Melissa Burghardt

Axonify is the frontline operations platform that maximizes team readiness and customer agility to grow sales and profit

Applying thrv’s Jobs-to-be-Done strategy to drive innovation-led growth for Luminate Capital portfolio companies (Axonify, MSI); Appointed as CEO of Axonify to lead business transformation

Productized the restaurant operating model to make it easier to run a SG restaurant, deliver great customer and team experience, develop leaders from within, and scale the business. Drove cross-team innovation for simplified model while continuously deploying ops-excellence and growth initiatives Delivered digital workflow and insights solutions, optimized team model and kitchen design, automation solutions, and ongoing ops optimization that improved restaurant profitability (labor and COGS), team and GM retention, and customer experience metrics while topline sales grew from COVID rebound and increasing locations from 95 to 180

Drove initial commercialization of Miso’s food robotics and AI platform. Responsible for partnerships, business operations, market modeling, fundraising support, and all G&A. Led evolution from garage R&D to restaurant proof-of-concept to early pilots and market launch of “Flippy” with CaliBurger, at Dodger Stadium and Chase Field with Compass Group, and at a global grocer “Flippy” was recognized by Time Magazine as a Best Invention of 2022

Applying thrv’s Jobs-to-be-Done strategy to drive innovation-led growth. Worked with Oracle, GoDaddy, FLIR

Led $1B SaaS product suite that automated marketing and customer acquisition for 300,000 small and medium businesses – Business owners generate new customer leads “hands free” while they focus on running their core business. Built high-performing team (~25 people) and transformed legacy ad placements into AI/ML optimization platform. Reversed sales decline to sales growth. Business and product lead and $1B P&L owner, with ~25-person direct team and multiple engineering, sales, ops teams, and partners. Direct team responsibilities: Business strategy, product management and marketing; development roadmap; partner integrations and operations; media buying, analytics, yield management, data science YP was an AT&T spin-off. It was later acquired by DexMedia, and is now called Thryv.