Wayne Neale
Chief Product Officer at Founders Workshop
Wayne Neale
Chief Product Officer at Founders Workshop
Manhattan Beach, California
Overview
Work Experience
Chief Product Officer
2024 - Current
At Founders Workshop, we empower entrepreneurs and visionaries by leveraging AI to accelerate your journey from idea to market. Our comprehensive suite of startup and product services combines exceptional expertise in business strategy, cutting-edge design, go-to-market, innovative product development, and AI technology. Unlike traditional software development firms, we integrate AI-driven insights with holistic business acumen to propel your venture forward with confidence and assurance.
Founder and CEO
2012
Kydak is an experience design company located in Tempe, AZ. We use human-centered design approaches to create highly desirable, usable, and useful experiences for mobile, web, products, and services. Kydak solves complex interaction problems while connecting your business with your customers. We integrate innovation, design, and interaction processes to help you create differentiated, profitable, and beautiful solutions for the marketplace. Kydak also provides market validation services for new ideas and products to help you find product-market fit.
Strategic Advisor
2021 - 2023
Providing strategy, consulting, and advisory to this cannabis, web3, blockchain company.
President and CEO
2018 - 2020
Laurus College is a private postsecondary college founded in 2006 in San Luis Obispo to serve underserved populations. Laurus College has developed Bachelor's Degrees and Associate Degree programs for students seeking successful careers. All courses are delivered online and with real-time video and interactive instruction. - Led all marketing activities including digital, social, content, radio, print, and broadcast - Managed a team of 170 instructors and staff - Automated business processes and reporting leading to increased enrollment - In a climate of declining enrollments, I increased starts by 66% while reducing marketing costs by 30%
Cofounder and CEO
2015 - 2018
GrowthX Academy trains individuals who want to transition into a career in Sales and Business Development, Growth Marketing or UX Design. Each program is an immersive, 12-week experience located onsite at Galvanize in San Francisco. Our world-class instructors are entrepreneurs, founders, business owners, and investors who teach the skills, mindsets, and frameworks necessary in today’s competitive environment. - Led digital marketing strategy and execution - Hired and built team of instructors, staff, and content experts - Designed and built curricula, iterating in realtime - Designed and implemented flipped classroom and competency-based education models Also a General Manager at GrowthX Venture providing seed-stage venture capital and market development expertise to a select group of startups seeking product-market fit and predictable revenue. GrowthX Venture acquired Kydak, LLC.
Sr. Director Student Experience
2013 - 2014
I was recruited to improve the student experience and to use design thinking and service design methodologies to uncover problems, prototype solutions, and use creativity to simplify complicated student experiences. Additionally, I helped design and create models of competency-based learning that the University of Phoenix and Western International University would begin to implement.
SVP Marketing and Product
2012 - 2013
ShoppingScout is a web and mobile app that helps you save time, money and effort on your grocery shopping. Our proprietary comparison shopping engine leverages multiple sources and the ShoppingScout community to find the best value on groceries across local stores and online retailers, maximizing savings on your entire shopping list. Our product database also contains product ingredients and nutrition information on over 2 million supermarket items.
VP Global Business Development/Product
2006 - 2011
• Challenged to enable global sales and field teams to position and sell new solutions • Grew customer base 300% in the first two years • Trained global sales team on SaaS lifecycle pricing optimization solutions and consultative selling methods • Tripled qualified pipeline through relentless segmentation, targeting and business-value messaging • Managed global go-to-market product launches including messaging, positioning, sales presentations, content creation, webinars, analyst interactions, press releases and event presence • Direct on-site sales support with client executives throughout sales cycles • Provided user interface guidelines and customer validation to SCRUM teams
Sr. Director, Marketing and Business Development
2005 - 2006
• Developed and grew net new sales pipeline into $75 million in six months • Functionally aligned sales and marketing execution • Transformed scientific/technical messaging into business value messaging increasing on-site meetings by 50%
Vice President, Marketing and Product/UX
2003 - 2005
Co-founded Business and Technology Management company providing Financial, Marketing and Sales consultancy for two SaaS based software companies in the Phoenix and Dallas areas.