Entrepreneur, Executive, and IT Operations Guru
San Francisco Bay Area
- Current
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- Founder and CEO at DBIX Corporation
- President at Blank Slate Consulting, Inc.
- Past
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- Director of Operations at Advomatic LLC
- Adviser / Investor at Simpli Hosting, Inc www.simpli.biz
- Operations Contractor at Self Employed
- Interim Chief Operating Officer at InfoRelay Online Systems, Inc.
- Chief Operating Officer at Simpli Hosting, Inc www.simpli.biz
- Senior Systems Engineering Consultant at Simpli Hosting, Inc. www.simpli.biz
- Vice President of Trading Systems at Visual Trading Systems, LLC
- Chief Technology Officer at RocketReview Incorporated
- Education
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- University of Michigan
- Stuyvesant High School
- Recommended
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29 people have recommended Seth - Connections
-
500+
connections
- Industry
- Information Technology and Services
- Websites
Seth Blank’s Summary
I am a seasoned executive with over 8 years of hands-on experience building and growing successful companies.
At my core, I love running businesses and am passionate about leading teams to build profitable and scalable solutions to complex problems.
My experience has been with startups in many fields: education, finance, technology, and web 2.0, to name a few.
When not serving in a general management capacity, I have primarily served as an executive overseeing IT Operations or business development focused on architecting distributed 24/7 high transaction environments with 100% customer-facing uptime.
In addition to advisory roles, I have also been called into several companies (generally former clients) as a fire-fighter to deal with technical, legal, vendor, and client issues.
If you need help growing your business or thinking through your IT strategy, contact me!
Seth Blank’s Specialties:
Business management, IT Operations, business development, branding, vendor negotiations, purchasing, team building, problem solving, hiring and training staff, defining goals priorities and process, project planning, project management, scalability planning, datacenter architecture, software architecture, customer communications and retention.
Seth Blank’s Experience
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Founder and CEO
DBIX Corporation
(Privately Held; Computer Software industry)
November 2007 — Present (1 year 9 months)
Co-founder and CEO of DBIX Corporation. We are in the prototype development and seed funding stages of enterprise grade database technologies for manipulating, rearranging, and auditing vast quantities of quickly changing data.
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President
Blank Slate Consulting, Inc.
(Privately Held; Information Technology and Services industry)
July 2007 — Present (2 years 1 month)
Blank Slate Consulting Inc., specializes in helping startups scale both from business and technology viewpoints.
BSCI's mission is to help its clients dramatically improve their bottom lines by improving operations and customer experience, scaling infrastructures, aligning job roles and responsibilities, and creating new products and services from existing systems.
Key accomplishments for our clients include:
• Bolstered revenue by leveraging existing infrastructures to offer new services
• Increased personnel efficiencies by reorganizing personnel and job responsibilities, hiring and training new staff
• Streamlined operations by re-architecting systems infrastructures and automating tasks
Current and former clients include:
• PastFuture Inc. (gdgt.com)
• Werkadoo
• Justin.tv
• Wotan, LLC
• Advomatic LLC
• Several stealth mode startups -
Director of Operations
Advomatic LLC
(Privately Held; Internet industry)
July 2007 — November 2007 (5 months)
Advomatic (www.advomatic.com) is a partnership run by Aaron Welch and Adam Mordecai. Advomatic primarily develops websites for non-profit and politically oriented advocacy groups.
Aaron Welch (founding partner and COO) took a leave of absence from Advomatic to take the role of Internet Technology Director for the Chris Dodd for President campaign; Aaron personally asked me to come aboard with the mission of ensuring the quality all current services and growing Advomatic's Hosting operations.
Some past and current recent clients are:
• Natural Resources Defense Council
• Living Liberally
• YearlyKos Convention
• TPM Cafe
• airamericaradio.com
• democrats.com
• personaldemocracy.com
• techpresident.com
I still retain a relationship with Advomatic and help out on an as-needed basis with existing and new clients, services, and projects. -
Adviser / Investor
Simpli Hosting, Inc www.simpli.biz
(Internet industry)
February 2007 — November 2007 (10 months)
Simpli Hosting Inc. one of the leading colocated and dedicated server providers in the Bay Area, was acquired by Silicon Valley Web Hosting in September 2007, although I remained an adviser through November.
I worked with Simpli on an advisory basis after I left as COO through Simpli's sale in Q4 2007. -
Operations Contractor
Self Employed
(Internet industry)
March 2007 — July 2007 (5 months)
As a self-employed Operations Contractor I have had the pleasure of working with several leading internet based companies providing varying levels of support and advice, from business development to hiring and training staff to systems architecture and administration help.
Current clients include:
• Wotan, LLC (http://www.wotanllc.com/ http://www.kayuda.com/)
• Justin.tv (http://www.justin.tv/)
• Several stealth mode startups
• Several hosting companies
• Previous employers -
Interim Chief Operating Officer
InfoRelay Online Systems, Inc.
(Internet industry)
April 2007 — May 2007 (2 months)
InfoRelay Online Systems, Inc. is a hosting and bandwidth services provider with several datacenter locations through the United States as well as a limited international presence.
This was a 6 week contract as an Interim Executive tasked with:
• Increased personnel efficiencies by reorganizing personnel and job responsibilities, hiring and training new staff
• Verifying, modifying, and creating operational procedures as needed to reinforce these new positions and to fill lack of prior policy
• Reviewing current business practices and recommending modifications as needed -
Chief Operating Officer
Simpli Hosting, Inc www.simpli.biz
(Internet industry)
May 2006 — February 2007 (10 months)
Simpli Hosting Inc. one of the leading colocated and dedicated server providers in the Bay Area, was acquired by Silicon Valley Web Hosting in September 2007.
• Expanded business with large clients through new service offerings and infrastructure upgrades
• Dramatically decreased customer complaints and system outages by hiring and training new staff
• Reduced costs and support overhead by selling shared hosting and renegotiating vendor contracts -
Senior Systems Engineering Consultant
Simpli Hosting, Inc. www.simpli.biz
(Internet industry)
November 2005 — April 2006 (6 months)
Simpli Hosting Inc. one of the leading colocated and dedicated server providers in the Bay Area, was acquired by Silicon Valley Web Hosting in September 2007.
• Advised on datacenter migration and complex systems issues
• Set up special offerings for new clients
• Aided in emergency situations -
Vice President of Trading Systems
Visual Trading Systems, LLC
(Privately Held; Information Technology and Services industry)
October 2003 — February 2006 (2 years 5 months)
Visual Trading Systems, LLC is the IT Services provider of Capital Market Services, LLC, one of the foremost Foreign Exchange Brokerages in the world.
• Increased operational efficiencies and dramatically reduced system failures by architecting fully redundant datacenters, migrating 100+ servers, and setting up a NOC for monitoring and support
• Improved systems scalability, availability, and security by leading team of driven operations professionals and contractors
• Boosted client acquisition by 40% as a result of system stability improvements
• Saved over $600,000 through vendor negotiations and staff role restructuring -
Chief Technology Officer
RocketReview Incorporated
(Information Technology and Services industry)
2000 — 2004 (4 years)
RocketReview Incorporated, founded by the co-founder of the Princeton Review, is an SAT preparation company which offers automated essay grading and test preparation books.
• Established company’s technical presence by overseeing the patent process and digital media creation
• Programmed first version of RocketReview’s flagship essay grading software
• Grew business by working with vendors and clients, improving software, and negotiating with strategic partners
Seth Blank’s Education
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University of Michigan
Mathematics, Computer Science, Physics 2000 — 2002
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Stuyvesant High School
Mathematics, Computer Science, English 1996 — 2000
Recipient of Gold Medal in Computer Science, highest honors in the department.
- Activities and Societies:
- Captain, Computer Science Team
Additional Information
Seth Blank’s Websites:
Seth Blank’s Interests:
Building and growing businesses, architecting scalable infrastructures, systems, and processes, business development, challenging problems
Seth Blank’s Honors:
Was one of 15 students internationally awarded a scholarship by Microsoft in 2000 for my "potential impact on the software world of tomorrow."
Seth Blank’s Contact Settings
Interested In:
- career opportunities
- consulting offers
- new ventures
- job inquiries
- expertise requests
- business deals
- reference requests
- getting back in touch
