Touraj Parang
Technology Executive & Advisor | Serial Entrepreneur and Investor with $2B+ in Exits | Strategic Advisor to High Growth Startups & Investor Funds | Amazon Bestselling Author of Exit Path
Touraj Parang
Technology Executive & Advisor | Serial Entrepreneur and Investor with $2B+ in Exits | Strategic Advisor to High Growth Startups & Investor Funds | Amazon Bestselling Author of Exit Path
San Francisco Bay Area
Overview
Work Experience
President, Chief Operating Officer, Board Member
2021 - Current
Nasdaq: SERV Executing on our mission to revolutionize sustainable, self-driving delivery with autonomous robots. Pivotal in leading Serve from an Uber spinoff into the trailblazer in the robotic delivery industry. Identify, prioritize, and drive revenue growth, competitive differentiation, and fundraising initiatives, leveraging partnership-driven go-to-market strategy and superior unit economics unlocked by deep tech and operational efficiency. Key Achievements: * Growth Financing: Led strategic planning, financial modeling, negotiations, and transaction execution to secure over $50 million in equity and debt funding from a syndicate of strategic investors (including Uber and Nvidia) and financial investors, fueling key technology advancements and fleet expansion. * Going Public: Co-led with our CEO all investment bank and deal sponsor due diligence and negotiation activities, resulting in a successful reverse merger and Private Placement (PIPE) financing in 2023 and OTC and Nasdaq uplisting in 2024. * Partnerships and Expansion: Forged a groundbreaking partnership with Uber Eats, achieving consistent monthly growth in deliveries with superior reliability and customer satisfaction performance, and initiated collaborations with major ecosystem partners such as Walmart, 7-Eleven, Pizza Hut, and Starbucks, boosting addressable market potential, presence, and visibility. * Innovation and Revenue Diversification: Pioneered an out-of-home advertising revenue line, diversifying revenue streams, and establishing strategic partnerships to support growth. * Leadership Excellence: Recruited and mentored the leadership team, fostering a culture of excellence, agile experimentation, and innovation. Successfully scaled to over 100 employees and contractors in 2022 across United States, Canada, and Mexico.
Member of HBR Advisory Council
2024
Invited to the Harvard Business Review Advisory Council, an exclusive, opt-in research community of business leaders, to contribute to research studies, engage in online discussion forums, and offer strategic feedback and innovative ideas to HBR editors and product developers, shaping new content and products with a focus on entrepreneurship, strategy, and innovation leadership
Operating Advisor
2014
Pear VC is a top-performing early-stage venture capital firm investing in passionate, mission-driven founders. Joined the founding partners as an operating partner and mentor to the portfolio from inception, working closely with AI, software, consumer, and b2b startups. Advise cohorts of world-class entrepreneurs on KPI and data-driven business execution, M&A strategy (prospect identification and relationship building), long-term business planning, radical prioritization, business development strategy (market mapping, deal structure, and pricing), competitive positioning, financial modeling, and viral consumer product marketing. Typically partner with 1 or 2 startups in each quarterly cohort and mentor them from napkin stage to demo day. Have led numerous group coaching sessions and presentations on mentorship, negotiation strategies, business development, and exits.
Author
2017
Drawing from 25 years of diverse experience in Silicon Valley as a corporate lawyer, startup investor, multi-exited entrepreneur, and strategic acquirer, authored a widely acclaimed and Amazon bestselling book published by McGraw Hill in August 2022. This book serves as a comprehensive playbook for all entrepreneurs regardless of the stage of their startup. It unveils the secrets to unlocking a startup's untapped strategic potential and executing successful exits to strategic buyers and partners aligned with its mission execution, all while addressing the often-overlooked topic of exits in the industry, challenging prevailing norms. Post publication activities include frequent participation in podcasts and panels, giving keynote presentations, and guest lecturing at various universities such as Stanford and UC Berkeley on exit strategies and business development best practices. Published articles, blog posts, and Op-Eds in Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and other prominent business publications on entrepreneurial topics.
Board Member / Strategic Advisor / Early-Stage Investor
2009
Conduct market research, analyze trends, seek expert opinions, and learn about new and emerging technologies with exponential growth potential to develop investment thesis. Leverage extensive network to identify, source, evaluate, conduct diligence, and participate in Pre-Seed to Series C early-stage investment opportunities focusing on artificial intelligence (AI), b2b, SaaS, ecommerce, fintech, cybersecurity, and cloud technologies, achieving a MOIC of 5.2 and over $1.5B in exit value over past 10 years. Played a key role in the development of 17 startups, leading to 1 IPO and 8 strategic acquisitions as a board member or strategic advisor.
Vice President, Business & Corporate Development
2014 - 2021
Promoted from Senior Director to Vice President of Business & Corporate Development. In each role, provided strategic leadership and spearheaded initiatives pivotal to the company's financial growth and strategic objectives and aligned with our mission to shift the global economy towards small businesses. Key Responsibilities and Achievements: * Strategic M&A: Drove the M&A and build-buy-partner strategy in close collaboration with key stakeholders, including the private equity financial sponsors on our board, executive team, and senior leadership across various business units including Communications, Domains (Registrar and Registry), Business Applications (Productivity), Hosting, Presence & Commerce, and Professional Web Services organizations. * Acquisitions: Led diligence and competitive bidding process for deals valued $3B in aggregate. Advocated for and led high-impact asset, stock, and talent acquisitions from target identification and prioritization to deal negotiation through successful integration to generate inorganic growth, accelerate innovation, boost competitive position and market share, integrate vertically, and grow wallet share. Notable acquisitions include Main Street Hub (online marketing), Freedom Voice (VoIP and messaging), Neustar (and MMX, .CLUB, and .DESIGN registries), Nodejitsu (open source platform), Apptix (hosted email), and Cognate (blockchain). * Strategic Partnerships: Built business cases, drove cross-functional alignment, led brainstorming & ideation sessions using design-thinking methodologies, negotiated, and oversaw our largest strategic partnerships with key technology industry players such as Google, Microsoft, Open-Xchange, and Yelp. * Leadership: Grew the Corporate Development organization and took on active role in recruiting and training junior team members. Excelled in managing and mentoring cross-functional teams, with a focus on fostering continuous learning and adaptability in fast-paced, matrixed organizations.
Founding Chief Operating Officer, Advisor
2013 - 2015
UpCounsel is the pioneering and disruptive online legal marketplace for SMBs. Spearheaded the company's strategic direction and operational excellence, differentiating our platform from competitors through delightful customer experience enabled by a carefully curated marketplace that matched competent counsel to the right jobs posted on the platform. Defined our KPIs, platform policies, and online user experience for both sides of the marketplace to overcome off-platform transactions and cold-start problem plaguing other marketplace businesses. Assembled a top-tier team of angel investors, advisors, and key employees, all vital in revolutionizing the legal sector. Instrumental in crafting and executing a robust go-to-market strategy and playbook for geographic expansion, eventually leading to UpCounsel's acquisition by LinkedIn and a private equity firm in 2019.
VP Strategy & Corporate Development
2009 - 2012
Webs is a leading website creation tool used by over 40 million users worldwide on a freemium business model. I was recruited by the Board and CEO to explore breakout and strategic possibilities. During my 2-year tenure, I championed the turn-around of the company from a generic website builder to an online marketing solution across web, mobile and social platforms focused on small businesses. Key Responsibilities & Achievements: * Defined and built cross-departmental consensus around a winning breakout strategy focusing on small business virtual front door solutions, resulting in explosive growth in revenues and company valuation from less than $30 million to $117.5 million in 2 years. * Managed developer community and integrated an ecosystem of over 20 small business applications into Webs App Store to fill competitive gaps in product offering while maintaining internal organizational support from engineering, product management, and customer service teams. * Identified, negotiated, and successfully integrated 2 critical international acquisitions: VisitorContact (rebuilt and relaunched as the first microbusiness CRM tool branded ContactMe) and Pagemodo (rebuilt and relaunched to become the leading Facebook Page creation tool with exponential user and revenue growth throughout 2011). * Championed strategic new business development and co-marketing initiatives with HP Logoworks, eNom/Demand Media, Register.com (now Web.com), Network Solutions (now Web.com), Constant Contact, MailChimp, RingCentral, CafePress, Ziplocal, ImmersiFind, Duda Mobile, Zumba, Wibiya, Google and Facebook to fill gaps in product offerings and accelerate time-to-market for small business offerings. * Ran the competitive M&A auction sales process involving 3 public suitors culminating in the strategic acquisition by Vistaprint in 2011 at $117.5 million valuation, spearheading all communications, negotiations, and diligence efforts (without any investment banker involvement).
Co-Founder, COO, and Board Member
2005 - 2009
Jaxtr was a pioneer in voice-over-IP (VOIP) mobile technology and the fastest growing social communications startup among its peers. Jaxtr raised $20 million in venture and debt financing, grew to over 50 employees in Silicon Valley and won numerous industry awards for innovation, design, and user growth. Jaxtr was sold in a private transaction in 2009. Key Responsibilities and Achievements: * Product Management: Leading the vision, specification, and implementation of most of the core product features, including a viral user acquisition engine which grew the service to over 10 million registered users worldwide within the first year of launch, working cross-functionally with Product, Engineering, Operations, and Support teams. * Innovation & Intellectual Property: Developing expertise in voice-over-IP (VOIP), SIP, and scalable web technologies and applications, co-authoring an issued patent in those areas. * Business Development: Putting together an ecosystem of back-end VOIP partnerships to drive down the costs of connecting VOIP and traditional PSTN networks in completely novel ways. * Strategic Acquisition: Leading the sale of the company to Sabse Technologies in 2009 with the mission to build a global cloud telephony platform.
Corporate Transactions Attorney
2004 - 2005
O'Melveny & Myers is a leading global corporate law firm. Recruited to help expand the Silicon Valley presence of the firm based on my strong network in the entrepreneur community. While evangelizing for OMM in Silicon Valley, my legal practice focused on representing emerging growth companies, venture capital firms and private equity investors in the areas of corporate finance, securities, M&A and general corporate and business law. A significant part of my practice involved international transactions, including working on several cross-border venture capital and private equity transactions in China and spending a summer in Shanghai and Beijing.