Summary: I have over 29 years of experience in the Technology and Staffing Industries. I founded my business, TECHEAD, with my wife, Philise Conein, in 1988. I have provided the visionary strategy, business development, team motivation, technical product conception and branding for the company. I have a deep understanding of technology, winning business proposals, client relationship and marketing. I have consulted more than 10 start-up companies and raised over $89 million dollars in Venture capital funds.
Over the years, I have served on a variety of Business Boards and partnered in various other IT (non-retail) companies. My community outreach includes: A Third term appointment on the Board of Directors of RichTech, and service on the VMFA (Virginia Museum of Fine Arts) Business Council. I am an active member of, and a former Board Member of the Virginia Council of CEOs. I was a Director and Board Member for Richmond Unite, helping coordinate the #DSRPT11 event, and was a catalyst in introducing Sir Richard Branson to David Karp of Tumblr during the event. I was an instigator for RVASeed Fund, created as a catalyst to raise seed money for RVA’s growing start-up community. Additional community involvement includes Startup Weekend, Startup Next and Lighthouse Labs.
Personal Recognition:
• Winner of RichTech's Community Catalyst Award 2012
• Finalist Top 40 under 40 Style Magazine, 1999
• Featured in “Work It Richmond” in the RTD:
http://www.timesdispatch.com/workitrichmond/people/article_70e35332-c86a-11e2-ba4b-0019bb30f31a.html
Experience
Knox Payments - February 2014 – Oct 2016
Investor, Advisor, Connector
Use my knowledge, connections and presentation skills to help the co-founders kick off the fastest growing Start-up in RVA. Winner of the Best New Enterprise Product Category at Launch.co 2014.
Knox Payments is a fast, innovative secure payment gateway. It increases a user’s shopping cart experience by removing the complex and time-consuming completion of forms and fields needed make online purchases. Knox Payments reduces fees for merchants and users. It is not a disguised Credit Card transaction gateway, but more of an online direct banking withdrawal system. After selecting their bank, the user only has to know his or hers on-line banking username and password to make a purchase. It is simple and quick. Knox Payments has incorporated 95% of all major banks in United States, giving Knox Payments access to 160 million users.
http://knoxpayments.com
MotorMouth.net - September 2012 – Present
Founder, Investor, Advisor, Connector
Introducing MotorMouth. An easy, fun to use free app that records and tags your voice wherever you are. Listen in as your location comes alive with the sound of others who have left their voices nearby. We started with a simple idea. Leave voice messages on a GPS delivery devices for people to follow or comment. The founders are Pat Hull, Dan Jacoby and myself.
http://www.motormouth.net
SHOCKOE.COM LLC - January 2005 – 2016 (9 years 10 months)
Founder and Partner
Shockoe.com, LLC specializes in Mobile Marketing Technologies. The company is a certified Appcelerator, Titanium Mobile Applications Development firm, is staffed by Titanium Certified Experts, and they also offer Titanium Training. TECHEAD partners with their Professional services division, making us a one-stop shop for Mobile related client needs; from training to development. They also offer on-site developers at to assist with internal projects. In 2005, Shockoe.com was spun off from TECHEAD into its own LLC.
http://www.shockoe.com
Pixelbilly Studios, LLC - April 2012 – 2014 (2 years)
Founder and Partner
We are a mobile game development game app company. Our first published game is LetterLasso. LetterLasso is a re-imagined approach to a Word scrambling game geared to the educational market and cognitive learning. Sold this start up.
Name Warden, LLC - March 2014 – Present
Investor, advisor, connector
Used my knowledge and skills to help launch Name Warden. This is the first legal trademark tracking SaaS (Software as a Service). Name Warden keeps trademark attorneys updated on client trademark filings and statuses. It also track competitors’ brands, marks and Patent filings that may infringe on the user’s trademarks.
http://www.namewarden.com
Desktop Service Center, Inc. DBA TECHEAD - 1992 – Present
Founder and President
With expanding opportunities, I hired/fired/train internal employees; Developed long-term relationship with key clients; Formed divisions of TECHEAD to meet client demands. The Divisions include, Staffing, Training and Solutions. For our Staffing Line of Business (LOB), I forged and established a Creative Staffing market, developed a marketing strategy, Created a Recruiting and Account Executive process that meets our clients Service-Level Agreements (SLAs) and Contract terms. Philise and I established a training department and TECHEAD became an authorized Adobe Training Center (1992 to 2014) and SCHEV certified.
Our Solutions Department created and established various web tools and services offerings for our clients. We spun off Shockoe.com into its own entity. We decided to diversify our services and target the Government sector and received our GSA and Seaport-e contracts.
Desktop Service Center, Inc. (DSC) - 1988 to 1992
President
DSC was founded in 1988. We started a media service bureau that focused on slides and overhead transparency production service for local fortune 500 companies. We incorporated Desktop Publishing; and a help desk service for Adobe Postscript and Microsoft desktop publishing services. Soon after in 1990, Philise and Phil Conein started a branch service to provide Creative Staffing to our local Fortune 500 Companies. In 1993, we closed the service business and focus on providing Creative staffing to other areas of Virginia. We started with $800 and grew the company with an annual revenue of over $6.5 Million.
Phil’s hands on experience includes: Start-up Businesses, Finance, Legal, Employee relations, understanding Employment laws IRS Classifications, Auditing, COS, Sales Strategy, Mentoring, Motivation Business Processes and Documentation, Business Strategy and Planning, Business Execution, P&L Bookkeeping, Accounting Best Practices, Forecasting, Fundraising, Securities Positioning Sales and Securities Analyst, Marketing Strategies, Market Testing, UXI Strategies, SMO, SMP, SEO, Crowd Sourcing, New Client Acquisition Strategy, Human Resource management, IT/IS knowledge and Classification Recruiting strategies, Investing Strategy, Marketing Sales life cycle, Board Governance, Event Planning, Government Compliance
Riddick Communications - January 1986 – February 1988 (2 years 2 months)
Provided Creative images for clip art. Converted line drawings into vector images. Made presentation templates for corporate market to be sold with hardware bundles. Learned about process, documentation and follow up on directions. Learned about team development and environment. Learned to develop products and provide services for the presentation market.
Current Skills Include: WordPress, PhP (editing skills), Troubleshooting, Balsamic, Quicken, MS Office, Photoshop, Illustrator, QuarkXPress, Windows, iOS, Slack, Dropbox, Evernote, Conceptual UX Design, SEO, SMO, Graphic Design, Creative Director, Google Analytics, Google Docs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Search strings, PPC, PPK, HTML, some CCS, GITHUB.