Jay Shaffer
Market Director at VentureSouth
Jay Shaffer
Market Director at VentureSouth
Greater Chattanooga
Overview
Work Experience
Market Director
2022 - Current
VentureSouth Chattanooga is a group of investors in and around Chattanooga who support early-stage, high-growth ventures in the Southeastern United States with capital and expertise.
Board Member
2019
Co-Lead of Screening Committee and Due Diligence. Lead the ATA Analyst Program of MBA and JD students.
Mentor, Advisor, Angel Investor
2018
Implementation Manager
2017 - 2018
Technology startup creating last-mile delivery system for packages to apartment communities. Orchestrated Test Program which developed over 150 use cases to provide feedback for Engineering and Product Teams. Designed and implemented systems, policies, and procedures for: * Sales Operations: Produced process flows for post-Sales activities. * Build Out: Developed technical specifications; Created “configurator” to optimize site space; Devised Package Room wiring schema. * Onboarding of new Apartment Communities and Residents. Initiate “Community Profile” to capture relevant data to ensure smooth transition. * Customer Support: Create support responses; Establish coverage; Map Salesforce migration. * Technical Support: Document triage for technical issues. Initiate Internal and 3rd Party resolution procedures.
Director Product Management - NCR Small Business
2016 - 2017
Oversaw product design, roadmap development, launch tools and processes for NCR’s cloud-based tablet point-of-sale system (POS). • Collaborated with key stakeholders to design functional requirements using Agile methodologies for Silver PRO Retail Office • Developed key integration API’s aligning with Unified Commerce and Supply Chain initiatives. • Drove consistent customer experience performance with User Interface (UI) team. • Conducted competitive analysis on retail industry, online, and in-store trends. • Built and maintained strong executive relationship across all teams within NCR Small Business.
Product Development
2014 - 2016
Community-building platform to assemble the fullest compliment of the Southeast's health decision makers, innovators, and students to foster ongoing collaboration. Gathered 1,000 (combined) top executives and stakeholders for events on September 2014 and September 2015. - Raise $1.1M in financial and in-kind contributions with health-related companies. - Co-Host Health Connect South Radio outreach to innovative health tech startups - Generate ROI benefit document for sponsors to achieve 95% renewal rate. - Design and implement systems and processes for health-related non-profit startup. - Oversee website and mobile web/app development for community platform. - Mentor students and recent graduates to become part of Health Connect South Team,
Co-Founder, Director of Product Management
2006 - 2013
Ecommerce startup selling personalized gifts with voice messages: “Music Boxes That Plays Memories”. Recommended by TODAY and CNN, VoiceQuilt has served over 11,000 customers and delivered over 400,000 voice message memories. Culled insights from VoiceQuilt campaign data, web analytics, customer care information and market research to reduce customer acquisition costs (CAC) and increase revenue per customer. Created and updated "Audio GIfts Landscape" to track competitive offerings. Defined and managed start-up operations from concept through testing, launch and production, linking the vision to processes and systems. - Determined pricing strategy and ROI for all VoiceQuilt products, services, and bundles - Negotiated over 50 contracts, monitor SLA's, and managed relationships with software developers, hardware designers, gift suppliers and vendors of telephony, network, payment gateway, credit card processing and cloud hosting services. - Designed and implemented VoiceQuilt’s gift personalization process, shipping VoiceQuilt orders (Music Boxes, CD and MP3 players) by next Business Day with 98.8% accuracy. - Implemented FreeCRM that drove high customer satisfaction: 99.3% of exit surveys reported that customers would recommend VoiceQuilt to friends. - Directed three rounds of mechanical design and hardware development, decreasing the cost of VoiceQuilt's audio playback device by over 50%.
Business Operations Manager
1991 - 2005
Reviewed / approved SOW for long-term Professional Services engagements including Sun HW, SW, consulting and support services. Designed and implemented performance measurement tools, SLA's and business processes for new ventures within SUN: Professional Services, Computer HW, SW and Sun-Netscape-AOL Alliance. P&L Responsibility. Business Operations Manager, Sun Professional Services 2004-2006 Created management operations dashboard (“SMASH” Report) that combined extracts from financial, CRM and time reporting input systems. Spearheaded weekly meetings to ensure that resources were focused on maximizing quarterly revenue and margin targets - Revenue and margin forecasts improved by 25% Sun-Netscape-AOL Alliance 2000-2004 - Created and implemented Book-to-Bill policies and procedures for Europe, APAC and Canada. - Created and implemented US pricing and sales commission strategy for Sun-AOL-Netscape large-scale software support services to optimize the revenue recognition split. - Supervised Service maintenance renewals and new contract sales. Business Operations Manager, Sun Professional Services 1994— 2000 - Pioneered financial and operational reporting for Eastern US operations of new Sun business unit to grow business to US$80M+ in fewer than five years. -Earned SunUP Achievement Award (top 1%-trip to Australia) for Unrivaled Performance. Revenue Manager, Sun Computer Systems 1991-1994 - Forecasted mix and volume for over $1.2B of strategic Sun HW & SW based on new product introductions and competitive analysis. - Allocated critical manufacturing components to optimize revenue, margin and client satisfaction. - Member New Product Introduction teams - Drove SunCUP (Continuous Update Process) with Sale and Operations to achieve revenue, margin and inventory targets.