Products are cheaper and easier to build than ever before, and product talent is plentiful. Differentiation comes from solving real market needs, not just building interesting products.
Something’s wrong when company founders feel the need to uproot from their homes and move to Silicon Valley to be close to their capitalists. Proximity to customers is what matters.
Andrew has been working in the technology sector for 20 years. Andrew manages operations and communications across GrowthX, leads startup sourcing, deal evaluation and the Investment Committee at GrowthX Capital, and works closely with GrowthX Corporate clients helping them realize the financial and strategic benefits of corporate venture capital.
He started his career as a lawyer for early Internet pioneers such as Alta Vista, Yahoo, and Salesforce while practicing law at Skadden Arps. He left private practice to join DoubleClick prior to the Google acquisition. Andrew then joined Thomson Financial where he co-founded their financial news business leading to the acquisition of Reuters. At Thomson Reuters, Andrew served as Publisher of Reuters News and then Co-Founder and Managing Director of their legal media business in Asia Pacific and the Middle East.
After nearly 6 years in Hong Kong and Singapore, Andrew returned to the U.S. and returned to helping early-stage companies. Andrew is a Kauffman Fellow, Regional Board Member of Venture for America, and a proud Mentor at Alchemist Accelerator, WeWork, Galvanize and Matter.
Sean is a Founding Partner of GrowthX, a Silicon Valley-based venture capital fund, market development training school and corporate advisory firm helping companies bring new products to market and reduce the innovation failure rate through capital, talent and know how.
Sean has over 20 years of experience bringing new products to market, including as a five-times sales founder. Sean’s deep expertise has been codified into a proprietary market acceleration program and entrepreneurial sales training curriculum.
In addition to helping dozens of startups find product-market fit and predictable revenue models, Sean helps global multinationals to identify new applications for their existing technology portfolio, bring new products to market with profitable business models, and organize and train self-managing early product-stage sales and marketing teams. Sean’s successful corporate advisory track record includes work for Bridgestone, Canon, Faurecia, and Clariant.
Sean is a globally recognized sales and marketing thought leader. He was named as One of the Top Sales Influencers You Should Be Following On Social Media, as well as Top 20 Inside Sales Influencers. Sean is a former professional golfer, PGA certified golf instructor, and an active mentor, advisor and guest lecturer at global startup accelerators, innovation conferences, and colleges and universities including Galvanize, Alchemist, GSVLabs and the London Business School.
An investor in more than 150 start-ups, Will has made it his life’s mission to help other entrepreneurs succeed in developing successful companies and achieving their goals. His skill and experience in connecting people have allowed him to build a global network of investors and entrepreneurs, all of whom he considers members of his extended family.
Before co-founding GrowthX, Will raised and led the Silicon Valley Growth Syndicate, a seed-stage MicroVC. Will was also a selling-founder of One-and-Only.com, the largest internet dating site and one of the top 100 sites of the 90s, acquired by Ticketmaster for $47 million dollars and rebranded as Match.com.
Will began his career working with N.B. Hunt, who sent him on a series of amazing adventures across Russia and Nicaragua, including physically carrying $250K of gold from Managua, Nicaragua to Miami, FL every other week. This increased Will’s risk tolerance to the point that starting an Internet company seemed rational.
As a leader of our Market Acceleration Program (MXP), Max has extensive experience developing and executing data-driven, scalable and repeatable go-to-market strategies at the early product-stage across various industries and products. Max’s expertise is centered on building systems, tools, processes and market messaging for teams to exponentially grow revenue and scale sales teams.
Before joining GrowthX as a Founding Partner, Max built the sales technology stack and lead generation playbook for multiple early stage companies. His experience identifying ideal prospects and constructing sophisticated, multi-step email campaigns resulted in a 3-5 X increase in lead generation and overall pipeline development, putting all companies he has worked with on a path to predictable revenue.
Max spent several years in China where he was managing director and the only foreign employee of a successful education startup that went from 15 employees to over 200 in 18 months
Trends & Insights March 28, 2018
(This article was authored by Greg Orme, a London Business School Associate Program Director and author of ‘The Spark – How to Ignite and Lead Business Creativity‘) Innovation hacks straight out of Silicon Valley Want […]
Trends & Insights September 14, 2017
By Dionne Mischler Originally published on Inside Sales by Design Reaction As leaders, we do not have the luxury of reacting. We MUST choose an appropriate response in any situation. Ergo, we must continually build our skill set […]
Trends & Insights August 28, 2017
By Sujan Patel Co-founder, Web Profits @sujanpatel Originally published on Inc.com Sean Sheppard, founder of GrowthX Academy, discusses the critical skills for the upcoming “Innovation Economy”. “How do we educate people for a future we can’t predict?” It’s […]
