Matt Shobe

A little short for a stormtrooper.

    • Summary

      I've spent the balance of my professional life in the entrepreneurial, small company trenches, but stints in large company environments have helped frame my communication and problem-solving approaches. More to come.

      Specialties: Product strategery, thoughtful customer experience design, and rapid prototyping on a shoestring budget. I will pick up a shovel if a shovel needs picking up.

    • Corporate Rock

      Co-Founder and Chief UX Officer Nov 2014 – Feb 2019

      Joined as co-founder of this first spin-out from Madrona Venture Labs. Mighty AI was a data management platform that helped autonomous vehicle/robot manufacturers, tier 1 automotive suppliers, and other startups and disruptors secure the high-quality, human-annotated data they need to train their computer vision algorithms.

       

      Acquired by Uber June 2019.

      Venture Hacker Jan 2014 - Nov 2014

      A fundraising and talent platform for startups, a startup discovery engine for investors. I helped design several aspects of the investor education experience, conducted user research, created some mobile prototypes, operated and closed syndicate deals, and spoke my piece on the Drain of Truth.

      BigDoor

      Chief Design Officer Feb 2011 - Jun 2012

      Helped design the next gen of BigDoor's loyalty platform for partners like MLB Advanced Media, NFL, TeenNick, Dell, and the super-fine City of Austin, Texas.

      Google

      Staff User Experience Designer Jun 2007 - Feb 2011

      I assumed the role of user experience designer within Google, spearheading various efforts to incorporate the key parts of FeedBurner into the overall publisher product mix. I also worked on all of the major advertising tools for publishers (AdWords, AdSense and DoubleClick), Google Apps Enterprise Marketplace, and Hangouts.

      FeedBurner

      Co-Founder and Chief Design Officer Feb 2004 - May 2007

      from my FeedBurner "About" Page entry:

      (Co-Founder and Chief Design Officer) Credited as the original "voice of FeedBurner," Matt also maintains an unwavering devotion to the FeedBurner fan club. If publishers and advertisers want it, his team brandishes the t-squares and slide rules required to make it happen.

       

      Acquired by Google June 2007.

      Burning Door LLC

      Principal Nov 1998 - May 2004
      Burning Door was myself and three other colleagues who've created, nurtured (and in some cases, survived) various Internet startups in Chicago. We did webapp design and architecture consulting as BD in between our startup drives.

      Spyonit

      Co-Founder Nov 1998 - Jul 2003
      Spyonit was a web service offering a catalog of alerts to the general public, covering everything from eBay auctions to breaking business and news headlines to a “Vanity Spy,” which could tell you when your name appeared anew at the major search engines. Named one of the "Top 50 Most Useful Sites" on the web by Yahoo! Magazine, July 2000 and acquiring a base of over 100,000 users, Spyonit was acquired by 724 Solutions in September 2000.

      As one of four founding Spyonit partners, I was responsible for:

      • Conceiving and implementing the site’s interaction and visual design
      • Communicating with end users daily to seek improvement feedback for every aspect of the service
      • Collaborating with customers and Spyonit enthusiasts to define web-based tools to extend Spyonit’s alerting capabilities

      My efforts directly contributed to our acquisition and realized bankable ROI for our angel investor corps in less than one year.

      Andersen Consulting (Accenture)

      Usability Specialist 1993 - 1994
      Brought what I learned about usability at Microsoft to a new team within Andersen that was attempting radically rethink how the firm built its solutions from a much more modular and reusable process and architecture. This rethink included much more focus on user experience; the best part was that I met my co-founders for three startups to follow among the like minds there.

      Microsoft

      Usability Specialist Intern May 1993 - Aug 1993
      Ran usability evaluations (and learned my way around a corporate usability lab, video editing, and concise, daresay "punchy" report writing) on very early Windows 95 prototypes and on the PageMaker-for-everyone-else of its time, Publisher 2.0. Cultivated an obsession for white cheese pizza and Talking Rain.

    • .EDU

      University of Washington

      Human Centered Design & Engineering, M.S. 1994 - 1996
      Activities: Society for Technical Communication, Research Assistant

      Purdue University

      English, Economics, B.A. 1988 - 1993
      Activities: Phi Kappa Theta, Phi Beta Kappa, Golden Key National Honor Society, Krannert School of Management Internship Program, Computer Science Teaching Assistant (CS110), School of Liberal Arts Dean's Freshman Scholar

    • The Socials

      Full LinkedIn Profile

      @shobe

      Instagram
      My investing/co-founding life

    • Et tu, podcaster?

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    Copyright 2019. 124, 325is, 996TT.