Dan Olsen

Current

CEO & Founder at YourVersion
Product Management Consultant at Olsen Solutions

Past

Senior Director of Product at Friendster
Group Product Manager, Quicken Brokerage at Intuit
Group Product Manager, Quicken at Intuit

Senior Product Manager, Quicken at Intuit
Product Manager, Quicken at Intuit
Investment Banking Summer Associate at Goldman Sachs
Lead Product Manager, Next Generation Submarine at Naval Reactors

see less...

4 more...

Education

Stanford Graduate School of Business
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Northwestern University

see less...

1 more...

Recommended

2 people have recommended Dan

Connections

500+ connections

Industry

Internet

Websites

Dan Olsen’s Summary

I am CEO and Founder of YourVersion, a consumer web start-up focused on real-time discovery. If you are a technical person with strong skills and experience who wants to become a key part of an early stage venture to launch great product and delight customers, please get in touch.

I am a Stanford MBA with a strong technical background, broad general management skills, and deep expertise in product management and marketing. Within the consumer software and web industry, I have held senior management positions at established companies as well as executive roles at start-ups.

Dan Olsen’s Specialties:

product management, marketing, online marketing, metrics, analytics, improving conversion rates, freemium business models, UI design, information architecture, interaction design, product development, Web 2.0, RIA, SaaS, personal finance, social networking, startups, consulting, coaching, interim executive, discovery, discovery engines

Dan Olsen’s Experience

CEO & Founder

YourVersion

(Internet industry)

2007 — Present (2 years )

I am CEO and founder of YourVersion, a consumer web start-up focused on real-time discovery. If you're a technical person with strong skills and experience (e.g., PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, XHTML, CSS) who wants to become a key part of an early stage venture to launch great product and delight customers, please get in touch.
www.yourversion.com
Product Management Consultant

Olsen Solutions

(Internet industry)

2005 — Present (4 years )

Olsen Solutions LLC offers product management and marketing consulting services, typically to early-stage consumer Web startups as acting VP of Product Management. My clients have included Box.net, YouSendIt, Moodlogic, Xing (formerly OpenBC), Angie's List, Epocrates, Attensa, TrustedID, Inbox Marketing, and Limeade. You can learn more at www.olsensolutions.com.
Senior Director of Product

Friendster

(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Internet industry)

2004 — 2005 (1 year )

Friendster is the pioneer of the social networking space, with financial backing from Kleiner Perkins, Benchmark Capital, and Battery Ventures.
Group Product Manager, Quicken Brokerage

Intuit

(Public Company; 5001-10,000 employees; INTU; Internet industry)

2001 — 2003 (2 years )

Quicken Brokerage was a unique start-up within Intuit's Quicken division whose strategic goal was to diversify and grow the division's revenue. I was the second person on the team and the head of product management, responsible for determining our product offering and working with engineering to nail our aggressive development timeline. Under my leadership, the Quicken Brokerage team launched a world-class online brokerage website from scratch in 8 months. Designed to be the best brokerage for Quicken users, Quicken Brokerage achieved feature parity with E*Trade, Schwab, and Fidelity while providing a great user interface and unique tax-smart investing features, receiving accolades from the financial services press and analysts. The most notable feature was the real-time tax advice proactively provided on the trading screen before the user placed a trade (on which I have a patent pending).
Group Product Manager, Quicken

Intuit

(Public Company; 5001-10,000 employees; INTU; Computer Software industry)

July 2000 — July 2001 (1 year 1 month)

Responsible for the entire Quicken product line.
Managed Quicken Product Management Team, which I grew from 3 to 8 people in one year. Coached and developed new product managers.
Led complete UI redesign of Quicken 2002 working with external design firm Fitch.
Determined long-term product strategy.
Senior Product Manager, Quicken

Intuit

(Public Company; 5001-10,000 employees; INTU; Computer Software industry)

July 1999 — July 2000 (1 year 1 month)

Responsible for the Quicken for Windows product line.
Managed Quicken for Windows Product Management Team. Coached and developed new product managers.
Led qualitative and quantitative user research.
Wrote Quicken 2001 for Windows MRD.
Main PR spokesperson on press tour with major computer, business, and financial media (i.e., Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, Forbes, Time, Newsweek, CNET, PC Magazine, etc.)
Product Manager, Quicken

Intuit

(Public Company; 5001-10,000 employees; INTU; Computer Software industry)

August 1998 — July 1999 (1 year )
Investment Banking Summer Associate

Goldman Sachs

(Public Company; 501-1000 employees; GS; Investment Banking industry)

June 1997 — September 1997 (4 months)
Lead Product Manager, Next Generation Submarine

Naval Reactors

(Government Agency; 501-1000 employees; Defense & Space industry)

July 1991 — August 1996 (5 years 2 months)

- Managed submarine design at Naval Reactors, a joint Department of Energy and Department of Navy organization created by Admiral Rickover.
- Responsible for the propulsion plant acoustics of Los Angeles Class submarines.
- Attended Bettis Reactor Engineering School for 6 months of full-time training, equivalent to a Master's degree in Nuclear and Mechanical Engineering.
- Managed the steam plant design for the Next Generation Submarine (now known as the Virginia Class).

Dan Olsen’s Education

Stanford Graduate School of Business

MBA , September 1996 — June 1998
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

MEA , Industrial Engineering , 1993 — 1995
Northwestern University

BS , Electrical Engineering , 1987 — 1991

Activities and Societies:

Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society, Eta Kappa Nu Electrical Engineering Honor Society, Mortarboard Senior Honor Society, Navy ROTC (NROTC)
DGF

Additional Information

Dan Olsen’s Websites:

Dan Olsen’s Groups:

Web 2.0 Expo, startup2startup, ZendCon, Voices that Matter, OpenSocial, Silicon Valley Web Builder, SVPMA, Attention Meetup, Stanford Facebook class, Entrepreneur events, Cornell Silicon Valley