I have an insatiable passion for work, for learning, and for being the best at what I do. I spent the last decade and a half building a 1,000+ member social club and men’s retail concept called Wingtip. The social club featured a bar & restaurant with one of the best whiskey collections on the west coast, a billiards room, boardroom, cigar lounge, wine cave, and roof deck; the retail store featured men’s clothing & accessories, a barbershop, wine & spirits, and cigars & accoutrements.
Prior to starting Wingtip, I spent 5 years in software sales at two startups: Andromedia (acquired by Macromedia in 1999) and Blue Martini Software (IPO in 2000). Post Wingtip, I returned to software, first as the Segment Leader for the Apparel, Footwear, & Accessories vertical at Oracle Netsuite, then as a CRM seller at Microsoft, brief stint at a Microsoft channel partner (RSM), and currently a Product Evangelist at 6sense, a B2B marketing & sales software juggernaut.
Background
I peaked in high school. A California state (1991) and national champion (1993) in Extemporaneous Speaking, and the captain of the only U.S. team to ever win the World Debate Championships (New Zealand, 1994), speech & debate explains my comfort in both a coat & tie and speaking in front of a crowd.
During my first year at the University of California, Berkeley, I had the pleasure of coaching speech part-time at James Logan High School in Union City, one of the top programs in the country before seeing a Help Wanted sign in a small, traditional men’s store across from campus called George J. Good.
Paying my own way through college was tough, working 60 hours a week at the clothing store and trying to take a full load of classes. I spent a year working at Sherlock’s Haven, a full-service tobacconist in San Francisco, before taking a summer internship at a small software company called Andromedia.
Andromedia was about 25 people when I started, growing to 200+ before it was acquired by Macromedia. I started as a $10/hr intern, and within 6 months, I was making six figures as a Sales Engineer, and did not return to Cal for my senior year.
By the summer of 1999, I was ready for a new challenge, and managed to earn my way into Blue Martini Software as employee 35. A year later, the company went public with a $4B valuation and 500+ employees. After a year as a Sales Engineer, I was promoted to Director, Sales Force Readiness, responsible for training and improving a global salesforce.
As the dot com boom turned to bust, I left to start Wingtip (initially called On The Fly): a one-stop shop of all the things I enjoyed shopping for, and a social club conceived as a perk for the store’s best customers.