William F Gollan

Current

President & CEO at Afligo

Past

President & CEO at Cybiz, Inc
President & COO at Bidders Edge, Inc
SVP/COO at EarthWeb, Inc. (Dice.com)

SVP Business Development at OrderTrust
Vice President Sales and Marketing at Kurzweil Applied Intelligence
Managing Director at Weatherview Management Consultants
Founder & CEO at Business Computers of Peterborough

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4 more...

Education

Waltham (MA) High School

Connections

192 connections

Industry

Internet

Websites

My Company

William F Gollan’s Summary

Seasoned early & mid-stage technology executive more than a 20-years general management experience in private & public IT-related start-ups. With a 30-year background in the industry, I have an intimate understanding of both old & new media combined with distributed computing technologies.

A proven record, with a particular emphasis on successfully integrating, monitoring and scaling extremely disparate systems, technologies & people, at start-ups, turnarounds, & companies obtained through merger & acquisition.

Experience with the investment & financial services community, especially with building intimate relationships with capital markets.

William F Gollan’s Specialties:

Crafting integrated strategies that leverage & maximize all elements of content, community & commerce - lowering customer acquisition costs & driving subscriber/customer growth.

William F Gollan’s Experience

President & CEO

Afligo

(Information Technology and Services industry)

March 2005 — Present (4 years 5 months)

Afligo is a registered trade name and a division of Systemax Inc. (NYSE: SYX), a Fortune 600, $3 billion reseller of IT products & services.

Afligo provides electronic rebate processing & marketing services to big-box & e-Retailers, as well as their manufacturers & suppliers.
President & CEO

Cybiz, Inc

(Computer Software industry)

September 2002 — March 2005 (2 years 7 months)

President & CEO of early stage supplier enablement software & professional services company backed by private equity - from Europe & the Middle East. Company delivered integrated supplier enablement & procurement solutions that connected trading partners faster & easier, dramatically optimizing supply chain efficiency.

Responsible for restructuring, recapitalization, & turn around of company's strategy direction. Restructured head-count from 77 down to 10 professionals, closing R&D offices in Beirut, Paris, & Bogotá. Reduced quarterly cash-burn from $1.35 million in 2001 to under $200,000 in 2003. • Cultivated relationships with VCs & private investors located in Europe & the Middle East, in particular Saudi Arabia, & Lebanon.
President & COO

Bidders Edge, Inc

(Computer Software industry)

May 2001 — September 2002 (1 year 5 months)

Venture backed, early-stage start-up company with 22 employees. Company was an auction aggregation service provider designed to offer comsumers the ability to search for items across numerous auctions without having to search each site individually. In March 2000, the BE web site contained information on more that 5 million items for auction on more than one hundred websites.
SVP/COO

EarthWeb, Inc. (Dice.com)

(Internet industry)

January 1997 — March 2001 (4 years 3 months)

As Senior Vice President, the equivalent of Chief Operating Officer, was a member of the Corporate Governance team. Had worldwide responsibility for Earthweb’s DICE.com, e-commerce, sales & marketing, as well as R&D. Played a key role in the company’s November 1998 IPO which raised $34 million, a May 1999 follow-on offering, which raised $26 million, & finally a $70 million convertible offering. During tenure revenues grew from $1 million to more than $50 million, with staff increasing from 35 to well over 350 professionals.

Leveraged extensive computer industry knowledge, contacts, & business experience to execute company's strategic direction. Successfully integrated several key acquisition targets & their personnel into company's business model. Key accomplishments include: dramatic growth in revenues, gross margins, customer base, page views, & paid subscribers.
SVP Business Development

OrderTrust

(Internet industry)

April 1996 — June 1997 (1 year 3 months)

Was responsible for overall e-commerce & internet product strategies & business alliances. Position oversaw product management, marketing, & strategic business development. Was responsible for driving all phases of e-commerce products & services. This includes product life cycle, analysis, business planning, feature-requirements, pricing, contracts & overall demand-generating marketing programs.
Vice President Sales and Marketing

Kurzweil Applied Intelligence

(Information Technology and Services industry)

March 1994 — April 1996 (2 years 2 months)

Developed, managed, and executed the company’s overall sales & marketing efforts associated with the launch of the Kurzweil VOICE for Windows v1.0 line of voice recognition desktop & LAN-based products. Spearheaded VAR & reseller channel efforts; closed in excess of $1.8 million in non-exclusive international VAR agreements in the United Kingdom, Australia, /New Zealand & Canada. Created & launched electronic distribution strategy to support low-price direct-sales model.
Managing Director

Weatherview Management Consultants

(Management Consulting industry)

1989 — March 1994 (5 years)

Select Client Engagements:

Lotus/IBM

Drove planning for demand generation programs tailored to suit all channel segments. Developed cost-metrics & evaluation tools, which lowered marketing costs. Developed guidelines to manage marketing program investments across all segments, dramatically increasing market share.

Stream International

Strategic business development assignment, with $2.1 billion worldwide business-to-business software & services client. Authored business plan to launch company’s Catalog Business Unit. Lead strategist & point-person in concept testing of vendor funding to ISVs. Recruited & developed management team. P&L responsibility for all “outsourced” service providers. Effectively reengineered existing organization & aggressively drove down fixed costs.

IDG – Computer Buying World

Co-founded & launched business-to-business publication targeted at corporate buyers of PC hardware & software. 130k BPA audited circulation of controlled-qualified readers. Responsibilities included: staff recruitment of 60, development of production & publishing systems specifications, creative & editorial package design, sales & marketing. Primary pre-launch responsibilities were pre-selling advertising & circulation acquisition strategy.

Litle & Company

Developed & launched IT industry’s first loyalty credit card program. The program’s goals were to increase customer retention for merchandise catalogers & increase magazine renewal rates. Membership acquisition programs executed for Dell Computer, MacWorld Magazine & PC World Magazine included direct mail, card-in-the-box & inbound/outbound telemarketing.

Ziff Davis Publishing – PC Week

Reporting to Group President; analyzed advertising rate structures across classes of vendors. Consulted for creative & editorial package redesigns. Developed & launched vendor funded differentiated advertising programs. Emphasis on sales training, account targeting & pricing.
Founder & CEO

Business Computers of Peterborough

(Consumer Electronics industry)

1980 — 1988 (8 years)

I worked as a freelance Editor at 73 (a ham radio magazine) and Byte (the original personal computing magazine) in the mid-1970s. This experience gave me an unparalleled vantage point from which to witness the shift in computing from the mini-mainframe model to that of personal micro computers for individual customers. I founded BCP with $7,000 of my own money; we were a very ealry stage discount mail-order catalog company focused on selling Radio Shack TRS-80, Apple, and IBM PC hardware, software, and peripherals.

Demand generation was driven primarily by a pioneering subscription-based business model, whereby customers paid a $25 annual membership fee to receive a monthly newsletter that highlighted the latest & greatest technologies at the best prices - more than a decade ahead of Pricegrabber and other internet-based shopping sites. This strategy helped grow annual revenues to more than $8MM.

Additional Information

William F Gollan’s Websites:

My Company

William F Gollan’s Interests:

My family & home is first love. Fly fishing in Maine for Landlock Salmon in Spring & Fall. Fly fishing on Key Biscayne early in the morning for "anything". Swordfishing off Miami under the stars.