Matt Shobe
My head is full of zero billion dollar businesses.
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 experience design and support operations design, and rapid experimentation/validation on a shoestring budget. Here to do the work.Interests
General aviation (I'm a private pilot), downhill skiing, distance running, automotive electric conversion. TS/SCI clearance.For a deeper dive into specific projects and deliverables, check out my Portfolio site.
- Corporate Rock
Rogue Leader/Product Manager Nov 2019 — Aug 2022
I helped guide the cultural growth of Rebellion through actual growth from 30 to almost 300 employees. I helped phrase and publicize the company values and contributed to its ethical principles. These felt like meaningful moments in the genesis of a defense tech startup.Also: prototyped mission replay and visualization tools; developed synthetic data product roadmap to accelerate computer vision efforts; and, at our sales leader’s request, I lead brand storytelling exercises to prepare anyone in the company to talk about our customers more effectively.Co-Founder and Chief UX Officer Nov 2014 – Feb 2019
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.
I led general product design. I also led service design to support the community experience for the tens of thousands of mobile and desktop web users who used our Spare5 application platform to earn income.
Acquired by Uber June 2019
Venture Hacker Jan 2014 - Nov 2014AngelList is a fundraising and talent platform for startups and a startup discovery and investment engine for investors and founders.
I helped design aspects of the investor education experience, conducted customer research, created mobile prototypes, and helped syndicate leads close millions of dollars worth of seed stage startup investment rounds.
BigDoor
Chief Design Officer Feb 2011 - Jun 2012
I 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 Google Meet.
Co-Founder and Chief Design Officer Feb 2004 - May 2007
…from my FeedBurner "About" Page entry:
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.SpyonitCo-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
Acquired by 724 Solutions October 2000Andersen 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 AssistantPurdue 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
Et tu, podcaster?
- If you can't stop, smile as you walk by.
