How I
Work
I identify where forces cancel and realign them
Validated across Wayin ($0→$25M), Likemind ($400k→$21M ARR), Athena ($15M net new ARR), et al.
Most companies stagnate from internal friction, not market failure. Teams think they're aligned but speak different languages—not only from each other, but from potential customers. Product, Marketing, and Revenue optimize disparate metrics that cancel each other out. I orchestrate by identifying where these forces oppose, realigning them, and unlocking velocity.
Career Timeline
Wayin
Head of Growth & Partnerships
2011–2017
Socialie
Fractional Head of Growth
2017–2018
Learfield
Director of Social Media
2018–2019
Likemind
Chief Executive Officer
2019–2023
Mondo Robot
Head of Growth
2023
Badger Strategy
Head of Growth
2024
Athena
Head of Audience
2025–Present
I diagnose by identifying the constraint others miss. I ask: what are our actions actually optimizing for, and is that driving us closer to our ultimate goal—whether that's user growth, revenue multiplication, development velocity, or retention? Too often, even visionary companies with excellent product-market fit overlook the disconnect between what they promise and what customers actually experience. I orchestrate the pieces available into a solution that works without taxing budgets or relying on gut instinct. I've done this as an IC, an executive, and as a consultant. My role doesn't fit traditional boxes because the problems I solve don't either.
// This diagnostic model works across contexts: scaled Wayin, Likemind, Athena full-time; orchestrated results for AI-native sports marketing, animation studio, and legal tech companies through Badger Strategy consultancy in compressed timeframes.
// Three examples of what orchestration looks like in practice
Case 01 / Constraint Synthesis
Wayin
The situation: Company pivoted from consumer social network to enterprise B2B syndication platform. Burning cash. Media sales team couldn't sell SaaS. No relationship with Twitter—whose data we needed to process at scale. Needed distribution channel and data access immediately or lights go out.
The diagnosis: Twitter had a monopoly partner problem. Mass Relevance was their only visualization partner in the ecosystem. Expensive, technically complex, inaccessible to SMBs. Twitter couldn't activate smaller partners because Mass Relevance priced them out. Twitter needed a foil but didn't know it yet.
The fix: Positioned Wayin as the accessible alternative. Less feature-rich but easier to implement, lower price point, unlocked SMB market Twitter couldn't reach. Presented this as solving Twitter's ecosystem problem. Got certified into their partner program. Overnight access to their 200-person global sales team. Got the data pipeline we needed.
Transformation / Constraint to Leverage
Result: $0 to $25M. We reprioritized our product roadmap to build a platform that was usable out of the box while remaining customizable, positioning us for the small open space in Twitter's official Partner Ecosystem. This unlocked data access, a 200-person global sales team, and a strategic partnership with our biggest distribution channel. The constraint wasn't our product—it was identifying where we fit in an ecosystem that didn't know it had room for us.
Case 02 / Metric Realignment
Likemind
The problem: Daily trivia email product. Strong open rates but 98% reliant on programmatic ad revenue. Lowest sponsorship rates in the industry. Cookies dying. Team over-indexed on optimizing email opens, didn't want users to "exhaust content" by visiting the website.
The diagnosis: Two fundamental constraints. First, wrong optimization target—we made 10x revenue per web session vs. per email open, but the team optimized the low-value metric and actively prevented the high-value behavior. Second, we knew nothing about our subscribers. Couldn't sell premium sponsorships because we couldn't target. "Here's our audience" doesn't command a premium when you can't segment it. This locked us into programmatic dependency with no diversification path.
The fix: Shifted focus to web session duration and data richness. Used strong email engagement to drive to web, built features that kept them there longer. Implemented data capture strategy: quiz results, preferences, behavioral signals. Now we could sell: "500,000 people who are 55+, home 4+ days/week, interested in gardening, in your region." Sponsorship rates went from bottom-of-industry to premium. Diversified away from programmatic dependency.
Transformation / Misaligned to Aligned
Result: $400K to $21M ARR, scaled to 22M subscribers. The team thought they were constrained by content exhaustion and programmatic rates. They were constrained by optimizing the wrong metric and having no user intelligence. The shift from email-centric to web-centric, from anonymous inventory to targetable audiences, unlocked the growth.
Case 03 / Value Realization Engineering
Athena
What was breaking: Client referral program—historically our strongest channel—was collapsing. Referral volume dropped. Conversion rates dropped. Early customers loved referring us. New customers didn't. Couldn't figure out why.
The diagnosis: Early customers got more attention because there were fewer of them. They experienced value quickly through high-touch onboarding and could articulate the novelty—the "aha moments" of early adoption. As we scaled, new customers got less attention, took longer to realize value, and by the time existing customers became power users, they'd lost the ability to articulate those early aha moments to friends.
Deeper problem: we were defining our ICP by firmographics (tech, VC, finance) instead of behavioral patterns. The real ICP wasn't an industry—it was anyone who could get immediate value in one of their three most important relationships: spouse, children, or career. If we delivered value in one of those three areas early, retention locked in. This realization let us expand messaging horizontally across industries, not just vertically within them.
Three specific breakdowns in the referral program: (1) No consistency—we changed rewards, people didn't trust they'd get paid. (2) No visibility—"I referred Jim but don't know where he is in your process, so I can't help close him." (3) No enablement—people couldn't articulate Athena's value across the newly expanded ICP.
The fix: Redefined the ICP and engineered the first mile of value realization around it. Shifted onboarding to identify which of the three core relationships each customer needed help with, then frontloaded value delivery in that specific area. For the referral program: (1) Consistency—standardized reward structure, made it visible and unchanging. (2) Visibility—built real-time dashboard showing exactly where each referral sat in the funnel, what they were thinking, how the referrer could help. (3) Enablement—created community for customers to share playbooks across different use cases (career delegation vs. family coordination), so they could articulate value regardless of which relationship drove their adoption.
Transformation / Value Gap to Value Realized
Result: 4,100+ SQLs generated. $15M net new ARR. The program wasn't broken because customers didn't care—it was broken because we were scaling without replicating the high-touch experience that made early customers successful, and we were limiting ourselves to firmographic targeting when the real pattern was behavioral. Once we engineered early value delivery around the three core relationships and enabled customers to articulate that value across use cases, mainstream customers retained and referred like early adopters did.
THE OPERATING SYSTEM
Honesty
Growth begins and ends with the Truth. Honesty is not a "soft skill" or a moral preference; it is a structural requirement for speed. In any system, the distance between reality and the "official story" is Latency. This latency is a tax that slows progress, drains capital, and breeds resentment. Honesty is the grease on the rails that allows a team to move without the friction of misalignment or ego.Enthusiasm
Progress is the the best source of professional motivation. You cannot manufacture or sustain genuine excitement without it. Real enthusiasm is the byproduct of Winning. When a team operates in total honesty, the static disappears. This creates a Unified Front—a level of collaboration where problems are not managed, but hunted by a well-oiled machine where all parts know how their role contributes. Seeing measurable, unvarnished progress is fun. It generates a high-voltage energy that fuels the next cycle of work.Indomitability
Indomitability is the refusal to revert to the pander when the stakes are high. When a problem arises, we don't retreat into the comfort of excuses or siloed initiatives to protect egos. We lean harder into the honesty. This persistence breeds a systemic resilience that makes the team impossible to stop. We don't just solve problems; we make them tremble in fear because we have the grit to face them exactly as they are.
• Honesty enables Collaboration.
• Collaboration drives Progress.
• Progress ignites Enthusiasm.
• Enthusiasm sustains Indomitability.
• Indomitability protects the Honesty.
This is the physics of actual growth.
• Collaboration drives Progress.
• Progress ignites Enthusiasm.
• Enthusiasm sustains Indomitability.
• Indomitability protects the Honesty.
This is the physics of actual growth.
The Cycle / Honesty → Enthusiasm → Indomitability