I like to start, build and invest in great companies - especially with deep technology.
Cofounder and Executive Chairman of Doppler Labs and DWNLD. Board Member at Classpass. Angel investor in Square, Pinterest, Classpass, Wish, Teespring, FiftyThree, Formlabs, Cargomatic, InDinero and many other great startups. Former Corporate Strategy at MSFT. Founder and CEO of Livestar (acquired by Pinterest).
Member Board of Directors @ Led the seed and Series A financings for Classpass. From August 2014 to Present (1 year 5 months) Greater New York City AreaExecutive Chairman and Cofounder @ Changing the way you hear the world... From July 2013 to Present (2 years 6 months) Greater New York City AreaExecutive Chairman and Cofounder @ From January 2011 to Present (5 years) Greater New York City AreaAngel Investor @ Angel investor in Square, Pinterest, Wish, Teespring, ClassPass, FiftyThree (Paper), Formlabs, Flexport, Getaround and many others. From June 2010 to Present (5 years 7 months) Founder and CEO @ I founded and sold Livestar, a mobile recommendations startup for personalized, trusted recommendations. We used machine learning and information retrieval to match you to high quality sources (i.e., friends, critics and people who had similar taste) of reviews for restaurants, movies, music and apps. We were backed by many of the top investors in tech and media and we sold to Pinterest in March 2013. From January 2011 to March 2013 (2 years 3 months) Senior Director, Corporate Strategy Group @ Led several multi-billion dollar M&A evaluations and strategy projects for divisional Presidents, including Entertainment, Online Services, Microsoft Research, Windows and more. Also ran Microsoft Senior Leadership team retreats for the CEO, CFO and divisional Presidents. Authored numerous memos and presentations for the Board of Directors. From January 2009 to December 2010 (2 years) Director @ Manage a team doing strategy and M&A for Microsoft's Online Services Group. Projects & deals included: Facebook investment, Yahoo deal, Annual Strategy Review, Advertising strategy, Aquantive acquisition, Mobile strategy, Video strategy and the Video distribution deal with Hulu (NBCU/News Corp.). From April 2005 to December 2009 (4 years 9 months) Product Manager @ - Managed positioning, messaging, sales-force coordination and business management for Core CAL server SKU, helping grow annual revenues from $700M to $1B over 12 months.
- Led SKU strategy and pricing for new subscription Server bundle SKU. Oversaw $300K market research budget spent on focus groups, discrete choice and conjoint analyses. Received Marketing Excellence Award from Server and Tools Marketing VP for role on this project, which was referred to by CEO Steve Ballmer as “one of the top revenue opportunities for the company”.
- Selected for executive leadership development program at Kellogg School of Management. Graduated from Microsoft’s Marketing Leadership Recruits program in top 3 of class.
- Received CEO Performance Recognition Award in 2004 for “significant achievement”. From August 2003 to April 2005 (1 year 9 months) Summer Analyst @ - Analyst for mid-market private equity firm, specializing in food and beverage buyouts.
- Collaborated directly with Managing Partner and Operating Partner in development of Frozen Desserts industry entry strategy, identifying acquisition candidates, growth opportunities and exit strategies.
- Observed first-hand how a successful private equity firm identifies, acquires, grows and exits portfolio investments. From June 2002 to August 2002 (3 months) Flyfishing Guide @ Best summer job ever. Took people on catch and release trout fishing trips on some of Colorado's most beautiful rivers. Mostly tried to just learn from my guide buddies how to be a better fisherman. From June 2001 to August 2001 (3 months) Intern @ Earned my first stripes and fell in love with tech as an intern at ebrary - the world's first full-text digital book library online founded by Christopher Warnock, Kevin Sayar and Mohamad Al-Baghdadi. Mostly they just let me learn from them - though I did my first competitive analysis, market research and signed up one publisher (that I met working a trade show). From June 2000 to August 2000 (3 months)
B.A. @ Yale University Fritz Lanman is skilled in: Product Management, Business Development, General Management, Marketing, Corporate Development, Strategy, Recruiting, Angel Investing, Early-stage Startups, Go-to-market Strategy, Start-ups, Mergers, Marketing Strategy, Strategic Partnerships, Market Research