs.