Underestimating 10 years
“Luck Is What Happens When Preparation Meets Opportunity”
Turning 39 earlier this year, I began reflecting on the last 10 years and was reminded by what Bill Gates said about 10 years.
“Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.” — Bill Gates
MoPub
10 years ago I accepted an offer from Jim Payne to join MoPub as the first business hire. 10 years later we are still working together.
I wanted to highlight some of my thought processes in the last 10 years of my career and thank those who have been crucial to my success.
In the fall of 2010 while working at PubMatic I attended an AdMosnters event with Rob Peralta who told me that more than 50% of sales for the movie Twilight came from their iOS app. The next day I narrowed my job search to mobile ad tech companies.
Jon Burke, my former MoPub manager re-introduced me to Jim.
I came into the conversation with Jim prepared to make the move to MoPub and presented him with an offer — The most equity I can get, the amount that I need to cover rent and groceries, and the opportunity to lead the sales/bd team after we raised more.
MoPub was instrumental in helping to become an executive and leader. I had the opportunity to leads teams across supply, demand, customer success, and exchange operations exposing me early to the challenges of scaling. After turning down multiple offers to get acquired along the way we accepted an offer from Twitter pre IPO and I was part of the MoPub deal team that presented and eventually accepted the term sheet. Inside Twitter, I learned some big company politics but we also participated in the team that eventually purchased Tapcommerce.
During Twitter is when I started actively angel investing and learning many lessons as an angel investor.
Angel Investing
To date, I have made over 124 Angel investments and cofounded a free community for active angel investors with Sam Huleatt, who I met when I moved to NYC in 2010. Some investing highlights include Attentive, Electric, Petal Card, OneSignal, MAX Ads, mParticle, Realm, and Goodtime.
OneSignal
After Twitter, we worked on a consumer video product that failed but we learned a lot of lessons. Next, I decided to take my own advice and build a process for what to do next, which eventually is how I found OneSignal.
That intro from Zach resulted in me joining George, Long, and the small eng team at OneSignal for the next few years helping to scale the business through our Series A, transitioning to Saas from data, and then helping to bring in Josh Wetzel, my other PubMatic manager in as the new CRO.
Following OneSignal, I followed my newly found passion for health and my personal weight loss journey into found Lever Health, raise a pre-seed round, and then after 2 years shut it down.
Now for the next chapter in the journey, Facet. I was part of the team that Jim worked with during 2019 to purchase Metamarkets.com from SNAP. In late 2020, Jim approached me about joining Facet as CEO.
Special thanks to Jon Burke, Caitlin McGovern, Brian Long, Sam Huleatt, Lauren Nemeth, Dan Sack, Lauren Wiseman, Herman Yang, Megan Patrylak, Josh Wetzel, John Kuolt, Natalie Sandoval, Zach Colleus, George Deglin, and more who have been instrumental in the last 10 years of my career. Last but certainly most important Kayla who has been here with me through each failure and win along the way.
