Mark Charkin
Investor at Ventures Together
Mark Charkin
Investor at Ventures Together
San Francisco Bay Area
Overview
Work Experience
Executive & Fractional CRO
2020 - Current
Frever - https://www.frever.com/ - Head of Strategic Partnerships : working with CEO on GTM strategy and partnerships - April 2024 - XIX Entertainment - https://www.xixentertainment.com/ - Digital Advisor / Producer : working directly with Simon Fuller building the next generation digital IP - May 2020 - present Social Standards - https://www.socialstandards.com/ - Stepped back from CRO to Commercial Advisory role to drive Fortune 500 brand deals (i.e. with Diageo, Wells Fargo etc) - January 2022 - April 2023 D-ID - https://www.d-id.com/ - Acting US GM & Head of Strategic Partnerships : working directly with the executive team to help build US commercial partnerships and operations - Jan 2022 - July 2022 Techwolf - www.techwolf.com - Advisor to the CEO & COO : working on strategic partnerships and US GTM Pophouse - https://career.pophouse.se/ - working with Executive team on ABBA Voyage & other special projects - May 2018 - September 2019
Seed Investor
2024
Angel Investor in multiple pre & seed stage stage ups
Chief Revenue Officer
2017 - 2020
Social Standards is an innovative market analytics platform that structures social data to create powerful insights. In my role as CRO I was responsible for leading and building all commercial operations - Sales, Marketing, Customer Success and have overall revenue responsibility. I personally brought in and closed Fortune 500 clients such as Coca Cola, AB InBev, Chanel, Coty, Sephora, Estee, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Heineken, Moet Hennessy and J&J as well as establish business relationships across Private Equity and Consultancies (Bain, KKR, TPG, TSG, AT Kearney etc) taking the business to $5m ARR from scratch in 2 years. I helped closed the Series B in 2018.
Independent - Consultant & Advisor & Investor
2015 - 2017
I was brought in to work with the executive teams at hyper growth start-ups such as Snapchat, Jaunt VR and Onfido to advise and support on GTM, International Expansion & Brand Partnership. Summary below; Snapchat - https://www.snapchat.com/ - Messaging application for sharing moments - Consultant/Adviser - Advertising strategy & International rollout - August2015 - Dec2016 Onfido - https://onfido.com/us - Building trust through intelligent background checks - Consultant - Partnered with CEO to launch Onfido in the US (BD/Partnerships) - Nov2015 - July 2016 Jaunt VR - http://www.jauntvr.com - Cinematic Virtual Reality - Consultant - BD, monetization strategy, Brand sponsorships - Jan2016 - April2017 Gfycat - www.gfycat.com - Short form content platform - Consultant - Distribution & Partnerships - May 2017 - Sept 2017; Vertebrae - www.vertebrae.io - Immersive AR/VR ad platform - Consultant - Brand Partnerships, Commercial Strategy & Sales - May 2017 - Sept 2017 The Hunt - https://www.thehunt.com/ - (acquired by Pinterest, Dec2015) Community that helps you track down items you covet - Advisor - July2015 - Dec2015 Deep Forest Media (acquired by Rakuten) - http://www.deepforestmedia.com/ - mobile dsp - Consultant - Commercial Strategy & BD - Feb2015 - Nov2015 Wearable World - http://wearableworld.co/ - Incubator / Advisory for IoT and Wearables - Seed investor - June2015 - present Incoming Media - http://www.incoming-media.com/ - Predictive High definition video solution - Consultant - Sales Strategy & BD - April2015 - July2015 Fabric - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fabric-your-want-to-list-for/id956915837?mt=8 - “want-to-list for everything you love to do” - Seed investor - Feb2015 - present Mayor of London International Business Programme - http://gotogrow.london/mentors-and-businesses/meet-the-mentors - Mentor - Feb2016 - June 2019 Lumia Capital - https://lumiacapital.com/ - Advisor - Global Success Council - June 2017 - July 2019
Chief Revenue Officer
2013 - 2014
The Exchange Lab, a leading Adtech company, created Datalab (proprietary insights and trading engine) that was one of the largest programmatic digital media marketplaces in the world. In my role as CRO I was tasked as follows - lead, manage, grow, establish the revenue teams globally (core UK, EMEA, CA, US & Singapore) - own sales budget, targets & P&L - define and get sign off on US goto market strategy and execute plan. First 9 months, I hired and opened offices in NYC, Dallas, Chicago, Atlanta & San Francisco - Partner with marketing (CMO) to define sales collateral, PR, events etc (i.e. IAB, Festival of Media, Cannes etc) - Define sales processes including CRM, sales reporting tools (Tableau), org structures, roles & resps, pipeline mgmt tools etc - Participate in series A fundraising, leading to $9m round from BGF in dec 2013
EVP Business Development & Advertising
2011 - 2013
King Digital Entertainment is one of the leading mobile games companies in the world ( infamous for Candy Crush Saga) I was brought in by the CEO (Riccardo Zacconi) and COO (Stephane Kurgan) into the executive team as EVP BD & Advertising to help build King Digital ground up from a small European games business to the undisputed global leader in casual games (Candy Crush Saga etc) with over 400million monthly uniques and over $2billion of revenue. - Built & led the Advertising & Business Development units & teams globally (core US & EU) from VP level down - Launched King.com in the USA, setting up offices in San Francisco & New York and establishing the initial strategic partnerships with Facebook, Google, Apple & Amazon - Built the advertising business, with full ownership of advertising budget, P&L, strategy, forecasting, & ad roadmap. Achieved nearly 1000% advertising revenue growth in 18 months and led multiple strategic deals with global brands including P&G, Nestle, Pepsi & Unilever. Disbanded the team in summer 2013 due to strategic business shift away from advertising. - Budget & P&L ownership for the King.com skill partner business with over 50 media & games partnerships, such as MSN, Yahoo, NBC, RTL, ITV, T-Online, Spil, Pogo etc. Led renegotiations of complex agreements to increase profitability of existing partners & many new partners brought in including AOL and M6 - Spokesperson/Speaker for King at advertising events such as Cannes Lions, SXSW, Digital Hollywood etc
Independent - Consultant & Advisor
2009 - 2011
I was brought in by CEO/Executive teams at Brightroll & Endemol to drive EMEA expansion and business development Brightroll - Leading Video Ad Platform (Acquired by Yahoo $640m) - Consultant - EU Launch GM Endemol - https://www.endemolshinegroup.com/ - World's Largest Independent Producer - Consultant - Brand Sponsorship Original Content - Jul 2009 - June 2010 Moviepilot - Leading Movie fan site and property (Aquired by Webedia $20m) - GTM Sales - Consultant - Jan 2011 - June 2011 DN Capital - https://www.dncapital.com/ - Leading EU/US VC - Special Industry Advisor - Nov 2010 - Nov 2012 Seedcamp - https://seedcamp.com/ - Europe's leading Seed Fund - Mentor & Advisor - Nov 2009 - Present Rippll - https://www.rippll.com/ - Location based mobile platform - Advisor & Investor - April 2010 - June 2019 Chime ventures - Division of the Chime Group to invest in emerging Adtech - Venture Partner - Advisor - Jun 2010 - June 2011
VP Global Sales
2006 - 2009
Bebo was one of the first social networking businesses, ultimately acquired by AOL for $850m In my role as VP Global Sales i built and owned the entire commercial organization; - I was the first commercial hire at Bebo (12th employee overall). Responsible for developing & building Bebos’ sales infrastructure and hiring an A grade team across the Uk and internationally from scratch - Key part of executive management team & critical part of leadership team that helped drive acquisition of Bebo by AOL for $850million in May 2008 - Responsible for the Bebo global revenue target (2006 - $2m - 2008 - $45million) - Driving and owning sales integration efforts with AOL globally - Managing agency and client relationships at director and CXO levels - Bebo spokesman for press and speaker (incl keynotes) at high profile events such as Cannes Lions, IAB Engage, Adtech, DMEXCO, Digital Hollywood, Internet World, IIA, Advertising 2.0 etc
Regional Sales Director EMEA
2001 - 2006
MSN is the digital division of Microsoft - Responsible for building this commercial unit from scratch to 30 people, (pre-sales, agency sales, client direct sales, account mgmt, operations and trade marketing) - Delivered annually double digit million $ budget to Microsoft (2006 - $65million) - Focused on building outstanding customer delight (customer satisfaction on our team as measured by outside consultancy was highest in EU vhs internal teams and our core competitors, Yahoo, Lycos and AOL). In 2005 the team was awarded team of the year across all of MSN - Forged first MSN global agency trading partnership with Aegis
UK Sales Director
1999 - 2001
- Recruited and managed team of five agency sales managers - Responsible for setting individual quotas, weekly forecasting and delivering the team target to the business - Directed a portfolio of agencies and direct clients, including Havas group, Interpublic and Aegis - Identified new sales opportunities and worked with internal teams to develop new advertising propositions