BIOGRAPHY
I am a digital executive, entrepreneur, investor and product leader with 20 years experience and a proven track record of transforming big ideas into successful and profitable products that connect with markets and consumers. My experience set spans from online to offline, and from seed and growth stage startups to major media companies. I’ve held a variety of leadership roles in general management, product, content and design. I draw on my diverse set of skills and experiences to help entrepreneurs and companies unlock greater value in their teams and customers, and navigate the complex demands required to build today’s market leading products.
I am a purpose-driven leader and a builder at heart. Whether it’s products, teams, content, brands or companies, I’ve always loved the magic of bringing great people together around a shared vision and working as a team to bring it to life. I've learned that building something meaningful requires more than enthusiasm and a good idea. I work with teams to establish deeper clarity of purpose and develop a process and a practice that supports that purpose. This allows the team to operate with a stronger belief in their work, greater urgency, more persistence and vastly improved decision-making. In the end, I believe this helps build better products and creates a gravity that pulls other great people and opportunities into orbit around a project.
I am a Founder of 21212, the leading digital accelerator in Brazil, where over the last four years we've invested in 40+ companies and advised over 200 founders. We were selected as a partner in Startup Brasil, a program of the Federal Government of Brazil and recently had our first significant exit with the acquisition of Zero Paper by Intuit. Prior to 21212, I was Chief Creative Officer at Sling Media where I co-founded the NYC office and recruited and led a 30+ member product and engineering team (with alums from MLB, ESPN and MTV). We focused on new product development including the premium on-demand TV portal, Sling.com. Sling was acquired by Echostar in late 2007. From 2003-06 I served as the VP of Digital at MTV and led MTV.com, MTV Mobile, and launched the MTV Overdrive video platform, where we created an entire slate of original video programming and pioneered the “Aftershow” 2nd screen format (pushing viewers from marquee MTV shows like The Hills to The Hills Aftershow on the web). Prior to MTV, I was Chief Creative Officer and founding Editor-in-Chief at Complex Media, a leading youth culture publisher which today ranks as the #4 online media brand in MAUs amongst millennials. I also was a Founder of Platform Network, a youth culture content and e-commerce portal which aggregated over 50 brands and publications and attracted investors including Sony. Platform was acquired by Sean Combs’s Hookt.com. I serve on the board of several startups including RecordSetter and RespondeAí and advise many others. I earned a BA from Brown University.
My core skills include executive management, product development, customer development, content development, editorial, marketing, team building, recruiting and company building. I have domain expertise across categories including web, mobile, gaming, consumer electronics, television, publishing and startups.
I love 90’s hip-hop, my wife, my two children, sneakers, old motorcycles, Kenya Hara, Dieter Rams, Brian Eno, Miyazaki films and time machines. I value optimism, empathy, trust, creativity, design, honesty, imagination, courage, risk taking, thoughtfulness, process, discipline and, occasionally, reckless abandon. As a child I was obsessed with technology and music-- my prized possessions were a Commodore Pet 2001 and a Moog Prodigy synthesizer. This helped to shape my identity as both a creator and a geek and laid a path towards my personal mission to bridge the worlds of technology, design, content and strategy.
I am infinitely curious, love problem solving and relish the adventure of collaborating with first-rate human beings to build the future together.