Musixmatch

Chief Business Officer

Acequia Capital

• Early & seed stage founder-focused investments across the music, media, gaming & technology spectrum. 

• Formed in 2010, Acequia has invested in more than 350 technology companies and achieved more than a decade of consistent, top quartile returns with 18 seed stage investments currently valued in excess of $1B.

Venture Partner

Austin City Limits

• Austin City Limits is the longest running music series in television history, the name behind music festivals in Austin (US), Sydney (AUS) and Auckland (NZ) and an award-winning concert venue. Created by Austin PBS and broadcast on PBS for 43 years, Austin City Limits is the only TV series to ever be awarded the US National Medal of Arts.

• Since 2002, the ACL Music Festival hosts over 130 artists and 225,000 patrons every year at Zilker Park in Austin, Texas. ACL has helped Austin to become widely known as the “Live Music Capital of the World”.

Board Member

Syng

Advisor

• Lead all aspects of business planning, strategy, commercial operations and P&L of a start-up audio company founded by a former Apple lead industrial designer, building hardware, software, and services that give listeners and creators the power to engage with sound in new and transformative ways.

• Built and ran sales, marketing, supply chain, mechanical & hardware operations, business development, customer care, finance & people operations comprising a team of over 50 FTE.

• Grew business from pre-revenue to 8 figure ARR in first year of go-to-market through building and scaling direct-to-consumer, retail and professional sales channels in 20 countries.

• Created and commercialized plan for B2B software licensing to diversify revenue and expand margins beyond 1st party hardware sales. Expanded gross margin to X% and licensed embedded software systems to 3rd party audio hardware OEMs.

• In concert with leadership team, lead & closed multiple financing rounds totaling over $48M.

• Syng was named by Fast Company as one of the “Most Innovative Companies in 2022”, and by TIME as a “Best Invention of 2021”.

Chief Commercial Officer

Book.io

Otis College of Art and Design

Established in 1918, Otis College of Art and Design is a non-profit 501(c)3 institution and national leader in art and design education. The College mission is to educate a diverse community of students to become highly skilled, well-informed, and responsible professionals--empowering them to shape the world. Alumni and faculty are Fulbright, MacArthur, and Guggenheim grant recipients, Oscar awardees, legendary costume designers, leaders of contemporary art movements, entrepreneurs, and design stars at Apple, Abercrombie & Fitch, Pixar, DreamWorks, Mattel, Nike, and Disney.

Board of Governors

Magic Leap

• Conceived and developed overall customer, content & developer ecosystem strategy for Magic Leap’s breakthrough spatial computing hardware & software platform. Directly supported the raise of over $2.4B in equity financing.

• Oversaw $50M annual budget and team of 200 people across all aspects of platform, developer & content ecosystems.

• Responsible for the end-to-end development, operations and business management of Magic Leap’s content ecosystem, app store, commerce and global creator & developer platform.

• Secured and launched content & technology partnerships with leading creators including Disney & LucasFilm, Warner Media (HBO, CNN), Epic Games, Unity Technologies, AT&T, DirecTV, NBA, Google, Viacom, Spotify, Insomniac Games, Weta Digital, Brainlab and hundreds of other partners across entertainment, communications, productivity, health care and other sectors.

• From scratch, built operating plan, assembled teams and scaled infrastructure to secure and publish hundreds of bespoke 3rd party applications from thousands of developers on a brand new XR computing platform.

Chief Content Officer

VEVO

• Founded & built the world’s largest all-premium music & video entertainment platform.

• Developed strategy; created & spun new company out of Universal Music Group into an industry joint-venture owned by Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Google/YouTube & Abu Dhabi Media Company. Successfully raised over $200M of equity financing.

• Built business entirely from concept and grew to operate a $400M ARR company with 300 employees across 15 global offices.

• Paid out over $1B in royalties back to industry rights-holders over initial 5-year period.

• Vevo is YouTube’s largest global content partner (measured by revenue & views) for the last 10+ years, generating in excess of 26 billion premium video streams per month.

• Developed a large scale off-YouTube network of owned & operated apps across AppleTV, Roku, Xbox, PlayStation, Samsung, Fire TV and iOS/Android.

• Built one of the largest all-premium online video advertising sales force – over 200 FTE’s serving 1100 global brand marketers and advertisers.

• Produced ~75 live & on-demand music concert events from artists including Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, Maroon 5, Jay-Z, Arcade Fire & many more in close partnership with major brand marketers such as American Express, General Motors, MasterCard and AT&T.

Founder, President & CEO

Universal Music Group

• Promoted to lead overall digital business for the world’s largest music company across North America.

• Defined & led strategy, licensing, partnerships, new business development and investments in addition to business affairs & engineering teams focused on overall digital revenue growth.

• Delivered in excess of $750M of revenue per year through creation & implementation of new, industry leading on-demand, subscription & audience based audio & video licenses & partnerships with Google, YouTube, Apple, Spotify, Amazon, Meta & more that collectively and uniformly define the revenue and marketing engines for the modern music industry today.

Executive Vice President, Digital Business

Sony Pictures Entertainment

• Founded Sony Pictures Mobile, a leading global developer & publisher of mobile games built upon the intellectual property of a major motion pictures & television studio.

• Grew business from inception to $50M in revenue and positive EBITDA within 2 years, resulting in becoming the #2 mobile game publisher within the US.

• Recruited & led a team of 50 FTE across software & game development, wireless carrier sales & distribution, quality assurance, licensing and marketing.

• Developed & published dozens of subscription & premium games worldwide including Spider-Man, Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy! and more.

Vice President, Sony Pictures Digital

Award-winning C-Suite executive with 27 years of leadership experience at the intersection of media, culture and technology.

Experience building & managing global teams of hundreds of people, P&L oversight from $50M - $400M.

Dynamic & inspiring thought leader, able to drive vision, build values-based culture and establish consensus with shareholders, colleagues & associates.

Diverse skill set covering executive leadership, strategy, partnerships, product development & engineering; with success in both start-up and large company environments and in U.S. and global markets.

Recognized expert and sought-after speaker on topics including media & entertainment (music, film/television, gaming), spatial computing along with licensing, advertising & subscription business models. 

Passionately supporting global creators, artists and developers on their journey is my life focus and mission.

Taplio

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