About

I have worked in a wide range of industries including enterprise SaaS, consumer web, and multimedia streaming and licensing. My passion is building great teams and creating healthy cultures in the hybrid work era. Past roles have included everything from leading operations to sales and marketing, and have been fortunate enough to start and scale a few successful ideas of my own along the way.

I typically work with SaaS or technology companies that have achieved product market fit ($1M-$50M ARR) and are looking to improve their culture, accelerate their growth and impact their communities. I’ve also had the pleasure of helping non-profit organizations, but my preference is to partner with exceptional and highly motivated for-profit businesses and teams.

Corporate Experience

  • Chief Revenue Officer at FM, one of the largest creative licensing platforms in the world. FM provides music and footage licensing using a recurring subscription model to the world’s leading brands including Google, Chevrolet, and Nike.
  • Head of Marketing at Aha! (Fastest growing remote SaaS company on Inc. 5,000). Employee #3 for a company that now has surpassed $100M in ARR in less than 7 years.
  • VP of Marketing at RealPage (later acquired by Thoma Bravo for $10.2B). Built a team of 65 engineers, data analysts, content writers, and growth marketers.
  • Head of Growth for Superpages.com and took them from 11% to 164% organic revenue growth YoY, becoming one of the 50 most visited websites in the world.
  • Growth Manager at Neptune Now, an on-demand streaming music solution used by theme parks and businesses across the country.

Founder Experience

  • Founder of Freegrader (acquired by Google) a website which used a proprietary algorithm to grade websites in only a few seconds. Freegrader generated more than 100,000 leads in it’s first year and graded more than 1,000,000 websites before being acquired by Google and merged into what is now their PageSpeed Insights tool.
  • Founder of Hissing Kitty (acquired by Private Equity) and turned it into one the world’s leading consumer advocacy sites with a small team of 3 freelance contractors. The mission was simple, empower users to have a voice and speak up when they are treated unfairly by businesses. Hissing Kitty hosted millions of reviews on 5,000+ brands worldwide.

Notable Investments

  • Early investor in Tesla [TSLA]. The shift from dealer centric sales to distributed direct-to-consumer, combined with their focus on software, catapulted them to the global leader in EVs.
  • Early investor in Slack [WORK]. Their asynchronous culture and focus on distributed teams led them to be later acquired by Salesforce [CRM] for $28B.
  • Early investor in Atlassian [TEAM]. Their product led growth and remote culture is a competitive advantage. They maintain an incredible 84% gross margin and 50% annual revenue growth.

Current Investments

  • Early investor in Fundrise, a crowd sourced real estate platform that helps democratize access to real estate investment for anyone regardless of background or socioeconomic status. More than 150,000 people use Fundrise to invest in commercial and single family real estate. Fundrise has a current valuation of $800M and maintains an annual growth rate greater than 100% annually.
  • Investor and advisor for ArborXR, a leading device management platform for the XR world. The platform has onboarded over 800 enterprise customers in the first year of launch including Qualcomm, HP, and Samsung.
  • Invested in Cameo during their Series B and Series C rounds, a 1-on-1 live video platform that connects fans with celebrities. More than 1,000,000 celebrity Cameo videos have already been completed. The current valuation of Cameo is $1B with more than 200 active employees and 30,000 celebrities on the platform.
  • Early investor in SEMrush, the world’s leading marketing technology platform. With over 70,000 customers and billions of data points on the world’s search behavior, SEMrush is the authority for the world’s leading demand generation and growth leaders.

Giving Back

  • Former board member for Life International. Over the last 10 years, they have helped distribute food, clothes, and children’s toys to millions throughout the world including Africa, Europe, and South America. Work included fundraising, branding, and promotion in English and Spanish to donors throughout North America.
  • Certified financial planner with more than 10 years experience working with individuals and families to better plan for their future. My focus is on providing everyone equal access to the tools and capital needed to create a better life. I am proud of having personally helped more than 1,000 people complete various financial literacy courses and programs.

Want to connect?

A few years ago I decided to take a sabbatical from typical networking platforms like LinkedIn and instead started a monthly newsletter. You can signup here or email me anytime at hey@keithbrown.com