15+ years of operational experience, sales leadership and entrepreneurship has led me to devote all of my professional (and much of my personal) time to helping founders realize their vision.
As of Summer 2021, I have made 75+ founder-driven investments across a broad range of sectors, including SaaS, DTC, fintech, health & wellness, proptech, cybersecurity, and cleantech.
I am looking for great founders who are dedicated to making their vision of the 🌎 a reality. My goal is to help a founder reach the point where an institutional investor can lead, price and diligence your next round of financing, as well as add capital in follow on rounds.
Investment Criteria
Strong founding teams, building software, with at least some technical background. I evaluate on the following criteria,
1. Founder / Team
2. Market / Opportunity
3. Product / Idea
Mike is the sales leader we needed to kick off and navigate Taboola's hyper-growth into the $1B+ business it is today. Over the years, Mike has had a ridiculous track record for building successful sales teams that address new business opportunities and customer segments. As an executive, Mike leads by example as a hands-on, strategic expert and by inspiring others with the passion for client solutions and sales excellence that drives him. As a colleague, I have often relied on Mike for advice and as a sounding board; his ability to stay calm and measured in chaotic environments is probably a huge part of his success as a start-up sales executive. Any company would be lucky to have Mike run their sales organization.
I worked with Mike and his Sales teams over the course of 6 years at Taboola, collaborating on top opportunities from pre-sales through successful customer launch. In that time, I witnessed the significant contribution Mike made to the company, from rapidly building and leading a highly-productive Sales team, to establishing a culture of excellence within the office. Mike has impressive knowledge of the ad tech space, and yet he's always open to additional perspectives and expertise in order to provide the best experience for our customers. I welcome the opportunity to work with him again in the future.
It's hard to find someone more dedicated and passionate than Mike. In the time that I worked for him at Taboola, Mike's curiosity and ambition led him to constantly improve his team and grow his people; even when I was promoted to a new role in the company, Mike took me to lunch and told me he'd always be in my corner. His accomplishments at Taboola are myriad (he built and scaled a hugely successful sales & account management organization) but he also advocates relentlessly for his people and constantly seeks improvements in all aspects of the team. Not one to shy away from a challenge or settle for "that's the way it's always been done," Mike is a strong addition to any team.
Michael is not your typical executive. I have not met a more down to earth, approachable leader. On and off the clock, Michael is incredibly helpful across all of our touchpoints - guiding and sharing his insights from his deep experience in our line of business. It's rare these days to see someone committed to a business for as long as Michael, let alone reinvent himself several times, growing with the company from a few to over a thousand. All of this while maintaining the same level of excellence that he expected from his employees, but mostly from himself. For these and many other reasons, Michael would be a linchpin for any company, regardless of size or line of business.
When I first joined Mike's team as an enterprise seller it was clear that the expectations were high. In a highly competitive market, Mike challenged us to always stay one-step-ahead of our competition, to constantly innovate and improve how we sell, utilize all the resources available to us and constantly refine the processes by which we operated. The result was a series of initiatives, approaches and tactics that definitely set us apart. It is a credit to Mike's ability to both establish a vision and implement the tactics to always position the team and the company for success. It's that type of leadership that saw him at the center of planning, executing and scaling three business units within Taboola from inception to maturity. Not only will Mike have the interests of the company in mind, but he is fiercely loyal to his reports and always acted as an advocate on my behalf. No greater evidence of this than my own path at Taboola. Having his support and guidance helped me realize my own career ambitions and aspirations. For this, I am eternally grateful. I have always looked to Mike for guidance as both a manager and a mentor. He is a tremendous asset to any organization.
I had a great experience working for and with Mike for nearly six years. On a personal level, I could always count on his expert guidance in how to manage complex negotiations and he consistently demonstrated a knack for creating deal structures that set both organizations up for success. Under Mike’s leadership, the size and scope of our organization grew dramatically as three separate business units were identified, developed and scaled across the Americas. Mike does an amazing job of balancing the team’s focus on near term KPIs, tactics and processes, while setting a vision for long term success. I learned a great deal from Mike about partnerships and how to scale an organization; I would absolutely welcome the opportunity to work with him again.
I have had the pleasure of working alongside Mike at Taboola, back at 2012 when Taboola was less than 50 people and even more so when I returned in 2016 and he was running a massive and extremely successful sales org. Mike effectively scaled the business team from inception through maturity (enterprise, smb, non-traditional). Mike has a unique capability to deeply understand the partner's requirements, handle it with a very partner focused mentality and a WIN-WIN approach and a strong eye for the detail that delivers upon and supports the commercial objectives. I strongly recommend Mike to any organisation looking for an experienced, senior and astute commercial leader to drive their business forward.
Michael is a great business partner to work with - he always keeps track of the business progress without ever losing sight of the strategic objective. He is a creative business leader with excellent hand on execution abilities. I'll be happy to continue cooperating with him in future ventures.
Michael is the ideal business partner for an IT Leader. He has deep knowledge of the field and is able to quickly align sales requirements with company priorities, allowing him to be strategic and efficient with company resources. When Michael said something was important, I trusted his judgment and we worked together to make it happen - and he got results. Not only that, he had a knack for thinking outside of the box, building strategic relationships with customers and moving mountains for partners big and small, while making everyone feel part of a winning team.
Mike is the sales leader we needed to kick off and navigate Taboola's hyper-growth into the $1B+ business it is today. Over the years, Mike has had a ridiculous track record for building successful sales teams that address new business opportunities and customer segments. As an executive, Mike leads by example as a hands-on, strategic expert and by inspiring others with the passion for client solutions and sales excellence that drives him. As a colleague, I have often relied on Mike for advice and as a sounding board; his ability to stay calm and measured in chaotic environments is probably a huge part of his success as a start-up sales executive. Any company would be lucky to have Mike run their sales organization.
I worked with Mike and his Sales teams over the course of 6 years at Taboola, collaborating on top opportunities from pre-sales through successful customer launch. In that time, I witnessed the significant contribution Mike made to the company, from rapidly building and leading a highly-productive Sales team, to establishing a culture of excellence within the office. Mike has impressive knowledge of the ad tech space, and yet he's always open to additional perspectives and expertise in order to provide the best experience for our customers. I welcome the opportunity to work with him again in the future.
I had a great experience working for and with Mike for nearly six years. On a personal level, I could always count on his expert guidance in how to manage complex negotiations and he consistently demonstrated a knack for creating deal structures that set both organizations up for success. Under Mike’s leadership, the size and scope of our organization grew dramatically as three separate business units were identified, developed and scaled across the Americas. Mike does an amazing job of balancing the team’s focus on near term KPIs, tactics and processes, while setting a vision for long term success. I learned a great deal from Mike about partnerships and how to scale an organization; I would absolutely welcome the opportunity to work with him again.
I have had the pleasure of working alongside Mike at Taboola, back at 2012 when Taboola was less than 50 people and even more so when I returned in 2016 and he was running a massive and extremely successful sales org. Mike effectively scaled the business team from inception through maturity (enterprise, smb, non-traditional). Mike has a unique capability to deeply understand the partner's requirements, handle it with a very partner focused mentality and a WIN-WIN approach and a strong eye for the detail that delivers upon and supports the commercial objectives. I strongly recommend Mike to any organisation looking for an experienced, senior and astute commercial leader to drive their business forward.
Michael is a great business partner to work with - he always keeps track of the business progress without ever losing sight of the strategic objective. He is a creative business leader with excellent hand on execution abilities. I'll be happy to continue cooperating with him in future ventures.
Michael is the ideal business partner for an IT Leader. He has deep knowledge of the field and is able to quickly align sales requirements with company priorities, allowing him to be strategic and efficient with company resources. When Michael said something was important, I trusted his judgment and we worked together to make it happen - and he got results. Not only that, he had a knack for thinking outside of the box, building strategic relationships with customers and moving mountains for partners big and small, while making everyone feel part of a winning team.
It's hard to find someone more dedicated and passionate than Mike. In the time that I worked for him at Taboola, Mike's curiosity and ambition led him to constantly improve his team and grow his people; even when I was promoted to a new role in the company, Mike took me to lunch and told me he'd always be in my corner. His accomplishments at Taboola are myriad (he built and scaled a hugely successful sales & account management organization) but he also advocates relentlessly for his people and constantly seeks improvements in all aspects of the team. Not one to shy away from a challenge or settle for "that's the way it's always been done," Mike is a strong addition to any team.
Michael is not your typical executive. I have not met a more down to earth, approachable leader. On and off the clock, Michael is incredibly helpful across all of our touchpoints - guiding and sharing his insights from his deep experience in our line of business. It's rare these days to see someone committed to a business for as long as Michael, let alone reinvent himself several times, growing with the company from a few to over a thousand. All of this while maintaining the same level of excellence that he expected from his employees, but mostly from himself. For these and many other reasons, Michael would be a linchpin for any company, regardless of size or line of business.
I believe the greatest opportunities occur at the point of convergence, either in market or technologies, preferably both.
