Matt Shobe
Fourth-gen fighter in a fifth-gen merge
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 strategies. More to come.
Specialties
Product strategery, thoughtful experience and service design, and rapid experimentation/validation on a shoestring budget. Here to do the work and never pass the buck.Interests
General aviation (I'm a private pilot), downhill skiing, distance running, automotive electric conversion. TS/SCI clearance 2021-2023.For a deeper dive into specific projects and deliverables, check out my Portfolio site. My resume is my LinkedIn profile.
highlights
- Each venture-backed startup I have co-founded and where I’ve led product design has featured positive ROI for investors, with a combined ~$185M in closing value across 3 exits to Google, Uber, and 724 Solutions.
- At Google, All three of the UX design direct reports I managed as a Staff Designer were promoted under my management; promotion required managers to advocate on behalf of employees for a committee, not make the final decision.
- At Google, I partnered with a peer designer to develop an “App Marketplace” prototype for Google search and won an internal business plan competition, presenting to Larry, Sergey, and Eric Schmidt. This vision lives on, in part, as the Google Workspace Marketplace.
- At Google, I shared part of a Founders Award for the design of a keyword suggestion tool called QueST that helped AdWords advertisers discover more cost-effective placements for their cost-per-click ads.
- Won “Early Career” category in the 2009 University of Washington Diamond Awards. This award is given annually to ~5 top College of Engineering alumni “who have made significant contributions to the field of engineering.”
- At AngelList, I remixed and repurposed a set of existing tools to create a new investor screening and education experience; the result mapped accredited investor check size to their experience and net worth more accurately, protecting less experienced investors from overweighting risky early stage private equity in their portfolios.
- At Spare 5, I led the creative partnership with an outside branding agency to successfully rebrand the company as “Mighty AI” and reposition our gig economy app as “Spare 5”. Once completed in 2017, this tricky shift made it clear to our customers that they were buying SaaS software from an AI-first enterprise company while preserving our consumer app experience’s popular identity.
- Credited Inventor on two U.S. patents, US-20170323211-A1 (Mighty AI), US-9113032-B1 (Google)
- At every company and on every team I’ve been a part of, I’ve upheld sets of values that we hire, debate and discuss, deliver, and even fire by. At Mighty AI and Rebellion Defense I helped co-author the company values statements. In my work, words are the single greatest output, but actions prove whether they truly matter.
- 8-time marathon finisher. Just 13 minutes and 43 seconds away from qualifying for Boston when I ran Chicago 2006.
- FAA Licensed Private Pilot. 325+ hours logged in Cessna, Diamond, Cirrus, Piper, and ICON aircraft as pilot-in-command. Probably a very good score on ratemypilot.com 😤
- Each venture-backed startup I have co-founded and where I’ve led product design has featured positive ROI for investors, with a combined ~$185M in closing value across 3 exits to Google, Uber, and 724 Solutions.
- .EDU
University of Washington
Human Centered Design & Engineering, M.S.
Activities: Society for Technical Communication, Research Assistant, Summer Intern at Internet pioneer SPRY Inc.
Purdue University
English, Economics, B.A.
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
If you can't stop, smile as you walk by.
© 1970-2024. 124, 971.