Intrepid

Intrepid is a financial technology company that brings innovation, inspiration, and opportunity to every entrepreneur and business in the creator economy.

Our core product "Superstar" is a creator marketing management software designed to automate the way data-driven marketing teams operate. It offers an integrated platform to manage the entire lifecycle of creator marketing campaigns. 

The objective is to streamline processes from the creator discovery phase to payments, all while leveraging data-driven insights and fostering enhanced collaboration among stakeholders.

I recruit customers, partners and lead our global community.

Co-Founder | Community | Growth 

Activate America

Producer of Amplified Avondale https://www.instagram.com/amplifiedavondale/ 

Activate America leads urban transformation and regenerative placemaking projects, creating vibrant cultural hubs for economic revitalization and fosters community connection and cultural diversity.

As the Founder and CEO of Activate America, I orchestrated a transformative journey that significantly impacted the local community. We've achieved remarkable milestones:

Community Development: Our festival transitioned from a homogenous gathering into a diverse and inclusive event, with over 1,000 monthly attendees representing a rich tapestry of backgrounds, fostering an inclusive sense of community and cultural diversity.

Revenue Growth: Doubled and tripled revenue for local merchants, contributing to the economic vitality of the community.

Urban Revitalization: Pioneered the creation of a net-new entertainment district, catalyzing urban revitalization and cultural enrichment.

Founder and CEO

Delivering over a hundred keynote speeches, panels, and moderated discussions on Fintech, Modern Banking, Web3, Blockchain, AI, and the Future of Work.

Translating deep tech trends into human-centric insights, driven by my entrepreneurial, executive recruiting, and advisory background.

Public Speaker

Silver Creek Partners

Full time through 2016, select long term clients through 2023. Global reach.
Key Contributions:

Recruited and onboarded over 2500 professionals, driving substantial revenue growth and innovation for diverse organizations. Hundreds of customers from idea stage to F50.
Functional areas: Engineering, Sales, Marketing, Corporate Development
Roles: CSuite to individual contributor.
Google, SAP, SingTel, AIA, Flipt, Anheiser Busch, Salesforce,

Key Accomplishments:
Scaled startup engineering teams from initial hires to robust units of up to 40 engineers.

Led talent acquisition for a HealhTech startup from idea to a teams 140+ employees.

Led talent acquisition efforts for a Fortune 100 electronics manufacturer, resulting in 35 senior manager and executive hires within 12 months.

Scaled a Fortune 50 insurance company's newly formed division from a single employee to 35 senior hires in just 18 months, including relocating 25 senior executives to Singapore.

Oversaw organizational design and talent acquisition for a corporate development and Innovation business unit, culminating in 14 executive-level hires.

Drove early success for startups, consistently recruiting first customers in zero to one environments.

Founder | Executive Recruiter

Intrepid Ventures

Intrepid Ventures was a Blockchain and Web3 startup studio and innovation lab for founders and chief innovation officers.

Customer-facing leader with a proven track record of success in growing and engaging communities, launching successful events, and building relationships in the blockchain and Web3 space.

Grew a global invite-only community from 0 to 30,000+ members in 18 months. Community led insights and guidance helped to shape the thinking of community members and position them for success in the rapidly evolving blockchain and Web3 space.

Developed and launched more than 20 sponsored events across Southeast Asia through ecosystem partners including Visa, Prudential, AIA, IFC World Bank, IBM, and others, attracting over 10,000 attendees. 

Facilitated community-driven innovation and collaboration, resulting in the launch of multiple successful blockchain/crypto products across insurance, fintech, security, and gaming.

Intrepid Ventures | Co-Founder | Blockchain & Web3 Venture Studio

Creator Economy | Influencer Marketing | Community | Sales and Partnerships | Recruiting

I help Influencer Marketing teams unify, automate, and scale their operations so they can focus on growth vs. administrative tasks.


I've recruited and helped build amazing teams (onboarded 2500+ professionals).
I've designed and built global communities from zero to 30K+.
Designed, launched and produced 18 Music and Art Festivals, 5 large scale conferences and 100+ events
Co-founded 4 startups in  Blockchain, Healthech, Fintech and AI/Automation.

Zach Piester

Noah Eisemann

Ark Consulting LLC

Ark Consulting is a business strategy and growth consultancy specializing in advising Creator Economy companies. As a one-man team, I work with Founders and Executives to position themselves and their businesses for success in a highly competitive market.

Recent Projects: 

- Increased Agency ARR YoY by 300% for leading creator payments SaaS solution by leveraging my network to quickly reach KDM at agency holding co's and designing low-risk programs for moving creator payments away from their legacy finance processes.  

- Grew revenue +$600k in new ARR in 6 months for a Performance Marketing Agency by launching their influencer service offering from scratch. Project entailed: identifying and onboarding an influencer platform to manage workflow, creating the GTM strategy, selling in influencer SOWs to new and existing clients, hiring a team to run campaigns, and managing P&L. Project expanded to include helping the agency drive net new revenue across all service offerings. 

- Increased Agency-related ARR by 8x MoM and decreased agency churn by 60% MoM for a leading influencer SaaS platform by revamping their agency pricing model. Project included: exposing friction points in previous pricing model, gaining leadership buy-in on new pricing model, working with team to implement model effectively.

- Increased win rate by 15% for a leading influencer SaaS platform by auditing their market positioning, pricing strategy, and product positioning. Presented findings to leadership team, which resulted in the company deciding to pivot and narrow their 2022 GTM sales and product strategy.

- Increased pipeline by 100% and win rate by 50% by serving as an interim Head of Sales for an Educational media startup based in Chicago. Coached their Jr. sales team members on how to create sustainable sales processes, while also working with the CFO to ensure revenue goals were met.

Founder

MyLikenessAI

MyLikeness AI enables content celebrities, influencers, and creators to commercially license, monetize and control the usage of their likeness in AI-generated audio, video, and images.

Strategic Advisor

glystn

Glystn is the first AI-driven community engagement engine that helps creators and their teams scale through intelligent automation. 

Glystn addresses the pains of a multi-platform presence and audience ownership by offering comprehensive tools that streamline cross-platform community enhancement. We empower creators, brands, agencies, and their teams to nurture and develop thriving audiences at scale. 

Glystn finds the topics that are most important, making it easier to align to the right revenue opportunities that are a match to the community.

With Glystn, users gain greater agency and ownership of their communities across all platforms, empowering communities to fall in love with their creators all over again!

ThisThat

ThisThat is a data company empowering advertisers to answer three simple questions; what happened, why did it happen, and what to do next to grow ROI.

ThisThat has created a new standard for influencer brand lift measurement, making it easy to prove the true impact of campaigns and unlock insights from audiences who see your ads in real time.

Lumanu

Lumanu enables enterprise brands and agencies to pay creators, influencers, and freelancers seamlessly at scale.

Hired as Interim Head of Partnerships to lead change in sales strategy from focusing on SMB & Mid-Market to Enterprise companies resulting in:

- 300% increase in average client ACV in 2023
- New partnerships with 60% of agency holding companies
- 400% increase in total Agency Partnerships
- 2 channel partnerships which led to$150k revenue in 6 mo

Head of Partnerships

Tagger by Sprout Social

Sold Tagger's Influencer Marketing and Social Listening SaaS platform to enterprise brands and agencies. Consulted marketing executives on how to create scalable influencer marketing and branded content processes that drive revenue.

- Opened Tagger’s Chicago office in 2019
- Exceeded 2020 revenue goal by 30% by focusing on agencies as core clients 
- Maintained 100% client retention rate while at Tagger by regularly scheduling client reviews and maintaining close relationships with decision makers
- Clients accounted for 20% of Tagger's total revenue
- Client portfolio spanned 30+ enterprise brands and agencies including Anheuser-Busch, FCB, BBDO, ICF Next, Finn Partners, Cramer-Krasselt, and CAVU Ventures
- Guest lecturer at DePaul University on emerging trends in Influencer Marketing

Director, Brand & Agency Partnerships

Social Native

- Designed, sold, and executed custom campaigns with brands and agencies looking to repurpose micro-influencer's content to scale branded content production across owned social and digital platforms (Snap, IG, FB, Twitter)

- Clients included: Anheuser-Busch, Colgate Palmolive, Danone

Social Native empowers brands to retain relevance with consumers via a 1:1 personalized content solution. Our content engine enables brands to generate high volumes of content on demand, while our creative optimization platform utilizes cutting edge technologies to help companies predict content relevancy and performance.

Client Partner

Fullscreen

Fullscreen is a WPP invested next-generation media company, owned by AT&T and WarnerMedia. Fullscreen provides a full suite of end-to-end digital marketing tools and services to the world's leading brands, agencies and media companies including YouTube advertising, custom content, branded entertainment, social and mobile-first marketing, influencer marketing, paid social media, innovation and O&O distribution.

Sales & Business Development Manager

Tongal

- Led new business response to brand & agency partnership initiatives by creating and pitching Tongal's unique branded content production model
- Owned full process of the inbound/outbound sales pipeline
- Delivered +$1.5mm revenue from over 10 brands including: Anheuser-Busch, Colgate Palmolive, Hills Pet Nutrition, Mattel, Bayer, LEGO, etc.)
- Produced +40 pieces of branded content from TVC to original series to custom pre-roll
- Produced 2 videos for Hill's Pet Nutrition that earned over 20mm total organic views with no paid support
- Handled P&L of relationships, managed performance and tracked results to established KPI's
- Oversaw handoff and SOW implementation to production, strategy and account teams
- Led coordination between internal teams, partner agencies and social platforms to execute SOW

Business Development Manager

Responsible for developing, leading and managing key account relationships developing innovative, digital-first content and creative strategies and overseeing the execution of campaigns for clients such as Colgate Palmolive, Anheuser Busch, General Electric, Johnson & Johnson, Dannon, etc. 

Responsibilities for those accounts were revenue generation, digital content marketing strategy and VP/C-Level Relationship management.

Tongal, an AdAge "A-List" Top 10 Agency, connects brands to a global creative talent pool specifically focused on solving creative & content challenges. The company was founded on the understanding that creative ideas can come from anyone, anywhere. Featured in publications such as Inc., AdWeek, Fortune, Business Week, McKinsey, The Huffington Post, Rolling Stone and CNBC Tongal was also named one of the 10 most innovative startups in the country by PepsiCo in their inaugural PepsiCo 10 challenge.

Account Executive

Young & Rubicam

- Managed Xerox's international advertising and creative & brand strategy.
- Produced 5 TV spots, 12 print ads, 50 digital assets across two international campaigns.
- Developed Xerox's communication strategy for their 2016 company separation.
- Oversaw and managed intern development.

I'm a consultant and strategic advisor to business leaders looking to maximize the benefits of Creator Marketing for their business. 

Early in my career, I latched onto the idea that creators are the solution to 'content at scale'. That idea has been the north star of my career and has set me on a path of working with some of the leading creator companies in the world. 

Currently, I advise brands and agencies on how to operationalize Creator Marketing to meet their business goals (selecting the right technology partners, implementing scalable processes, hiring the right talent) and adve Founders of Creator Marketing start-ups on how to differentiate their businesses through unique GTM strategies.

Before launching my practice, I led business brand and agency partnerships for Tagger Media (acquired by Sprout Social in 2023 for $140m), Fullscreen and a variety of other creator-focused start ups. Before being in the start-up world my career began in NYC as an Account Executive at Y&R working on Xerox.

I love to network and share ideas - especially related to the creator economy. Feel free to reach out!

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The Battle

Zach Piester

Noah Eisemann

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