AU

April Underwood

Founder of Adverb Ventures

United States

Overview 

April Underwood is the Managing Director and Co-founder of Adverb Ventures, with a focus on investing in various sectors and stages such as Future of Work, Consumer Health, and Developer Tools. She has held significant roles at companies like Slack as Chief Product Officer and Twitter as Director of Product, demonstrating her expertise in product management and strategic partnerships. Underwood's career highlights include co-founding #ANGELS and Nearby, as well as serving on the boards of Zillow Group and Eventbrite, showcasing her strong leadership skills and strategic vision in the tech industry.

Work Experience 

  • Managing Director and Co-Founder

    2023 - Current

Adverb Ventures is a new venture capital firm.

  • Board Director

    2017

Zillow is an online real estate marketplace for finding and sharing information about homes, real estate, and mortgages.

Raised $96,627,980.00 from TCV and TCV.

  • Board Director

    2022

Eventbrite develops an online platform that lets users find and create events.

Raised $557,250,000.00 from Francisco Partners.

  • Co-Founder

    2015

    We are an investment collective of experienced operators and the authors of The Gap Table. We’ve backed over 150 companies to date. Learn more: http://hashtagangels.com

  • Founder and CEO

    2020 - 2022

    I founded Nearby in the beginning of the COVID pandemic to help local retailers make the transition to e-commerce and give shoppers the choice to shop local while shopping online. My team and I raised over $25M from GV, Obvious Ventures, and Redpoint. In fall of 2021, a portion of the team joined Twitter through acquisition and I wound down the business.

  • Chief Product Officer

    2018 - 2019

    Led product, platform, user research, and design organizations as business matured and company prepared to become a public company as Slack’s first CPO. My staff of talented leaders included VPs, Senior Directors, and Directors whose teams were responsible for all aspects of the product as well as functional organizations including Design and Research. Many of those leaders are still in their roles today (and have grown in their roles and titles since the IPO).

  • Vice President of Product

    2015 - 2018

    Joined company at 150 employees to build and oversee the Slack Platform. Stepped up to run all of product as Slack’s first VP of Product after launching the platform in December 2015.

Slack is a cloud-based communication and collaboration platform for teams.

Raised $1,391,100,000.00 from Light Street Capital, Meyer Ventures and Employee Stock Option Fund.

  • Director of Product

    2010 - 2015

    I joined Twitter in 2010 as a Product Manager on Platform / API when the company was 175 employees. Over my 5 years there, I wore a number a number of hats. I was PM on the suite of platform capabilities which served publishers (e.g., Tweet Button, Follow Button, etc). I was a founding Director on the Business Development team where I ran a team of 5. I returned to Product roles and helped build the Ads Product suite from its earliest days, including building the Ads API and its ecosystem from 0->1. As a Director of Product, I grew into cross-functional leadership, managing Ads Product Marketing in addition to my Product Management team, on an interim basis in 2014. Finally, I ran the Data Products team which had joined us via the acquisition of Gnip. I built a wide variety of functional, managerial, and external comms skills while the company grew from 150->4000 people.

X is a social networking platform that allows its users to send and read microblogs.

Raised $12,869,191,511.00 from Greenlight Capital, Binance, Litani Ventures, Qatar Investment Authority, Qatar Holding, The Lawrence J. Ellison Revocable Trust, Fidelity, Alwaleed Bin Talal, Sequoia Capital and Vy Capital.

  • Product Manager, Travel

    2009 - 2010

    Joined company at 20 employees. Drove market assessment and product definition for a new consumer product aimed at helping travelers manage their weather-related risk. Launched in summer 2010 as raincheck.com and was later sunset in favor of agriculture product suite.

  • Senior Partner Technology Manager

    2007 - 2009

    Management of content acquisition and monetization programs for Google products including Product Search, Maps, News, Finance, Blogger, Book Search, Groups, and more. Contributed to strategy for Travel vertical which resulted in the acquisition of ITA Software.

Google is a multinational corporation that specializes in Internet-related services and organizes the world’s information.

Raised $26,100,000.00 from Angel Investors LP, Kleiner Perkins, Signatures Capital, Sequoia Capital, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Shaquille O'Neal, Henry Kissinger, Google and Tiger Woods.

  • MBA Intern

    2006 - 2006

Apple is a corporation that designs, manufactures, and markets consumer electronics, personal computers, and software.

Raised $1,170,230,000.00 from KB Securities, Berkshire Hathaway and Microsoft.

Articles About April

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