Adam S.

My life thesis: execution > strategy. Compounding FTW. I'm an optimistic skeptic. Curiosity is the most important quality in life.

I enjoy pattern matching and read widely. The opportunity to learn every day is a gift. Time is precious. The ability to improve what and where I focus and delegate the rest is ideal. 

I [of course] love my family and friends. I believe I am a logical, thoughtful adult and therefore accept my choices. I am content and therefore I have won.

Founder and CEO @Chore. We are a founder's back-office (HR, finance, compliance, equity) operations team. Back-office operations are an undifferentiated tax on success. Focusing on your superpower enables success. Chore handles the rest (i.e. we specialize in ops so you never have to) so you can achieve your dreams. 

Host of the Entrepreneurial Excellence podcast. I dive deep with multi time founders about their key decisions, actions, hires, drivers and more that they use to achieve "excellence." 

General Partner at the Autopilot Fund. We invest in early stage startups. We love obsessed founders who have a history of breaking through walls. I have invested in over 200 startups across multiple funds. 14 are unicorns (8 from seed).

In previous lives, I founded 3 other companies, been a product leader on a big co API team, Chief Revenue Officer (CRO), Chief Operating Officer (COO), and do-it-all janitor. 

I enjoy building great teams, processes, and stories that unify a company around a shared mission. Helping others build successful businesses brings me joy. More successful startups = a better, more dynamic world.

People describe me as energetic, positive, creative, detailed and optimistic. I enjoy rational, logical, data driven debate built on mutual trust and respect. I'm not an engineer but people view me as "technical" and have built companies with the brightest PhDs and brilliant engineers. The best compliment I received was "you ask great questions."

Honesty, trust, fun, a sense of urgency and mission are what I look for in colleagues and places I work. Passion about my product, my company and my team is what drives me. I work hard and enjoy being surrounded by people who do the same. 

"Leave the world (and your business) better than when you arrived..."
"The greatest risk is not taking one!"

Always curious and learning. Subscribe to Entrepreneurial Excellence to learn.

General Partner

The Autopilot Fund focuses on early-stage companies that serve and accelerate how companies operate. 

More about us: https://autopilot.fund/

Operations span various “departments”: could be in engineering, operations, sales, finance, product, customer success… the questions we ask ourselves are:

1. Is this a founding team so capable that others should be afraid to go against them?
2. Do they understand the problem better than anyone, and have special “founder-market” fit?
3. Will they rest until they have dragged the world kicking & screaming into their vision of the future?
4. Is the product “infrastructure” in a manner of speaking: structured data, deeply embedded, sticky?
5. Does the advent of AI exponentially increase or decrease their defensibility?

Our portfolio includes some pretty special companies like AngelList, Pulley, Puzzle, Levels, Disco, among others. 

Smart founders focus. Bad founders distract themselves with all the small, non-product, non-customer work that can easily take up hours but not move your startup forward.

We are sector agnostic and focus mostly on early stage. Our thesis is simple: the best founders come from anywhere, with any background, working in any industry. Focus, joy, dogged determination, and deep knowledge about your product and how you're changing the world is what leads to success.

If you're interested in learning more, drop me a note on LinkedIn.

Firstbase.com

I lead the Product & Design Teams at Firstbase, a Series B startup focused on making remote work incredible for companies.

I spend most of my time building easy ways for 200+ companies to order, return, replace and buy out equipment for their remote employees anywhere in the world.

In addition to building our customer app, I also build integrations, data pipelines, internal operations and billing systems to support our business at scale. While doing so, I try not to break things too much.

Head of Product Management

I joined Firstbase to lead product development for our customer facing app. I was promoted in November 2022 to lead all our product & design teams.

Director, Product Management

Workato

I led onboarding and personalization initiatives for Workato, a series E startup focused on helping companies automate their work through integrations. Most of my work focused on running experiments and building tools to help customers build automations faster, with less help.

Director of Product Management

Amazon

I led a team of engineers and data scientists focused on launching new personalization experiences for Amazon. My team built new models and experiences using reviews, influencer, editorial and product data to help customers find the right product for them. 

Our experiments drove $1B+ in incremental revenue for Amazon throughout 2019-2021.

Principal Product Manager, Personalization

I helped sellers worldwide sell new and local selection in Amazon's marketplace, including heavy/bulky products like furniture or Christmas trees, perishables, chemical products and low cost items. Started Amazon's local selling program.

Principal Product Manager, Supplier Fulfillment Services

This was my first product experience. I launched Same-Day and One-Day Delivery shipping options for 100K+ third party merchants WW that shipped from their own warehouses. Integrated these shipping options across Amazon Shipping systems and website features including Search, Detail Page and Checkout.

Sr. Product Manager, Supplier Fulfillment Services

Alimentos MVD C.A. (FRIGO)

Launched and developed Frigo, a self-service fresh food restaurant startup, from concept to startup to running business. Achieved average sales of $360K/year through four years of operations. Sold business in 2015. 

Owned product development and marketing. Introduced new product lines including frozen food meals and desserts. Conducted marketing campaigns to capture B2B customers (~30% of Frigo’s revenue from 2013 through 2017).

Director / Co-founder Alimentos MVD C.A.

Dish Network

• Developed a new marketing strategy to target Hispanics by acculturation level, aimed at increasing Dish’s overall Hispanic market share by 2%
• Evaluated performance of Dish Latino Bonus Pack (Programming Package). Created detailed roadmap for launch of new Latino Packages intended to improve Dish Latino’s average revenue per user by 8% in 2015

MBA Intern (DishLatino - Marketing / Product Management)

Alfonzo Rivas & Cia

• Led product development, point of sale, pricing, marketing and communication strategies for Maizoritos Adult Division Cereals (Natural Mix, Toost Avena and Cronch Flakes)
• Launched Cinnamon Toost Avena, increasing Toost Avena’s monthly sales average by 35% to 48,000 units 
• Initiated Natural Mix's Facebook and Twitter social media sites. Overviewed content and promotions, leading it to become Alfonzo Rivas’ second largest social media brand, with more than 5K followers in each account
• Managed $2.5mm advertising budget. Led planning and execution of national TV and radio campaigns for Natural Mix and Toost Avena

Brand Manager - Maizoritos Adult Cereal Division

• Developed new retail strategy focused on including Flips in snacks segment to gain double exposure; improved Flips Market Share to 20% in children’s cereal market, reaching average sales of 840,000 units/month
• Managed product development research and planning, identifying key market trends that led to the launch of 4 new product line extensions: Flips Fantasy, Flips Twist, Strawberry Multigen and Sugar free Multigen, and 2 seasonal promotions: Flips Halloween and Christmas presentations
• Created and executed marketing brand plan for Multigen. Improved Multigen sales by 45% to 204,000 units
• Managed Flips social media strategies. Adjusted the content of our social media sites, increasing Flips Facebook fans by 200% in one year and the average monthly of unique visits to Flips’ official website by 25%

Assistant Brand Manager / Flips Cereal

Roca Sanitario, S.A.

Quality Assurance Intern

I like building things. When I was little, this meant a lot of legos. Nowadays, it's usually cool customer experiences. If they are challenging to build, even better. 

I try to focus my time on tackling big problems. If I need help, I'm usually pretty good at sending people cookies and convincing them to help me out. 

I ask a ton of questions. I feel this helps me be right more often than not. And if not, at least I know where I stand most of the time.

I've had the amazing opportunity to learn from many smart people throughout my career. I'm grateful for this and try to keep myself curious.

My friends think I'm lucky. I think it's more about being positive about things and adaptable. 

If you'd like to chat or have a cool idea, do feel free to reach out!

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The Battle

Adam S.

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