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Scott McGregor                                                     InnovationMgr@smcgregor.com

ÒTransforming Innovative Technology into Market Making New ProductsÓ                   http://www.smcgregor.com

                                                                                                                                ph: 408-385-1014

 

 

Entrepreneurial Executive – New Product Innovation

                       Entrepreneurial senior technical executive and inventor of many paradigm breaking Internet services and software applications. Led new product development from conception to market dominance. Strategic thinker, growth oriented multi-functional leader with 20 years of start-up experience. Inspirational team builder and mentor inclusive leadership style that fosters creativity, enthusiasm, imaginative technical breakthroughs, collaborative teamwork, user satisfaction, market dominance, and press recognition.

Ÿ  Devised more than 20 Internet, software & mobile applications. Multiple Patents Pending.

Ÿ  Doubled sales of companyÕs stalled product in first 3 months after joining as COO (Light Crafts).

Ÿ  Boosted sales from $500K to $10M in 2 years, pioneering a new market (Web Conferencing), achieving market leadership, enabling IPO filing and subsequent company acquisition by Microsoft. Over 1 Million users daily now rely upon this product. (PlaceWare).

Ÿ  Created product positioning, marketing, and products launch plans devised promotional collateral including eye-catch stage and streaming video demonstrations at DEMO 2004.  (Tailwind Solutions). Authored funding pitches, investor documents, business plans, IPO S1 and road show documents (PlaceWare), helping secure investment capital.

Ÿ  Devised new product development method, praised in CACM for shortening development by 70% (HP). Featured subject of UnixWorld editorial praising pioneering work that raised the bar for application usability for entire computing industry (by editor David Flack, 1992). Cover notice in SunWorld praising new productÕs ease of use (MergeRight). Co-founded spinout (Prescient Software).

Ÿ  Launched new product innovation team, inspiring 4 dazzling innovations in first 3 months, resulting in senior management recognition and cash rewards for each member of innovation team. Dramatically reduced product development effort, enabling rapid introduction of new products. (Intuit).

Ÿ  Attracted, developed and retained top performing technical, engineering and marketing talent and built cohesive, cross functional teams at many companies. Led teams up to 50 staff members (Sybase).

Ÿ  Designed numerous paradigm breaking products and services that have garnered cover notices, favorable reviews, recognition and awards for innovation and ease of use. (PlaceWare, MergeRight).

Ÿ  Co-founded, built or grew several start up companies, and restarts (XooXooX, Prescient, SeeItFirst).

SWIFT DESIGN GROUP, Managing Director, CTO & CMO   Management Consulting          1994 – present

Ÿ  Enabled high tech start-up clients to introduce attention getting, high usability products; open new markets; attract customers, strategic partners and investors;

Ÿ  Recruited and led both technical and marketing teams;

Ÿ  Developed innovative products; business plans, investor pitches and innovative marketing strategies.

XOOXOOX, CEO, Product Strategist       WorldÕs first PULL Web Ad Network       2008 – present

Ÿ  Enabled bootstrap start-up to design, develop and test its innovative web advertising service;

Ÿ  Built a strong management team and attracted its first investment;

Ÿ  Maintained forward progress toward product introduction, despite an uncertain economy and challenging fund raising environment.

LIGHT CRAFTS, Chief Operating Officer         Digital Photography Products              2007 – 2008

Ÿ  Doubled formerly flat sales in first 3 months through changes to website, recruitment of marketing and engineering teams and development of specifications for new product and new marketing strategies.

Ÿ  Initiated new product line opening broader consumer markets,

INTUIT, Sr. Engineering Manager, Consumer Tax Division                       TurboTax  2004 – 2005

Ÿ  Founding leader of new R&D Innovation team that created radically new tax application authoring platform with many breakthroughs.

Ÿ  Dramatically increased Tax Developer productivity, improved end user product usability, and enhanced flexibility of company to simultaneously address multiple new markets,

SEEITFIRST, VP, Engineering & Product Marketing          Streaming Video            2002 – 2003

Ÿ  Enabled company to survive ÒDot Com BustÓ as a scrappy restart.

Ÿ  Developed innovative products that opened new international strategic partnerships with companies and government agencies in Japan, India and Singapore, ultimately enabling sale of company.

DATA DIGEST, VP, Engineering & Product Strategy,           Predictive Analytics       2000  – 2003

Ÿ  Delivered paradigm breaking predictive analytics product for professionals who are not statisticians.

Ÿ  Developed product from conception to market introduction in 12 months

Ÿ  Recruited top engineering talent in a very competitive labor market.

Ÿ  Inspired creative approaches to deliver a high usability and highly interactive user interface.

PLACEWARE, Sr. Product Manager / Experience Designer,       Web Conferencing 1998 – 2000

Ÿ  Increased sales 20X in 2 years and enabled companyÕs IPO filing and eventual acquisition.

Ÿ  Led design, development and introduction of the worldÕs first successful web conferencing product: the PlaceWare Web Conference Center now marketed as Microsoft Live Officeª.

KAIROS SOFTWARE, Sr. Project Manager,               Mobile Sales Training             1997 – 1998

Ÿ  Delivered first online content title (based on Geoffrey MooreÕs Crossing the Chasm) within 3 months.

Ÿ  Directed outsourced artwork, technical writing, content development, and QA.

Ÿ  Recruited top engineering talent enabling 3 conception-to-customer delivery cycles in just 12 months. 

TEKNOWLEDGE, Sr. R&D Project Manager,              Artificial Intelligence R&D        1995 – 1997

Ÿ  Completed contract R&D projects on time, enabling startling public demonstrations of integrated speech recognition and web based Briefing Associate (forerunner to Web Conferencing) for DARPA.

Ÿ  Enabled company to enter commercial market by developing Sales Associate for e-commerce.

      SYBASE, Director, Engineering Services,                          Databases                      1994 – 1995

Ÿ  Reduced cost of software tools acquisition and training and increased interdivisional cooperation.

Ÿ  Founding leader of company wide engineering services department. Department standardized all software tools development, acquisition and training, metrics.

Ÿ  Reduced software failures in field by directing a final QA organization that performed integration testing of each new product against every released product from other divisions.

ATHERTON TECHNOLOGY, General Manager, Ahead Software Div.      CASE           1990 – 1994

Ÿ  Founding leader of new software product division. Devised new software product that won cover notice and favorable reviews praising products ease of learning and ease of use at initial introduction.

Ÿ  Drove product development from conception to introduction in first 90 days after founding division. 

Ÿ  Division later spun out as Prescient Software, which I led as Founder/CEO.

HEWLETT-PACKARD                                 Computer Manufacturer                               1980 – 1990

R&D Project Manager,                    Information Systems Div,                                                                                              CASE & Software Development Tools

Ÿ  Rescued LabÕs flagship project that was behind schedule and brought it in on time by redesigning workflow and simplifying product functionality.

Engineering Productivity Manager,                  Corp. Computing Center                                                               High Performance Computing

Ÿ  Re-established companyÕs engineering competitiveness, leading to development of new RISC architecture systems that are the heart of all HP mainframes and minicomputers today,

Ÿ  Led projects to connect all engineers in over 25 divisions worldwide to companywide network of high performance mainframes and mini super computers.


Education
:    á    BA Haverford College.

á       MSIA / MBA Carnegie Mellon University.

á       Graduate Studies in Computer Science, Stanford University

á       Instructor, Graduate Management Courses at UCB, UCSC and Univ. of Phoenix.

Associations:     ACM, IEEE, SIGCHI, BayCHI. Cofounder & past president Silicon Valley chapters of the Assn. for Software Design and World Wide Inst. of Software Architects.