Founder StartPR.com / Adjunct Professor U. of Miami
Miami/Fort Lauderdale Area
Founder StartPR.com / Adjunct Professor U. of Miami
Miami/Fort Lauderdale Area
I am a co-founder of StartPR.com, which will launch soon. StartPR is an online collaborative workspace for brand monitoring and reputation management, for use by PR professionals, agencies and marketing departments.
I lecture at the University of Miami School of Communication on Social Media: online identity, community building and citizen journalism.
I also plan local South Florida internet community RefreshMiami meetups and organized the first BarCamp Miami this year.
Previously, I directed online and offline marketing and community building activities at Scrapblog.com. I have helped European start-ups develop their business, as a company founder and as the initiator of new business lines. I have also advised online and mobile startups get their footing through early-stage business planning, seed and venture capital fundraising and local and international business development.
I have acquired over 17 years of strategic planning, marketing and business development experience in the United States, Europe and South America.
I am half-Brazilian, half-Finnish and speak five languages, including English, Spanish, Portuguese, French and Finnish.
Please reach me at: alex [at] decarvalho [dot] net
(Educational Institution; 1001-5000 employees; Education Management industry)
August 2007 — Present (1 year)
Designed and taught “Social Media: Branding, Community-Building and Citizen Journalism,” covering a range of social media culture, theory, technology and platforms for both personal and corporate objectives.
- Explored with students best practices and techniques for online expression, identity-management, community-building and citizen journalism through social media.
- Developed case studies and invited guest speakers to expose students to new effective strategies and applications of social media tools.
(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Public Relations and Communications industry)
July 2007 — Present (1 year 1 month)
Conceptualized and offshored development and design of this hosted blogger-relations online application, which allows users to track and manage what bloggers and social networkers say about their companies, brands, products, clients and individuals on over 100 million blogs worldwide.
Currently managing the launch and growth of this business-to-business service developed for corporate marketing departments and for public relations and advertising agencies, allowing users to track mentions instantly, monitor sites linking to them most, annotate and store their favorite posts, coordinate responses with their colleagues and create reports detailing their buzz and their blogger-relations activity.
(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Internet industry)
January 2007 — June 2007 (6 months)
Built the user base from 16,000 members to over 200,000 current members in less than a year and grew usage in Brazil from zero to fifty percent of current website traffic, with no marketing or advertising budget and no dedicated staff.
Developed online and offline social-media strategy and community-management role from scratch by:
-Using wide range of social media platforms, tools and services, including blogging, micro-blogging, social networks, forums and RSS.
-Determining best social architecture for the website to engage users.
-Assessing and responding to the needs of users and creating business processes for member feedback, customer service and issue resolution.
-Overcoming obstacles by balancing needs of the company with needs of the community.
-Implementing an internal dashboard to measure members’ activity related to usage of spent in the application and on the website.
-Motivating top users to become our best evangelists.
(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Management Consulting industry)
September 2002 — January 2007 (4 years 5 months)
Strongly focused on positioning and service innovation for business and consumer markets. Work includes providing marketing and management advice for companies expanding internationally: market research, product strategy, marketing and advertising strategy, public relations and identification of local partners.
(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Online Media industry)
January 2003 — March 2004 (1 year 3 months)
Developed year-long company-wide strategic business plan. Investigated emerging consumer wireless media markets in Europe. Developed business case for executive management team, worked with engineering to specify services, performed competitive analysis, determined features & benefits and created a P&L for the new consumer business unit to determine overall financial viability.
(Public Company; 201-500 employees; BVIT; Online Media industry)
February 2001 — April 2002 (1 year 3 months)
Established new Business Services line in Europe: determined customer and market requirements, drove overall strategy, developed marketing and launch plans, and communicated vision internally and externally.
- Built strategic relationships and negotiated software/advertising bundling deals.
- Hired, trained and managed sales teams in France, UK, Austria, Spain and Germany.
- Defined pricing, product strategy and sales objectives for European sales force.
- Led application design team and worked with engineering to determine product roadmap.
(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Marketing and Advertising industry)
September 1999 — January 2001 (1 year 5 months)
- Principal executive team member that grew company valuation from $0.2M to $50M at peak, responsible for all pricing, positioning, packaging, and launch activities.
- Wrote business plan and raised first- (€2M) and B-financing round (€5M).
- Set up subsidiaries in Paris, London and Hamburg; hired and trained country managers.
- Managed product marketing, communications and PR activities.
- Built account sales team for full-service, hosted application service provisioning.
- Landed top European clients, including France Telecom, MTV, CCF and Bouygues Telecom.
- Implemented strategic partnerships for indirect sales with Publicis and other ad agencies.
(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Management Consulting industry)
March 1998 — August 1999 (1 year 6 months)
+ Advised on corporate strategy for Air France before their first capital markets flotation, resulting in the SkyTeam alliance with Delta Airlines
+ Developed new in-flight service standards for Air France based on customer experience segmentation
+ Reorganized distribution for Le Parisien (French top 5 daily) by replacing the NMPP (Cooperative for press distribution in France) with in-house distribution
(Privately Held; 5001-10,000 employees; Management Consulting industry)
March 1995 — March 1998 (3 years 1 month)
+ Developed cost-reduction strategies for Chevron Oil's United States upstream business
+ Redesigned the Audit Department organization for General Motors
+ Conducted global market analysis for Corning Saint-Gobain / Eurokera, world market-leader in glass ceramics
+ Other clients included British Airways, Repsol, VISA, Borealis and Nortel Networks
(Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Marketing and Advertising industry)
February 1991 — December 1993 (2 years 11 months)
+ Developed advertising, positioning and database marketing campaigns for clients
+ Managed public relations crisis management program for the Government of Mexico, Immigration and Customs
+ Other clients included Soviet Aeroflot Airlines and ENTRA, a start-up telecom company serving South America
MBA, January 1994 — December 1994
International Herald Tribune Scholarship
BBA, Economics, International Finance and Marketing, September 1985 — June 1990
Foster Bowman Ashe Scholarship
Economics September 1988 — June 1989
Stanford University International Study Programme