Awad Sayeed

Paying it forward advising early-stage startups on growth, fundraising, hiring, go-to-market, and anything else a founder might have on their mind. Helps me continuously stay grounded with the startup ecosystem while reminding myself how fast change is happening.

• Spearheaded integration of Pixlee, TurnTo, Go Instore, and Emplifi Social Commerce into a unified product suite. • Enhanced user-generated content, ratings & reviews, and live shopping experiences, driving brand engagement. • Collaborated with global cross-functional teams to align commerce strategies with emerging social media trends. Helped me understand the nuances of integrating a startup within a larger company post-acquisition.

• Led the integration of product and design teams from Pixlee and TurnTo across 75+ PMs, Designers, and Engineers. • Drove the development of industry-leading solutions for over 1,000 enterprise and emerging brands. • Key member of the executive team in the successful acquisition by Emplifi in November 2022, positioning the company for future growth. Helped me immensely in growing as a leader and facilitator when bringing together two successful and established products, teams, cultures.

Switched hats and helped scale the Pixlee business across the USA, Canada, UK, and South Korea to include 5 offices in 4 countries servicing Americas, EMEA, APAC. Helped me gain an even greater appreciation for all of the non-technical roles involved in growing a business. This is when I really internalized that businesses are ultimately made up of people, and that people and culture are what matter most at the end of the day.

• Co-founded Pixlee, transforming a college dorm room idea into a pioneering platform in the UGC marketing space. • Spearheaded the early development of the Pixlee platform as the first software engineer, overseeing product, design, and engineering. • Successfully scaled the company from inception to a market leader, driving significant growth from zero to one and beyond. We were laughed out the door as a toy at first, but that's often the case for those on the bleeding edge. Helped bring to life real world global scale systems in production when servicing a wide spectrum of customers. And how to hire really smart people.

Consulted on and built wide a variety of software solutions for clients in mobile gaming, analytics, publishing, telephony, and business applications. Witnessed and facilitated many technology transitions. Made a bunch of cool stuff. Helped me understand how much potential there was in being a full stack individual and what the jobs of the future would entail.

All the grunt work you can imagine short of running coffee for Merrill Lynch Global Markets & Investment Banking right until ML ceased to independently exist. I've regrettably forgotten all my Bloomberg hotkeys but remember many of the pitch books I had the pleasure of working on while sipping the Kool Aid, not fully realizing the financial world was collapsing all around us. What a time to be alive. Helped me understand that anyone can excel in the right space with the right opportunity.