I was originally trained as a photographer at (the once prestigious, now defunct) Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara. I left school after a couple years, with the hopes of learning the finer points out in the wild, rather than at a university. I worked my way into the multi-media business, connecting lights, sounds, images and video together with rudimentary computers. The interest is computers took me to computer networks, so one night I took down the photographer marquee and replaced it with a Certified Netware Engineer sign.
After a few years of building and maintaining local area networks, I caught the internet bug, which resulted in the building of Data On Call. DOC was my first attempt to hire people, and build something bigger than myself. I pulled in partners, but no investors other than some family. It was originally established as the one-stop-shop for small businesses to disseminate their information through data driven websites, email, and believe it or not, faxing. Connecting fax services to various internet points became the real driver, and we sold that company to
j2 Global (owners of eFax) in 2005.
I ended up joining the
j2 Global executive team, after the sale of Data On Call. I held product and corporate development titles and worked at j2 for eight years. Together with a lot of great people, we built the company from ~$100M in revenue, to over $500M with NET profit margins of over 40%. Millions of paying customers, dozens of international offices, and non-stop acquisitions of both technology and customers.
I left j2 in 2013 not knowing what was next, only knowing that it was time for something new. With a solid exit under my belt, and a good run at j2, I chose to do some early stage investing in San Diego startups. I really enjoyed the process of meeting, vetting, and eventually supporting these great companies, but within a year it became clear that I was no investor. I wanted to be closer to the operational action – I need to see tangible results daily, and the investment game is much more long-term.
I’m always building a business of my own. Currently I have partnered with Hampton Dohrman to help non-profits manage their organizations under the brand Tiny Opera House. Before that, I was the COO of Great Jones Street, lead by another local startup guy, Kelly Abbott. GJS built a beautiful mobile app for publishing short stories. My role was mainly in the back office, contracting thousands of stories and getting them on-boarded with ultimate delivery to the app, and our website.
