Boston Entrepreneur | Technologist | Product Strategist | Husband | Dad
I am an entrepreneur, technologist and executive from Boston. I founded CloudHealth Technologies in 2012 with the goal of helping customers like me, who were struggling with the challenges of managing at scale in the public cloud. With my boys in elementary school, I made the irrational decision to quit my job and start a company at the intersection of my two professional passions: cloud computing and IT management. I bootstrapped the initial business, ran a Lean process, developed the first Minimum Viable Product (MVP), and closed the first paying customers - all as a one person business.
The story book version of CloudHealth is that we became one of the fastest growing companies in Boston, created a new product category, and grew to over 500 people from 2013 to 2020 (we were acquired by VMware the end of 2018). The reality is we struggled, innovated and persevered every step of the way. Like all startups, we got some things right and wrong. If there was a secret to our success, it was this: hire great people, find great customers, strive to drive customer value every day, be humble, and catch a few lucky breaks along the way. We did this and more. One of the accomplishment I am most proud of is that CloudHealth is remembered by many of its current and former employees as one of the best places they worked.
My experiences from CloudHealth have made me passionate about all things product strategy. I developed my own methodology around driving toward Product Market Fit - i.e. the ability to repeatedly and successfully sell and deliver a value proposition into a target market - which allowed us to get to growth phase with the minimum amount of time and capital. I also adapted new techniques to agile product management that allowed us to create a new product category and become a market leader. Too many startups fail from the highly treatable condition of failure to achieve product market fit.
I also have the unusual distinction of having been a member of the "first Scrum team", as a founding member of the Easel Synchronicity team before the advent of the Agile Manifesto. I occasionally get asked to tell my recollection of the "first standup", since I was actually there (hint: there was a reason for standing and not the one you think). I am an avid blogger, a member of the Forbes Technology Council, and a Boston CIO of the Year award winner.
On the personal front, I am a husband and the father of two boys. I am passionate about Boston, technology, startups, baseball, Cape Cod, history, travel and all things cloud (not necessarily in that order). I live in the city of Boston, but like to be on Cape Cod as much as possible, which has become my second home. You might also catch me at Fenway Park too, which would be a second home too if the Red Sox would just let me stay overnight.