Start-up DNA in high-growth, early-stage markets. Mentor. Growth-focused. Have sat on both sides of the table (financing, buy and sell-side M&A, B2B). Board level. Strategic. Experience across broad-range of emerging markets, many now mainstream.
Currently the Global VP, eB2B Marketplace, based in New York. Previously the Head of China Digital eCommerce for AB InBev, based in Shanghai.
As a serial technology start-up guy, working for the world’s largest beverage company in this role is not intuitive at first glance. More used to raising venture capital, building high-growth businesses and sitting on the sell-side during M&A discussions, I have “start-up DNA”, but AB InBev offered the best of all worlds – the chance to work in a newly created group, ABI’s ZX Ventures organization, with the mandate to launch and build an eCommerce business in China with ABI as a single strategic investor. Treating the business as a high-growth start-up is a key part of the ZXV culture, with innovation, velocity and agility as key pillars.
Having started my career in Beijing in 1989, I have come full circle in this, my second tour of China. In between China stints, I have had front row seats at several technology inflection points, spending the mid-90’s in Silicon Valley involved in the early Internet, SaaS and Cloud, the late-90’s in Redmond, deeply embedded in Microsoft as it transitioned from a work group to enterprise player, laid the groundwork for “du”, a telecom company in Dubai, spent 10 years at the forefront of mobile broadband, rode the front edge of the enterprise social media wave, launched an eCommerce business in China, & am now building a global Marketplace business unit, helping to bring people together for a Better World.
Favorite quote: “Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision. Their goals differed, but they all had this in common: that the step was first, the road new, the vision unborrowed, and the response they received — hatred. The great creators — the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors — stood alone against the men of their time. Every great new thought was opposed. Every great new invention was denounced…But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered and they paid. But they won.” —Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead