History
When you're part of new markets being created, it's something special.
Indeed, the ecommerce marketplace is a robust, evolving one that seems to have just appeared on the scene. The reality is that today's market is the culmination of many different converging markets: targeting, content, personalization, point-of-sale media, site optimization and search all combine to reduce friction in commerce by delivering consumers an experience that is the most timely, relevant and personal.
Our team has evangelized and created standards on all the pieces of today's ecommerce puzzle. We've anticipated market shifts and have championed technologies that are today's standards. We're passionate about what's next. We've got the experience to understand opportunities of scale. We'll apply the diligence required to make the bets on the winner's of tomorrow.
Principal
John Federman
John brings decades of experience to his work at SurfStreet. With over 25 years experience driving revenue and profit through innovative ecommerce, data, content and media platforms designed to connect buyers and sellers, John has been on the front lines at assignment after assignment. With deep big-publishing-company experience, John has gone on to lead transformative data and technology companies that target, engage and build relationships with consumers across multiple platforms.
John has been an individual contributor and sales leader. He's been both a start-up and turn-around CEO for both venture and private-equity backed enterprises. He's successfully fundraised for four companies and has been on both the buy and sell-side of transactions, delivering a spectacular ROI to investors.
Experience
- 6x CEO: Webcollage, Dailybreak, Searchandise Commerce, eStara, Dotomi and AdSmart creating over $750m in shareholder value.
- Webcollage: The leading cloud-based (SaaS) content management platform for the publishing and syndication of rich product content across retail sites globally. Hired a new executive team; grew new business 34% y/y; reduced churn from 27% to 9%; grew enterprise value by 60% and sold to Wicks Equity portfolio company, Gladson.
- Dailybreak: Recruited to drive pivot from college-themed destination site to brand-sponsored engagement platform. Created a scalable, profitable business; transitioned to national footprint, attracting major brands; implemented data-driven strategy; executed successful exit to Connolly Partners.
- Searchandise Commerce: Searchandise Commerce was an innovator in retail site monetization, pioneering the Retail Search Media category. Successfully sold to RichRelevance.
- eStara: eStara created the Click-to-Call SaaS technology that powered most of the Internet Retailer 50 - as well as Amazon, Dell, American Airlines and over 500 more. After growing revenues four-fold, sold to ATG, and then to Oracle where it plays a significant role in the Oracle Marketing Cloud.
- Dotomi: The pioneer in retargeting and dynamic, personal brand-driven messaging. Launched the US company, fundraised and scaled operations. Dotomi was sold to ValueClick and now lives on as Conversant within Epsilon.
- AdSmart: AdSmart was an early player in the online advertsing network marketplace. Repositioned the company and quickly scaled operations from $50k/month to $8m/month. Pioneered use of clickstream data to target consumers and sold the company to Engage Technologies.
- 4x Independent Board Member: ForeSee, Multiply, Rich Relevance and Texterity.
