Work
Highlights from the enterprise software startups I helped build
Welcome to a brief tour of my startup experience.
I led product development and kept customers happy at three
enterprise software startups: Flex.io, Gold Prairie, and Kirix.
Some say building a startup is like trying to assemble an airplane
while you're flying it, but I think it's more like shooting the
rapids on a surfboard. Here are some highlights from this journey.
Flex.io
#NoCode platform for delivering data from cloud apps to
spreadsheets.
Launched at PyCon Startup Row in 2017 and operated through 2020.
Flex.io website (archive)
Product demo video
What I did at Flex.io
Flex.io was a cloud service for integrating data from Web apps
directly into Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets. It gave
spreadsheet users a way to get live, refreshable data from the
cloud without having to write code or go through an IT project.
I led the product development team, focusing on user experience
(UX) and product-market fit.
With the team, I also built a product showcase and spreadsheet template portal for key cloud integrations, including BigCommerce, Crunchbase,
HubSpot, Intercom, and Shopify.
Highlights
Flex.io combined a number of technologies that were completely
new at the time, from serverless, API-driven data feeds to new
features in Excel. This provided some memorable moments:
- Demoing an early version with serverless data feeds and a CLI at PyCon Startup Row
- Working as an early test partner with the Microsoft Office product team to leverage their new Dynamic Arrays feature in Excel
- Collaborating on creating new services with forward-thinking customers, like Crunchbase
Gold Prairie
Enterprise SaaS solution for identifying and preventing payment
errors.
Exited in 2019 via a private sale.
Gold Prairie home page (archive)
Company profile on Crunchbase
What I did at Gold Prairie
Gold Prairie was a Fintech solution for identifying and preventing payment errors, such as duplicate
payments and missed discounts. It operated as an automated, internal
financial control for accounting staff at large organizations.
I led product development and managed all aspects of the product
lifecycle from initial market validation to delivering the
solution and building customer relationships.
After 10+ years of growing the company, including raising a
small investment round, we successfully exited via a private
sale in 2019.
Highlights
Gold Prairie delivered great results and this led to many
long-term relationships with our customers (5+ years).
Additional things I'm proud of include:
- Deploying the solution at 40+ enterprise customers, including Astellas Pharma, American Red Cross, Condé Nast, JC Penney, and Medline Industries
- Cutting the timeframe for recovering funds from 1-2 years to less than a month
- Generating an average of $2 million annual savings per customer
Kirix
Productivity application for data preparation and ad hoc data
analysis.
Awarded "Best Productivity Application" at LinuxWorld Boston
2005.
Product demo video
What I did at Kirix
Kirix was an award-winning productivity tool for transforming, cleaning, and analyzing data. It also incorporated
a built-in web browser for opening and working with CSV files on
the web.
Kirix was a team effort by a small group of founders. I focused
primarily on product strategy, product development, and
marketing.
Highlights
Kirix garnered media attention and impressed a lot of people,
but in many ways it was ahead of its time. We were pioneering
data preparation before that became its own product category.
Some highlights include:
- Winning the Product Excellence Award at LinuxWorld Boston 2005 for the "Best Desktop-Productivity-Business Application," beating Sun Microsystems's StarOffice
- Generating media coverage from InfoWorld, The Register, Computerworld, and other tech news sources
- Delivering a unique, innovative data analytic feature set, including dynamic calculations across 100+ million records, linking data sets, and browsing Web-based data