Ken Norton

I specialize in helping senior product leaders grow their authentic leadership capacity so they can meet the complexity of their roles. Past and present clients include leaders at high-growth startups and Amazon, Dropbox, Duolingo, Flatiron Health, Google, LinkedIn, Meta, Slack, Stripe, and YouTube. https://www.bringthedonuts.com/

During my fourteen years at Google I was the product management lead for—in chronological order—Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Mobile Maps, and GV (formerly Google Ventures). I was a coach, mentor, and orientation instructor for Google's product management organization. I was also a coach to founders and executives in the GV portfolio. I continue to serve many of them today as an independent executive coach. As an early member of the Google Apps (now Workspace) team, I helped grow the business from its early beta state to hundreds of millions of daily users. These products are used today by more than three billion people worldwide. I received the OC Award in 2010—Google's second-highest award for innovation.

Jotspot was a Web 2.0 pioneer in cloud-based collaboration tools and do-it-yourself applications for small- to medium-sized businesses. Our product was one of the first truly interactive web-based apps with a rich user experience. We were backed by Redpoint and Mayfield. I led product development and product marketing. Jotspot was acquired by Google in 2006, and our product offering was folded into Google Workspace as Google Sites and Google Docs, used today by millions of consumers and corporations.

At Yahoo! I worked in the Search division under future LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, with responsibility for a number of products including Yahoo! Shopping, Yahoo! Toolbar, News search, Image search, social search and assisted search. I led the Web 2.0 social search team that spearheaded the acquisition of Flickr. I joined Yahoo! with the acquisition of Inktomi in December 2002, where I led search product strategy.

My cofounders and I were some of the first entrepreneurs to identify the opportunity that would come to be known as cloud computing. Grand Central was an early cloud integration platform startup (think: Zapier about a decade too early). I conceived of the opportunity, hired the team, raised capital, and served as startup CEO during the initial go-to-market period. Our investors were Halsey Minor & Eric Greenberg (12 Entrepreneuring), and Benchmark Capital.

By my departure, NBCi was a public company with over $100M in revenue and a top ten Internet ranking. Despite a crowded market, Snap was the fastest-growing search engine from the day we launched it until I left. I was responsible for strategic product planning, corporate technical direction, and management of a team of over 150 technical professionals. Snap was spun out from my team at CNET after an investment by NBC and I served as VP of Engineering. It became NBC Internet after a merger and IPO, at which point I was promoted to CTO.

CNET was a Web 1.0 pioneer and one of the earliest content publishers to embrace the internet fully. I was one of the first engineers hired in the San Francisco offices and joined prior to the IPO. Before I worked on Snap, I succeeded in introducing several new sites to the market, including category leaders News.com and Download.com. I was a member of the Snap founding team – one of the earliest search engines and an innovator of the “portal” business model. I moved to the Snap spin-off after NBC invested. I was promoted to VP of Engineering of the standalone company.