About

Hi, firstly, a personal intro

I am an enterprise sales expert, lover of partnerships, digital marketer, technologist, product guy, business consultant, a fan of beautiful words, husband,  father, political observer, and former coder living and working in Melbourne, Australia. I have run product and commercial teams in enterprises, start-ups, and scale-ups in Melbourne and in Europe. I have a deep experience across all sectors and have a deep passion for helping small businesses and start-ups be successful and achieve their goals.

It goes without saying that this blog/ site is a personal and unrelated to any of the businesses that pay me money.

As a lover of technology, I try not to become enamoured with bright shiny things, focusing instead on the stuff which will improve customer experience and deliver a commercial return to the business.

I love helping people and organisations use technology to make their lives better and firmly believe we’re only at the start of a major global shift. I have been the keynote speaker at many Small Business events around the world where I talk about how SMB’s can grow their businesses using digital. I have also been the lead instructor in Product Management for the awesome folks at General Assembly.

I love speaking at events so get in touch with me if you want to be entertained and informed.

This is not really my first blog. I had what was called a digital diary in 1999 which I used to publish sarcastic poetry about drinking in bars. For the benefit of the wider community, I do not intend that any sarcastic poetry makes it to this blog.

In 2014, in a rage about Tony Abbott’s strange and incompetent brand of conservative politics, I created tonyabbott.fail. Everything was hand-coded and the site was archived by the National Library of Australia which is kind of fun. Later I also created malcolmturnbull.fail.

That is what the Internet is for – fun and connection, as well as commerce.

Lastly, thanks to Natalie, poet and artist, for being awesome.

My professional career so far

Oct 21 – Present	Director, Partnerships APAC	Lightspeed Commerce, Inc
Apr 20 – Oct 21	Head of Global Partnerships, Ecwid	Lightspeed Commerce, Inc
Mar 19 – Apr 20	Chief Digital Officer	Plezzel Pty Ltd
Jul 16 – Mar 19	Chief Digital Officer	Spotzer Digital BV
Jun 15 – Jul 16	Managing Director, APAC	Spotzer Digital BV
Nov 14 – Jun 15	Senior Product Manager, Commercial	Sensis
Oct 12 – Aug 14	General Manager, Product Management	WebCentral Ltd
Sep 10 – Sep 12	General Manager, Commercial	WebCentral Ltd
Oct 07 – Sep 10	Ecommerce Product Manager	WebCentral Ltd
Jun 02 – Oct 07	Web Development Team Lead	WebCentral Ltd
Jul 00 – Jun 02	Web Developer	Women’s & Children’s Health Care Network

My key achievements

• Revenue growth | Track record of delivering revenue growth in B2B SaaS businesses including growing revenue in the hosting, ecommerce platform, and payments segments.
• Product Innovation | Launched a new digital advertising product in the highly competitive proptech space and successfully landed new partnerships with tier-1 enterprises that grew company revenue by 84% over 12 months.
• Partnerships scale | Scaled a partnership with one of the world’s leading Telcos from a $30k pilot to a multi-million dollar partnership in 3 years.
• Technical Leadership | Delivered consolidation and AWS cloud migration projects that improved customer experience, improved margin, and grew revenue.
• Go to Market strategy | Developed and executed strategies to transform the go to market strategy and execution of enterprise businesses in Europe, Australia, and the USA including Orange Telecom, Liberty Global, Telstra, News Corporation, Tegna (USA), and ReachLocal.
• Strategy development | Developed and executed a strategic roadmap in a proptech that provided a strong foundation to drive future revenue growth. The roadmap is being executed today and continues to drive growth for the business
• Market disruption | Led the launch of a disruptive product for a large telco from pilot to national launch which resulted in significant revenue growth.
• Strategic Account Management | Renegotiated contract with world’s 3rd largest web host to deliver >30% ongoing growth in MRR from new subscriptions
• Payment Alliances | Negotiated mutually beneficial partnerships with some of the largest payment companies in the world to create a differentiated product that helped them compete with monolithic platforms like Shopify and Shop Pay.
• Business Transformation | While at Plezzel, I landed 4 of the top 5 real estate groups in Australia significantly growing MRR and advertising revenue.
• Scaled platforms | Scaled platform and processes to support growth in digital units from a run rate of 500 per month to >10,000 per month.
• Cloud Migration | Created and implemented a comprehensive Cloud product strategy and roadmap based on customer lifecycle principles which delivered revenue and profit growth in targeted areas.
• Retention | Grew retention rates for domain names from 63% to over 72% delivering over $1 million in increased revenue and the highest retention rates in the AU market through successful execution of an innovative auto-renewal strategy.