Title: SVP Semantic Web Social Media Product Development
Market Opportunity
Unique opportunity to join an early stage stealth mode start up that is building solutions around the “next big evolution” in Digital Social Media by contributing to the overall leadership as a late stage founder. This position can potentially lead to CXO role based on your product development delivery and relationships with the key stakeholders. The company is at the forefront of personalizing the web, and is aiming to become a dominant player in the next wave of the semantic web 3.0 – Your Web. The development team in Australia has just released alpha and the company is relocating its HQ to West Coast Seattle or Silicon Valley in November this year. NextGen Global Executive Search has recruited for the CEO and CTO in their previous ventures, so be assured these guys have a very successful track record.
The Company and Their Solution
The company is a stealth mode start-up founded with the mission to personalize the world’s extreme and fast growing corpus of knowledge represented through people, within the web and online data. Their patent pending technology intelligently surfaces important information from web and social media organised around the consumers’ interests and relationships, connected or serendipitous. It enhances Web 2.0 functionality making it faster, better organised, easier to socialise, share, discover, drive reputation and easier for advertisers to reach consumers with things of real interest. With the growth of social media and the online web stretching the search and social filters to the point consumers are overwhelmed, they intend to bring a new web personalised entry point that harnesses the growing web’s potential for discovering important things. Their Context Discovery Platform goes beyond the Interest graph and will help marketers’ better service and reach consumers through Taste Graph, Reputation Graph etc. through implicit graph definitions.
Position Overview
With their platform now in place the company is targeting to add a late stage co-founder (preferably Silicon Valley, Seattle, or New York). The right candidate will work with the Executive Chairman/Co-Founder on strategy and the business model formulation and priorities and hold full responsibility for technology and products. You should have the potential or proven experience to be a candidate to take on leadership responsibility as CTO or CEO at some point in the future. The company, angel funded and cash positive, is moving towards a Series A to support the public rollout of its social network application in 2012.
Contribute to the overall leadership of the start-up as a late stage founder in product strategy and vision, product development, product management, business case strategy, partnerships, and relationships with key industry stakeholders and investors.
1) Contribute to the overall leadership of the start-up as a late stage founder
2) Lead the design and development of the technology vision and strategy
3) Translate vision into design and systems, overseeing product definitions, development, roll-out, and continuous improvement
4) Anticipate and identify trends and explore innovation opportunities, proactively seeking out innovative technologies and solutions to improve end user experience
5) Deep experience and interest in social networks, social media, social psychology, ad business, business model formulation, semantic web, large scale data mining and mobile
6) Remain current on changes regarding software technologies, semantic web, large/web scale database, reasoning systems, interest graph and mobile
7) Build, manage and leverage industry relationships with key stakeholders
8) Proven, scalable leadership in small start-up environment
Product Strategy
Anticipate and identify trends and explore innovation opportunities, proactively seeing out innovative technologies and solutions to improve end user experience. Ultimately you will be responsible to leverage the company’s innovative technology and capabilities to engage users and deliver significant user memberships across the product portfolio. At the same time, you will be responsible for ensuring that detailed tactical work supports the higher-level strategic thinking.
Product Development and Product Management
Lead the design and development of the technology vision and strategy in aligning the product roadmap and user experience. Translate the vision into defining the design and systems, overseeing product definitions and product development, roll out from alpha to beta, and continuous improvement. Ensure both the user and social experiences encompass the visual, interactive behavior and assistive capabilities of the products with emphasis on usability and usefulness and critical attention to aesthetic appeal.Prioritize functions and features delivery while constantly monitoring and revisiting the strategy and adjust user experience as necessary to meet customer needs, usage, market conditions, technology, and societal trends change.
Business Case Strategy and Key Industry Stakeholders
Remain current on changes regarding software technologies, semantic web, large/web scale database, reasoning systems, interest graph, mobile media, social networking, and communities. Build, manage and leverage industry relationships with key stakeholders using you proven, scalable leadership accomplishments in previous successful early stage start-up environments.
· location based couponing
· personalized couponing –personalized coupon algorithms linked to social analysis and buying behavior + location
· affiliate program –significant opportunity that may and is mostly untapped on the mobile device. However, this needs large scale affiliate partners involved
· online advertising –requires large volumes of traffic to sites driving revenue contribution. Potential value to our and other networks
· SocialCRM, Reputation 3.0 and E.3 Enterprise products
Requirements
Requires 10+ years’ experience in web-based consumer UX, digital media, and online social networks. A background in computer engineering, semantic web design, mobile content platforms, and consumer behavior is essential for this role, along with previous successful launches of large scale internet products.
Ø 10+ years’ experience in Java programming in online/consumer web environments with open source application frameworks, modules, and service platforms using Spring and OSGi.
Ø A detailed understanding of distributed architectures, large scale database technologies including Mongo DB, semantic technologies, cloud computing infrastructure over a period of 7 years.
Ø Detailed experience in consumer product development (5+ years) with strong grasp on User Experience (UX) methodologies and leading technologies to implement AJAX based UXs
Ø At least 3+ years using NLP concept & interest extraction / utilisation.
Ø Deep experience with Google Web Toolkit and Amazon Web Services (AWS).
You need to have a relaxed yet enthusiastic attitude that can slice and dice large scale challenges into bite-sized tasks that you can subsequently deliver upon. Superb attention to detail is needed, as is superior creative and innovative problem-solving skills. You must be a self-starter with the ability to work both independently and within a small team to deliver stretch targets. Deep experience and interest in social networks, social media, semantic web, large scale data mining and mobile devices. You will have in-depth knowledge and experience in delivering world-class user experience from a range of compelling features and benefits.
The successful candidate will lead the design and specification of the product features and user experiences ensuring close alignment to target segments. You will have the ability to specify the user experience at a detailed resolution, ensuring both user uptake and alignment within the technical team. You will work closely with many stakeholders both internal and external to the organization to lead the alignment between product, strategy and the user. You must be highly motivated with a collaborative team approach and superior problem-solving skills. A demonstrated trait in using a pragmatic approach with personal and professional resilience and tenacity is essential.
Compensation in Start-Up Environment
As a late-stage co-founder, the salary is commensurate with an angel funded company that includes a base salary, equity, and MBO stock options plus bonuses. It is important that you are comfortable working in a start-up environment where processes may not be fully established and some cash portions of annual compensation are deferred. You need to be agile in your approach as the company embarks on a rapid growth phase. You should be currently based in San Francisco Bay (Silicon Valley area), Seattle, or NYC area with strong current relationships with executive leaders, development community, stakeholders, and investors in the digital media, mobile media, and social networking verticals.
With mobile applications and cloud data centers, the potential revenue for managed services vendors has not been seen by the IT industry since the dotcom boom of the 90s. And it promises to be an even larger market with unlimited growth.
