GTM-focused SaaS Advisor and Board Member

I am a go-to-market-focused technology executive and board member with over 20 years experience leading SaaS companies.  

I have led product, marketing, sales, and customer success, and twice I have run companies as CEO.  Along the way I have served formally on 4 boards of directors (including one public company), 7 advisory boards and 3 non-profit boards.

As part of these roles, I have helped to:

* Sell 5 companies (to Oracle, Amazon, Aurea, Maritz, and NonProfitEZ)
* Secure over $100M in equity financing (series Seed, A, B, C)
* Acquire and integrate 5 companies
* Manage small and large quotas (up to $300M)
* Launch dozens of products
* Get two products to profitability on a pure PLG / self-serve basis
* Grow multiple companies at 50%+ growth rates
* Restructure / downsize multiple companies
* Hire hundreds of people
* Create over $1B of shareholder value

I am now 100% focused on teaching, writing, investing and advising.  

As the Executive Chairman of Winning by Design, I work with leadership teams to optimize go-to-market strategies, product development, and customer success.  As an active board member and advisor, I focus on product development and corporate strategy.  As a professor at BYU's Marriott School of Business I teach Product-led Growth, B2B Sales & Marketing, and Career Strategy.

I recently published my first book with Stanford University Press:  FREEMIUM, available from all book retailers.

I am proud to serve as a formal advisor to Mercato Partners, Pledge, Terrett, and ProAI, and an informal advisor to other entrepreneurs and business leaders changing the world.

My mission is to empower the next generation of software leaders and entrepreneurs to create value for their customers and for society.

Dave Boyce

It's almost 2026. Time to make a choice about how you kick off your year with your team:

▶️ "AI pilots are failing and sucking up a lot of time. We are sticking to the basics.  AI cannot replace what we do.  If you can use AI to help you in your individual job, great, but we are not going 'all in' on AI in 2026."

▶️ "The AI train is moving fast. The only thing worse than missing a train is missing a fast train--it's hard to catch up.  Based on our inititial AI pilots, here is what we are doing in 2026.  We will be the most AI-powered GTM team in our industry."

At Winning by Design we have chosen path B.  We spent all year launching AI pilots and agents.  Not all of them worked, but some of them now define how we work day to day. SiftHub is all in. Salesforce is all in. SAP is all in. Google, Meta, and Microsoft--all in. Also Winning by Design's certified partners:  SalesHood, Momentum.io, Fathom, Grain, Una Software, Vasco, Attention, PeopleAI-- all in.

Time to gut check.  What have you done, and what are you doing in AI GTM?  Are you ready to get on stage in January and launch your year with a clear AI strategy?

XOXO,

-db

25% of adults have a hole in their heart. 

It’s called a Patent Foramen Ovale (PFO), and it occurs when a baby’s heart fails to completely close the opening in the atrial septum as the heart starts to beat independently. 

This week I had my PFO surgically closed. 

The doctors wanted to close it to prevent any future deoxygenated blood clots from passing through the hole and on to the brain (vs going first to the lungs, which tend to do a better job breaking up clots). 

The surgeon inserted a titanium mesh septal occluder, all done arthroscopically (entered through the groin). 

I’ve attached two videos here:

1) an animation of the procedure
2) a video of my device, now in place 

CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT?

It’s amazing to me what humans are able to innovate with precision science. Whenever I engage with innovation like this (or AI or robotics or pharmaceuticals), I realize how much room we have in GTM to tighten up our game. 

200 years ago, we didn’t understand the human body like we do now, and we practiced bloodletting via leeches. We amputated, we blistered, we lobotomized. 

But when you know better, you do better. Medicine has come a LONG way… so have engineering, manufacturing, space exploration…. 

Next up: GTM. We still have a surprising amount of “winging it” in GTM. But there are underlying principles of compounding and system-led growth that can help us do better. 

Today I’m grateful for modern medicine. And tomorrow I’ll continue working with Winning by Design  on modernizing GTM. 

Let’s go!!!

XOXO

-db

https://lnkd.in/g72_jZhB

AI-Native companies run on PLG Rails.

We see the breakout success of some select AI-native companies (Cursor, Replit, Lovable, Mistral, OpenAI...) and assume there must be something special about their GTM.

Yes, they are in a hot space with wind at their backs.

But no, they are not using agents to sell to you.  It's just #PLG.  And if you dive deeper, you can see how and why.  

I wrote about this in the October issue of GROWTH, and I've now published that article to my Substack (linked below). You can get a free digital subscription to GROWTH by following the link at the end of the article.

XOXO,

-db

Winning by Design

ALTAVE

Our mission is to serve our customers with the most trusted and reliable software and AI systems for monitoring offshore oil and gas and mining operations, setting the standard for excellence in the industry worldwide.

Director of Software Engineering & AI

NewStore, Inc.

NewStore delivers a platform for retail brands to run their stores on iPhones with outstanding efficiency.

NewStore is the first cloud platform that connects omni order management with mobile point of service.

Our store associate apps allow retail brands like Outdoor Voices and UNTUCKit to offer seamless shopping experiences by quickly rolling out endless aisle, mobile checkout, store fulfillment, inventory management, and clienteling.

Main contributions:

* Led the creation of two new teams supporting company revenue growth of 4x in one year.

* Improved hiring process reducing hiring lead time from months to 2 weeks. Hired and successfully onboarded 10 engineers.

* Implemented team topologies reorganization aiming better ownership and reduced cognitive load, positively impacting many engineers and teams including: order management, fulfillment routing, shipments/delivery, product catalog, in-store fulfillment.

* Led developers to better AWS Cloud technologies adoption, enabling the team to own our infrastructure, and improving disaster recovery and monitoring.

Engineering Manager

Tribe

Tribe is reinventing the way we buy eyewear, backed by the largest European online optician, Mister Spex. The company delivers AI-powered glasses recommendations, real size glasses try-on using augmented reality, and millimeter-precise measurements for frame and lens using 3D modeling.

Main contributions:
 
* Refocused company development process on delivering value to customers, enabling the first product launch after only 2 months, the Mister Spex app. This app achieved 4.6 of rating on App Store.

* Hired new employees for the engineering and product teams. 

* Led adoption of best practices in security based on GDPR.

Product Manager

GETAWAY

GETAWAY enables fleet owners to digitalise their car rentals and maintenance. The company reliable technology infrastructure and mobile app allow fleet owners to generated more value from their assets while providing an enjoyable driver experience.
Main contributions:
* Solution Architecture and DevOps of company infrastructure on AWS, leading to a reduction of 80% in costs per rental while increasing reliability.

* Improve the company software development process, based on Scrum, allowing better communication and team ownership of the board.

* Reduced 4x times car booking failures and reduced 2x customer complaints by proposing a new KPI related to customer satisfaction, and continuously improving our system based on this metric.
   
* Architecture and implementation of a hybrid database system using MongoDB and AWS S3, reducing 3x MongoDB storage size and costs, while increasing scalability and security of GDPR protect data.

* Software architecture and development of an innovative car-sharing solution using the following stack: AWS Elastic Beanstalk, AWS Lambda, Cloudwatch, S3, EC2, J2EE, JPA, Kotlin, Java 8, Groovy, MongoDB, Gitlab.

Product Engineer

Amazon Web Services

DevOps Engineering for automation of AWS Network.
Design of security and software quality assurance policy for network devices bastions. These bastions are used by thousands of AWS Engineers.
Development of tool for automated verification of security policies.
Creation and execution of campaign with guidelines for improvement of continuous integration and continuous delivery practices involving more than 100 different software owners.
Architectural design of a solution to migrate network devices access model from vertical to horizontal scaling

System Development Engineer II

ALTAVE - LTA Solutions

Coaching, training and leading of ALTAVE software team.
Solutions Architecture.
Sales engineering and business development of ALTAVE tethered balloons to new markets.
Architecture and implementation of an intuitive weather alert app using AWS Lambda, S3, Python, Javascript and aeronautical messages TAF/METAR

Systems engineering and development of a system for displaying 24-megapixel aerial imagery in real-time using C language, Linux, Shell Script and ffmpeg. This display system was integrated into a wide area persistent surveillance balloons for the RIO 2016 Olympic Games.

Business development and engineering sales support of ALTAVE tethered balloons to new markets.

Systems engineering, software, hardware and mechanical development of a stabilized and georeferenced PTZ camera for tethered balloons, using IMU sensor fusion, Kalman Filter, OpenCV and brushless motor control.

Systems engineering and development of a Geo-Location system for real-time displaying the airborne camera view on a georeferenced map, and a Geo-Pointing system for controlling a pan-tilt camera to a GPS coordinate.

Lead Software Engineer & Solutions Architect (Consultant)

NCB Sistemas Embarcados

Coaching, training and leading of the NCB software team.
Sales engineering and business development of NCB equipment to agricultural companies.
Definition and implementation of product development process, especially focused on its embedded software engineering needs, enabling the company to launch its first products .
Systems engineering and embedded software development of a digital flow meter of pesticides for agricultural aircraft.
Systems engineering, control of a DC motor, and embedded software development of an equipment for aerial releasing of parasitoids for biological pest control using C Language, C++, QT/QML, Android, ARM and PSoC. The equipment was designed to be installed in UAV and manned vehicles.

Harpia Sistemas S/A

Definition of the Harpia Software Development Process based on the quality management system AS9100 / NBR15100 and on the aeronautical software guideline DO-178C.

System architecture of a ground control station for a long-endurance and large UAV with high design assurance level. Assessment of several technologies and standards such as DOD UCS Architecture, Stanag 4609 and 4545 for video/image interoperability and Stanag 4586 for UAV control.

Optronics system integration of thermal and visible light imaging equipment with a C4I center through radio datalink using Java and C Language. Responsible for system requirement specification, system architecture, and embedded video processing software development and testing.

Product Development Engineer - Software

Monity

Start-up of a small company, with two partners, focused on transportation security market.

General management of the company, including Accounting, Finance, Business Plan and Marketing Plan.

Responsible for development of proposals for government funding programs.

Founder

Definition and implementation of company product lifecycle management focused on electronics and software development.

Hiring, training and leading a team with six engineers.

Successful sales engineering resulting in the company's initial clients including Rapidao Cometa/FedEx, Embraer, and the City Government of Sao Jose dos Campos. 

Project Management and architectural design of a mobile video surveillance system for vehicles, with real-time transmission of images using 3G networks.  

Project Management, Design, and implementation of a software-based MPEG-2 decoder for a DVB-Satellite digital video set-top box.

Implementation of embedded software for video compression using uClinux and a DSP.  

Development of protocols for communication between the central storage server and vehicle embedded modules. Development of an embedded database to increase the lifespan of flash memory devices used in continuously video storage.

Development of Java to C interfaces to allow fast and portable video decoding for graphical user interface.

Develop of a high performance Java database server for multimedia streaming.

Head Of Engineering

Fundação Casimiro Montenegro Filho

Development of the Borland Center for Software Engineering at ITA. Management assistant of eight members teams selected for mastering the software life cycle management tools. 

Market research and analysis to implement an innovative B2B / B2C system for logistics operators.

Design and implementation of a web-based Budget Management Software for a multinational corporation.

Software Engineer Intern

Customer-obsessed and servant engineering leader that successfully delivered many challenging products either on my own startup or in global leaders such as Amazon.

Successfully led teams on many effective innovations such as a SaaS platform for omnichannel retail, a face measurement AR app for eyewear e-commerce, a shared mobility platform for Van's, and a real-time M2M video surveillance system for cargo transportation.

Wide leadership and technical background with 19 years of experience in IT industry fostering digital transformation best practices of agile development, CI/CD, SecDevOps, microservices, product management, solutions architecture, cloud computing, and team topologies.

taplio

The Battle

Dave Boyce

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Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Dave Boyce's LinkedIn Performance

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