Evan Cohen
COO for Startups at EVCO Advisory Services
Evan Cohen
COO for Startups at EVCO Advisory Services
New York City Metropolitan Area
Overview
Work Experience
Strategic Advisor and Fractional CFO / COO for Startups
2018 - Current
Strategic advisor, fractional CFO / COO, and executive coach for startup Founders / CEOs, supporting finance & operations, growth, strategy, business planning, fundraising, leadership development, and management.
Board Director
2019
Independent non-executive Board Director at HostelWorld, the world's leading booking platform for youth hostels. Member of remuneration, nomination, and audit subcommittees. HostelWorld is publicly traded on the London and Irish stock exchanges (HSW).
Vice President, Finance and Operations
2022 - 2023
Sole business leader at Tibles, a web3 startup that builds NFT / digital collectibles apps for fans in partnership with major entertainment companies such as Dr Seuss Enterprises and Fraggle Rock.
Venture Partner
2019 - 2021
Human Ventures is an early-stage venture fund in NYC that backs and builds consumer technology companies. Led and designed Humans in the Wild, Human's accelerator program for early-stage entrepreneurs, with thematic focus areas covering Health & Wellness and Future of Work.
East Coast Regional Director
2016 - 2018
Senior executive responsible for Lyft’s entire East Coast business, encompassing 8 offices including New York City, Boston and Washington DC. Managed multi-billion dollar GMV business by leading a team of over 300 responsible for local market strategy, marketplace operations, passenger marketing programs, and driver recruitment, engagement and retention. Oversaw 10x growth in Lyft’s East Coast weekly rides and revenues while national market share grew from under 10% to over 35%. Managed hyper-growth of teams and business as overall company size grew from 400 to 4,500 employees during tenure.
General Manager, New York City
2015 - 2016
Led New York City marketplace for Lyft.
Chief Operating Officer
2010 - 2014
6th full-time employee at Foursquare, the location-based mobile service dedicated to helping users discover interesting places and friends nearby. As COO, responsible for building and managing business functions for the company, spanning business development, international expansion, marketing, finance, legal, talent and corporate development. Oversaw rapid expansion of the company from six to 170 employees, growth from 50k to 50m users across the globe, development of ad-driven and data sales monetization programs, and led numerous fundraising efforts to raise more than $170m of investment capital.
Vice President, Strategy and Operations
2007 - 2009
Early employee in Bebo’s London office during the period of rapid growth in which the site became one of the largest social networks in the world and a top-five site overall in Europe. Responsible for a range of growth initiatives, strategic planning, corporate development, board management, and partnership support. Sample projects include helping to negotiate and manage large commercial partnerships with Yahoo! for syndicated ad sales, music rights owners for content distribution licenses, and production companies for original video series commissions. Part of deal team that negotiated successful $850m acquisition exit to AOL. Also served as a Senior Vice President for AOL, post acquisition, helping to manage the People Networks division, which strove to integrate AIM, Bebo and AOL email into a full-spectrum community product.
Media & Entertainment Strategy Consultant
2005 - 2007
Worked as a London-based strategy consultant helping television companies and video rights owners develop digital strategic initiatives. Engaged by Channel 4, ITV, NBC-U, Viacom and others on various strategy projects, including evaluating potential of online video advertising, designing new media rights regulatory framework, structuring mobile video content and distribution strategy, and building business case for live entertainment business opportunities.
Media & Entertainment Strategy Consultant
2005 - 2005
Worked as an independent strategy consultant for Fremantle / Bertelsmann, developing business cases to explore potential TV program distribution strategies, including growth and competitive assessments of multi-channel, broadband, and mobile markets. Also worked with HomeChoice, an early interactive television platform, to perform strategic marketing analysis of viewer trends, user segmentation, and subscriber growth.
Vice President, Data Research Group
1996 - 2002
Early employee at Jupiter Research, a pioneering consulting and market research firm for the then brand new consumer internet industry. Responsible for building models to forecast growth dynamics in new consumer online sectors such as shopping, advertising and travel, creating a series of consumer market research products, and building and managing a team of 12. Led a team dedicated to leveraging merger with Media Metrix through the development of joint research services. During tenure, Jupiter grew to 300+ employees, signed over 1,000 clients for research subscription services, opened multiple offices around the world, and completed a successful IPO.