Ben Smith IV
Investor in, Advisor to, and Founder of Media and Technology Companies
- Location
- San Francisco Bay Area
- Industry
- Venture Capital & Private Equity
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Ben Smith IV's Overview
- Current
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- Chief Executive Officer at ShopCo
- Managing Partner at BTSIV, LLC
- Venture Partner at Accelerator Venture Capital
- Board of Directors at Glu Mobile
- Chairman, Board Member at DealSquare
- Board Member at Spoke Software
- Advisor at Cendana Capital
- Advisor at theComplete.me
- Founder at Enlighten Ventures
- Past
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- President Reply! Media at Reply.com
- Co-Founder,CEO and Chairman of Board at MerchantCircle (sold to Reply, 2011)
- Board at Tapulous
- Advisory Board at Mesmo.tv
- Executive in Residence at Rustic Canyon Ventures
- Advisor at CodeGear
- SVP Corporate Development/Strategic Advisor at Borland Software
- Chief Executive Officer at CodeGear, A Borland Company
- Chairman and CEO at MerchantCircle
- Acting Chairman at Developer Software Group, Borland Software
- Board Member at Cydelity (Acquired by Digital Envoy)
- Chairman and CEO at Spoke Software
- Senior Advisor, Strategy and Planning, Department of Transportation at US Government, TSA
- Vice President, Venture Development at EDS
- Vice President at A.T. Kearney
- Acting CEO at Casbah
- Interim SVP Sales and Marketing at Skyway Logistics/ Union Pacific
- Manager at Ernst and Young, Management Consulting
- Many things along my way at Various
- Education
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- Carnegie Mellon University - Tepper School of Business
- University of California, Davis
- Recommendations
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20 people have recommended Ben
- Connections
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500+ connections
- Websites
Ben Smith IV's Summary
Ben joined ShopCo recently to lead its efforts to grow and serve the audiences of 12 major media companies with shopping solutions.
Ben, left as the President of Reply Media. Reply is a high growth profitable company that manages a series of local internet properties and provides leads to local businesses. Ben sold a profitable MerchantCircle to Reply! for a significant return in 2011.
As Co-Founder of MerchantCircle, Ben built the largest network of local businesses on the web and one of the fastest growing local advertising networks. Ben incubated MC, as an EIR at Rustic Canyon, where he was focused on helping to finance and create companies in new media and software.
In addition to being the SVP of Corporate Development at Borland through 4 acquisitions. Ben was the original CEO of CodeGear for which he led the separation and startup.
Earlier, Ben co-founded Spoke with USVP and couple of great entrepreneurs in 2002. He guided Spoke to its 50th customer and through 3 rounds of successfully higher financing valuations while establishing a new category with his name on key social patents. Ben remains on the board of Spoke.
Prior to joining Spoke, Ben served the White House as the Senior Advisor for Strategy and Planning, to the Secretary of Transportation for the period of creating the Transportation Security Administration after 9-11. Prior to this, Ben was a Vice President in EDS's A.T. Kearney management consulting subsidiary, leading the West Coast operations of the Kearney/EDS Venture Development Group. He has advised large leading technology companies on business and marketing strategies. As the youngest partner in the history of Kearney, he was recognized by Consulting News as one of the top 25 consultants in the world in 2002. Ben has also been interim SVP of Sales and Marketing for a $150M logistics services company and interim CEO of a 60-person Upside 100 software company.
Specialties
Fortune 500 and Startup Intersection, Strategy Consulting, New Company Formation, Strategic Investment, Acquisitions, Channel Strategy, Product Strategy, Marketing, Business Development, Large Corporation Innovation
Ben Smith IV's Experience
Chief Executive Officer
ShopCo
April 2012 – Present (2 months) Silicon Valley, Ca
Backed by 12 major newspaper and media companies including Advance Digital, A. H. Belo Corporation, Community Newspaper Holdings Inc., Cox Media Group, The E. W. Scripps Company, Gannett Co., Inc., GateHouse Media, Inc., Hearst Corporation, Lee Enterprises, MediaNews Group, The McClatchy Company, and The Washington Post Co, Shopco owns a series of properties and assets focused on bringing better shopping solutions to the more than 80% of US markets that it serves across mobile, the web, tablets, and social platforms.
ShopCo has operations in Chico, Roseville, and Silicon Valley, California and owns Trividia and FindnSave in addition to other properties.
Managing Partner
BTSIV, LLC
2002 – Present (10 years) Silicon Valley, California
Consulting and investment partnership that advises technology companies on strategy, finance, and marketing, and acquisitions.
Work with companies with for professional fees and equity. I almost always invest in the companies as well along side a set of top venture firms.
Very focused on helping companies execute high velocity sales model and innovative business models.
Serve on a few private company boards as part of this firm and have invested in companies like Mesmo (sold to Game Show Network), Tapulous (Sold to Disney), Trovix (sold to Monster) TooDo.com, IndexTank (Sold to LinkedIn), SocialWire, Choicepass, DealSqaure, Complete.me, QP Park, LongTailVideo and others.
Investor in or advisor to numerous venture funds, including Softech, Accelerator Ventures, PivotNorth, Freestyle, and Cendana.
Venture Partner
Accelerator Venture Capital
December 2011 – Present (6 months) San Francisco Bay Area
Work with Managing Partner on portfolio development.
Accelerator Ventures is a San Francisco-based venture capital firm that invests in early stage technology companies. Accelerator Ventures works with talented entrepreneurs to create the next generation of great companies.
Board of Directors
Glu Mobile
Public Company; 501-1000 employees; GLUU; Computer Games industry
November 2010 – Present (1 year 7 months) www.glu.com
A public mobile gaming company. Joined the board with new CEO to help reposition the company to the freemium molde, original IP and smart phone revenue.
Board Member
Spoke Software
Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Internet industry
May 2006 – Present (6 years 1 month) Silicon Valley
Helping to drive company for new growth working with the Board and CEO while representing the founding common shareholders and a group of investors to grow the largest organically growing database of business people.
Advisor
theComplete.me
Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Internet industry
October 2011 – Present (8 months) Silicon Valley, Ca
Discovery tool for new friends and relationships build on facebook and leveraging all social media profiles and data.
Founder
Enlighten Ventures
Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Marketing and Advertising industry
2001 – Present (11 years)
Fund made up of current and former senior partners from consulting partnerships that invest in early stage companies along side of top tier venture funds. Some deals include Trovix (Acquired by Monster),Trigo (Acquired by IBM), and Metreo (Acquired by STG),
President Reply! Media
Reply.com
Privately Held; 201-500 employees; Online Media industry
June 2011 – August 2011 (3 months) Mountain View, Ca
Lead all consumer media mobile and internet properties across Reply! including MerchantCircle.com, Bloglines.com, Contractors.com, iMotors.com, and TimeBridge.com which represents 10's of millions of organic consumer users per month and millions of small local merchants.
Reply! acquired the company I founded, MerchantCircle in 2011 for a significant return to investors and team.
Co-Founder,CEO and Chairman of Board
MerchantCircle (sold to Reply, 2011)
Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Internet industry
August 2004 – June 2011 (6 years 11 months) Mountain View, Ca
Bringing the Local Internet to Millions of Local Businesses.
MerchantCircle connects the local business community with the Local Internet, helping merchants understand and use our Internet tools and buy online and offline advertising
Ben co founded the company which now serves 2MM local merchants and 25MM monthly consumers; and has achieved profitability, 3 years of over 60% annual growth and 90% gross margins. He drove the sale of the company in 2011 for $60MM and great return for his investors and team along side of addition return from the buyers filed IPO.
The company was backed by Scale Ventures, Rustic Canyon Partners, IAC, and Steamboat Ventures and owned MerchantCircle.com, Bloglines.com, and Timebridge.com
Board
Tapulous
Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Computer Games industry
February 2008 – July 2010 (2 years 6 months)
One of the first iPhone application network sold to Disney is 2010 and the maker of one of the top 5 most used games on the iPhone platform. One of the first investors, helped lead the board and advise the CEO to an incredible return in 18 months.
Advisor
CodeGear
Public Company; 201-500 employees; BORL; Computer Software industry
April 2007 – October 2007 (7 months)
Advising $75MM developer tools spin off from Borland Software launching products in PHP, Ruby, and open source stack. Sold to Embarcadero
SVP Corporate Development/Strategic Advisor
Borland Software
Public Company; 501-1000 employees; BORL; Computer Software industry
March 2005 – May 2007 (2 years 3 months)
Advising 3 CEO's on acquisition strategy and execution and then managed Corporate Development during repositioning of company. Built out corporate development team to support strategy.
Drove 3 acquisition transactions over 9 months worth over $150M along side of a couple of investments. Acquistions included Legadero, Gauntlet, and Segue.
Legadero positioned Borland in the portfolio management space.
Gauntlet became the center piece of the Open ALM positioning for Borland.
Segue helped drive ALM growth well over to well over 50% YTY growth and positioned Borland strongly with Mercury acquisition by HP.
Drove sell off process of a $75M business. Restructured business during the process.
Chief Executive Officer
CodeGear, A Borland Company
Public Company; 501-1000 employees; BORL; Computer Software industry
November 2006 – April 2007 (6 months)
CEO of an newly formed business being separated from Borland Software. (Sold to Embaradero)
CodeGear is the leading organization globally for innovating tools for software developers. Drove the creation of new organization, lreinvigorated eadership team, launch of CodeGear brand, and the creation of 3 new products including the first new langauge platforms in years (Ruby and PHP).
Chairman and CEO
MerchantCircle
Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Internet industry
November 2004 – December 2006 (2 years 2 months)
Founding CEO of Local advertising company focused on local merchants. Established concept, team, developed funding, defined product strategy and established as leading player for the Local Internet
Chairman and CEO
Spoke Software
Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Internet industry
2002 – 2005 (3 years) Palo Alto, California
After telling the "real" founder this was a "goofy" idea when he brought me something that turned into Spoke in 2002, I bumped into some interesting science and decided with a focus on sales processes there was a tremendous opportunity to build a business.
Have driven Spoke as the founding CEO since 2002 with a focus on privacy, users control of their data, and enterprise value from day one.
Have driven the company from the white board to a complete management team, to 15 patents (5 with my name on them), through raising $21M in progressively higher valuations, to its first enterprise customers including some of the largest salesforces in the world and to over 50 Team edition customers.
In a difficult move, created and drove the strategy to switch to a higher velocity sales model and pure web delivery. As part of this, the team created partnerships with Siebel On Demand and Salesforce.com
Co investor on some of the key social networking patents that Spoke owns. Remain on the board of Spoke.
Senior Advisor, Strategy and Planning, Department of Transportation
US Government, TSA
September 2001 – July 2002 (11 months) http://www.tsa.gov/
On leave from EDS, worked with incredible team of long term civil service executives and recruited other senior executives who also took a leave from the private sector, to help establish the response to 9-11. This included helping to stand up the Transportation Security Administration from employee 1 to an organization of 10's of thousands and leading the initial investigations into a number of valuable technology programs and the deployment of over $10B of technology. Recognized by the Office of the Secretary of Transportation for the leadership that I showed.
Vice President, Venture Development
EDS
Public Company; 10,001+ employees; Information Technology and Services industry
1999 – 2002 (3 years)
Founding member of team to get A.T. Kearney and then EDS into Venture investment activity and partnering with early stage software and hardware companies. Lead the formation of new relationships with the venture community for EDS and helped EDS form a number of new businesses.
Wrote publicly about future of webservices, storage, and enterprise applications. Talked EDS out of some of the great bad investments of the bubble, but not all of them.
Lead the formation of a go to market alliance with Sun, Webmethods and a set of 5 emerging software companies. 3 of these 5 are now the leaders in their categories with 2 having very strong financial exits.
Vice President
A.T. Kearney
Partnership; 1001-5000 employees; Management Consulting industry
1994 – 2002 (8 years) Silicon Valley
One of the founding members of the team who established the High Technology efforts at A.T. Kearney which became one of the most vibrant practices at the firm. After being named the youngest partner in A.T. Kearney history, I was named one of the 25 most influential consultants in 2002 for my work with clients.
Conducted strategy, m&a, marketing, and operations work with leading clients around the world including HP, Sony, LG, Lucent, FedEx, and others. Defined new sales methodology and organization approach at a number of large technology companies. Worked with leading companies on thier approach to alliances and investment activities.
Acting CEO
Casbah
March 2000 – June 2000 (4 months)
Stepped into run EDS investment in b2b arena. Created positioning that drove company to be on the Upside 100 list and Forrester leader lists. Managed transaction with another private company after crash of 2000. In addition to many important things, was the guy who called the liquidators to buy unopened Sun servers and 4 week old furniture. Met the first investor in Spoke when he passed on Casbah 4 times.
Interim SVP Sales and Marketing
Skyway Logistics/ Union Pacific
1997 – 1998 (1 year)
As part of a transition team supporting the respositioning of the company, I stepped in to run sales and marketing of a $150M transporation company which grew to $186M by the time a transaction was done. This included a complete remake of the sales team into a technology solutions focused team and a new account focus.
A key piece of this repositioning was the creation of an internet based tranportation management solution that two other great people had put together at the company. These 2 people ended up being key leaders in a company Arzoon that I was an investor in.
A number of the people I met became close friends including people that I later invested in and with and one of the people who asked me to serve the White House a few years later.
Partnership; 10,001+ employees; Accounting industry
1993 – 1994 (1 year)
Worked on numerous interesting clients like HP, Apple, Samsung, Lockheed. Key member of team for the first large scale reengineering project in Korea. Began to invest aggressively in relationships, including one of people who was one of the first customers for Spoke
Many things along my way
Various
1982 – 1993 (11 years)
a clerk in a pharmacy, a cook at fast food place, scooped ice cream, washed cars at a gas station, scored credit apps for Providian,washed and changed tires on semi trucks, CAD design for grocery store contactor, got robbed at an AP/PM, designed robot parts for Caltrans RoboDot, designed tools for IBM disk drives, did M&A and Supplier restructuring for a disk drive company....
Ben Smith IV's Courses
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BSME, Mechanical Engineering
University of California, Davis
- Finite Element Analyis
- Econometrics
- Robotic Design
- Statistical Design Analysis
Ben Smith IV's Honors and Awards
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Top 25 most Influential Consultants in the World
Consulting News- 2002
Selected by consulting industry as one of the 25 most influential consultants in the world for world with strategy clients
Ben Smith IV's Skills & Expertise
Ben Smith IV's Patents
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Creation and maintenance of social relationship network graphs
- United States Patent 7539697
- Issued May 26, 2009
A relationship graph representing a social network connecting multiple entities is created and maintained as nodes and edges. Data received for an entity is used to create a new node. A strength of relationship value is calculated for each relationship between the new entity and an entity represented by an existing node and assigned to an edge is created to represent each relationship. Data received for an existing node causes the node to be updated, and the strength of relationship values for each of its relationships to be recalculated and assigned to the appropriate edge. More than one node may exist for an entity and conflicts among the data of the multiple nodes are reconciled. The received data may be extracted from data sources owned by a user in accordance with privacy criteria for the user, or may result from processing data in the relationship graph.
Ben Smith IV's Education
Carnegie Mellon University - Tepper School of Business
MSIA/MBA, Strategy
1991 – 1993
University of California, Davis
BSME, Mechanical Engineering
1986 – 1991
Activities and Societies: Lambda Chi Alpha
Ben Smith IV's Additional Information
- Websites:
- Interests:
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social networking, raiders football, pricing management, next generation enterprise software, oakland a's, webservices, jetsking, paintball, old mustangs, nola's, pismo beach, alabama, homeland security, transportation security, small devices, kid rock, davis, motorcycles, venture investing, lambda chi alpha, montana, Lead21, oakland raiders, enterprise software, hewlett packard, semiconductors, disk drives, jimmy buffett, storage, sailing, baseball, Davis, CMU, Carnegie Mellon, UC Davis, university of alabama, Tepper School of Business, applications on unstructured data, unstructured data, open source enterprise software, Bush Innovator Team, Congressman Nunes Technology Advisory board, Renaissance Weekend, Musubi, MerchantCircle, Florida RNC Marshal, small business, advertising, phishing
- Groups and Associations:
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- Honors and Awards:
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25 Most Influential Consultants of the Year, 2002
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