Mark Coker

Current

Founder and CEO at Smashwords
Founder at Dovetail Public Relations

Past

Contributing Writer at VentureBeat
Founder and Former President at BestCalls.com
Sr. Associate at Neale-May and Partners

Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Coker Electronics

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Education

University of California, Berkeley - Walter A. Haas School of Business

Recommended

4 people have recommended Mark

Connections

199 connections

Industry

Public Relations and Communications

Websites

Mark Coker’s Summary

Founder of Smashwords, an ebook publisher.

On advisory board of GetQuik (restaurant order automation technology) and Knowledge Genie (digital publishing). Previously on advisory boards of AVG (security software) and Flat World Knowledge (open source text books).

Founder/owner of Dovetail Public Relations in Los Gatos, a tech PR firm specializing in venture-backed startups. Celebrating 15+ yrs in business.

Former contributing writer for VentureBeat. See links above.

My angel investing is via Dovetail, usually in the form of services in exchange for equity at seed stage. We've invested in, or earned equity stakes in, over a dozen private firms over the years, including Exploit Prevention Labs (acquired), RightNow (IPOed), Quova (operating), IP Metrics (acquired), NeoScale (BK), Shareholder.com (acquired), Terracheck (acquired), FamilyWonder (acquired), GetQuik (operating), Flat World Knowledge (operating), Utopy (operating) and others. If you run a cool startup and want venture PR, pitch me.

More:

BestCalls.com - Founded this earnings conference call directory in '97. Our efforts to open conference calls to small investors was a catalyst for the SEC's Regulation FD. Acquired in '03 by Shareholder.com, which was itself acquired by the Nasdaq in '05. Nasdaq still operates BestCalls.

IP Metrics - '98-'03. Served on BOD for this software company, did their PR, and was an investor. Acquired by FalconStor.

Rightnow - '98-'01. Helped grow company from Greg Gianforte's bedroom to 300+ employee leader in SaaS CRM. Now public.

Storage Dimensions - '94-'98. Early LAN storage pioneer. Took them through IPO to acquisition.

McAfee Associates - '94-'97. Helped grow these guys from under $20 million to over $300 million. A wild ride reporting directly to Bill Larson and his many vps of marketing and product managers.

What else? Co-author with my wife of BOOB TUBE, a satire on the daytime television soap operas. Yeah, soap operas.

Mark Coker’s Specialties:

Strategic communications consultant, entrepreneur, writer, angel investor and business advisor to technology companies, with focus on startups.

Mark Coker’s Experience

Founder and CEO

Smashwords

(Publishing industry)

January 2008 — Present (1 year 11 months)

Digital publishing startup. Smashwords allows book authors and publishers to digitally publish and distribute multi-format, DRM-free ebooks. Authors determine the price and sampling rights, and receive 85% of the net sales proceeds from their works.
Founder

Dovetail Public Relations

(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Marketing and Advertising industry)

October 1993 — Present (16 years 2 months)

Dovetail is an award-winning technology PR firm based in Los Gatos, CA. The firm specializes in startups and high-growth companies in the areas of storage, security, web services, network infrastructure and software. Although I own Dovetail, my role is limited primarily to planning and strategy for clients, and agency biz dev. My awesome employees manage most of the day to day operations and client service. The Dovetail team consistently generates great results for our clients. For a summary of current Dovetail clients, visit www.dovetailpr.com/clients.htm If you've got questions about how we can help support the growth of your company, ping me.
Contributing Writer

VentureBeat

(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Publishing industry)

March 2007 — November 2007 (9 months)

Contributing writer for VentureBeat (www.venturebeat.com), the Silicon Valley business blog. Covered innovative startups and select conferences.
Founder and Former President

BestCalls.com

(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Information Services industry)

July 1997 — June 2003 (6 years )

Founded BestCalls.com, an online directory of earnings conference calls. Our work at BestCalls helped open up earnings conference calls to average investors, helped level the playing field between main street and Wall Street, and served as a catalyst for the SEC's Regulation FD and other disclosure reform actions that followed.

BestCalls.com was acquired by Shareholder.com in 2003. Shareholder.com, along with its BestCalls.com division, was acquired by the Nasdaq stock exchange in 2005.
Sr. Associate

Neale-May and Partners

(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Public Relations and Communications industry)

1991 — 1993 (2 years )

Some day, books will be written about Neale-May. Neale-May veterans (yes, support groups have formed from time to time) almost universally refer to the place as PR boot camp. I'm thankful for everything I learned there, and for the incredible people I met.
Vice President of Sales and Marketing

Coker Electronics

(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Computer Software industry)

January 1987 — June 1991 (4 years 6 months)

Coker Electronics, founded by my father Charles, developed the tPost family of email software, which was among the first (along with cc:Mail) to allow corporations to create their own store and forward email systems. Coker Electronics also developed tPost Faxforward, which was the industry's first email-to-fax gateway. This was a true garage startup. My dad gave me a really big title but no sales and marketing budget. It was through necessity that I learned the art and science of public relations, because PR is the only way we could make the phone ring. This was all pre-Internet.

Mark Coker’s Education

University of California, Berkeley - Walter A. Haas School of Business

BS , Marketing , 1983 — 1988

Activities and Societies:

Casa Zimbabwe (formerly Ridge Project) co-op house manager, workshift manager, and founding editor of Ridge Roach Newsletter (my first foray into media and publishing). Former resident of Barrington co-op before it was condemned, and resident of Crandall Hall (now Clark-Kerr).