Launch Key

The most direct route off the corporate merry-go-round is you.

 Leverage your experience to launch digital products at any age. 

Join 1000+ execs and late career entrepreneurs reading the Launch Key newsletter as we share modern tools, old school wisdom and free knowledge gleaned from decades of digital innovation.

Founder | Publisher

EnergyXchain

EnergyXchain was awarded a National Science Foundation Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) grant to conduct research and development work using blockchain technology for transaction processes in the natural gas industry. The company has a growing IP portfolio and patented technology processes that may also be utilized for energy transaction management via smart contracts, with equal applicability in sectors such as hydrogen, carbon attribution tracking, natural gas and electricity.

CEO, co-founder

Empowered

Empowered grew from one question: What if benefits enrollments were easy? Everyone struggled with insurance. Brokers needed more time with clients, HR managers drowned in paperwork and employees couldn't enroll in a basic medical plan without hassle. We wanted to provide everyone with a simple, transparent enrollment process. A process that made it easy for someone to pick the best benefits for their family.

In 2000, we launched our first consumer-driven healthcare programs, sprinting ahead of the industry by prioritizing people. Today millions of employees trust this platform for their benefits. Empowered is  wholly owned by Aflac.

Chief Innovation Officer, co-founder

Leader of the effort to redesign, develop and deploy EDA’s flagship data product as an online analytics tool. Product launch led to 20% increased sales and returned 100% of the investment in the first year post development.  

With the insight that EDA brings to the table, businesses can make better decisions by identifying trends, exploiting market opportunities, supporting sales service dealer strategies, being informed about regional hot spots, and emerging markets.

If you sell, finance or service capital equipment, EDA offers you the priceless information and timely market intelligence you need to get ahead. www.edadata.com. EDA is a Randall-Reilly company.

VP of Sales and Marketing

Vialogix

Web development company focused on user-based web solutions for internet, intranet and extranet applications.  Solutions included e-commerce, Web-enabled and database applications that enabled clients to reduce business costs or increase sales. The business cultivated long-term relationships with a broad client list that included Fortune 500 level companies Baker & Taylor, Bank of America, First Citizens Bank, National Gypsum, Novant Health, and Wachovia.

Rob Norris Communications

Built technology consulting practice specializing in digital asset management. Apple expertise used for creating networks, managing infrastructure with corporate clients - First Union National Bank, Interstate/Johnson Lane, Royal Insurance, advertising agencies in the Charlotte area. Created multimedia CD-ROM projects, interactive projects and first web based tools in 1994.

President

Coleman Lew & Associates

Recruited advertising and marketing executives for a retained search firm. Interviewed prospects and researched backgrounds. Wrote recommendations, presented candidates, negotiated salaries and benefits with clients.

Executive Recruiter

30+ years of business experience creating and leading innovative technology businesses. From the 90's internet to AI, I've carved out a living explaining and building solutions to solve business problems. 

Expertise in application development has been leveraged across energy, health care, financial services, ecommerce and data analytics businesses. I've sold to both Fortune 500 companies and SMB. I've bootstrapped and won National Science Foundation grants. There have been my fair share of entrepreneurial mistakes but have also published patents and even won a SXSW award. 

I'm not quite finished with technology and can help you avoid a few headaches with your own digital products. I recommend resources, and tools to add to your career portfolio and spin up your dream in weeks - not years. My network includes experts in literally every business function and I will happily recommend people who will level up your startup. Win/Win/Win.

Join the Launch Key newsletter for free: 
https://launchkey.beehiiv.com/subscribe

Rob Norris

Happy Thanksgiving 🍁 

And especially to entrepreneurs who have a lot to be thankful for. We never succeed all by ourselves. Take time to show gratitude to customers, employees, partners, mentors, backers but most importantly family. 

This weeks Launch Key ⬇️

Founder | Publisher @ Launch Key 🚀 | Add to your career portfolio with a passion project or side hustle. Join like-minded execs, SMB owners and late-career entrepreneurs reading the Launch Key for digital inspiration.

Open article: Thanksgiving for entrepreneurs by launchkey.beehiiv.com

This week’s Launch Key reminder is that there is no perfect career path. But there are plenty of options to make your own career portfolio far more interesting. 

Just 3 subscriber examples from Dean Otto, Tom Hewitt and Christopher Jones. 

Get in there and read about them for yourself ⬇️

Open article: Career portfolios by launchkey.beehiiv.com

We can't all have a bear steal a chainsaw on camera. 

But if we do, it's a chance to build an audience. Husqvarna social media folks effortlessly joined a funny online conversation and created buzz with humor and product giveaways. 

This week's Launch Key with a little more on the Creator Economy and using your wit. ⬇️

Open article: Creator economy of chainsaw bears by launchkey.beehiiv.com

Growing an audience with humor and experience

Did you see Taylor Sheridan's Billion dollar deal? 

In a time when Hollywood types are scared that AI will replace them, Sheridan just won generational wealth because of authentic talent. All because he bet on himself. 

That's the topic of this week's Launch Key 🚀

Outsized results are possible when you bet on yourself. 

Get in there ⬇️ 

https://lnkd.in/eMZntXVB

Open article: Bet on yourself by launchkey.beehiiv.com

Not all products are digital. 

Your late-career side hustle might not always come out of your work knowledge. Christopher Jones created a non-digital Bloody Mary mix while working on his weekend sailing hobby. 

This week's Launch Key 🚀  has the latest. 

Get in there ⬇️

Open article: Not all products are digital by launchkey.beehiiv.com

Turn your passion project into a late-career side hustle

beehiiv

First employee.

beehiiv is a newsletter platform built by newsletter people. We provide creators with the best tools in email to scale, reach a larger audience, and make more money.

Reported to the CEO:
• Led growth/marketing efforts from Seed through Series B ($50.8m raised, $225m valuation) 
• Ramped ARR growth from ~$0 to $17M+
• Scaled customer acquistion from ~0 to 20k+
• Expanded user base from ~0 to 500k+

Team player capable of cross-functional execution:
• Collaborated with Finance and Data leads to organize growth data which I presented to associates and Partners of top VC firms during the due diligence process of our series B fundraising efforts which culminated in a successful raise of more than $33m at a $225m valuation.
• Oversaw the growth of the Marketing team to: 
     • 9 direct reports
     • 15+ freelance/offshore VAs
• Prototyped B2B sales motion and assisted in building the initial sales org
• Prototyped early customer success functions and processes
• Prototyped solution engineering functions and processes

Head of Growth

Senior Growth Manager

SymphonyOS

Advisor

Interbloom

Advised the Founding team on marketing strategy (go-to-market planning, product positioning, customer discovery, fundraising) culminating in a successful pre-seed fundraising round in excess of $150k.

MDMA Labs

Marketing consulting services spanning analytics, media buying, and go-to-market strategy.

Affiliate marketing.

Holding co. for various newsletter media properties including:
- Vacation Voyeur (luxury travel)
- The Fit (men’s fashion, lifestyle)
- The Turn (golf)

Founder

Ready Set Rocket

Developed and implemented successful marketing plans, executed digital media strategies for Fortune 500 clients across the real estate, higher education and biotech industries.

Deployed advanced analytics strategies leveraging ETL technology, data warehousing tools, and custom data visualization platforms to deliver omni-channel customer data and business analytics dashboards.

Senior Media Strategist

Knowledge to Practice (K2P)

Reversing negative sales trends, doubled revenue under a year.

Reporting to the CMO, I led digital acquisition efforts utilizing best-practice email marketing, search engine marketing, paid and organic social media marketing, conversion rate optimization, analytics, SEO, and PR activities.

Director of Digital Marketing

WebMechanix

• Wrote internal client relationship management processes as part of an
organizational change management initiative that achieved client
retention, utilization, and client performance
objectives.

• Identified inefficiencies in client goal-setting and reporting processes that
precipitated organization-wide migration to the “OKR” framework resulting
in attainment of aggressive revenue, user acquisition, and cost-reduction goals.

• Led more than a dozen complex digital project engagements from
deal-close to upsell and/or offboarding I met or exceeded client sentiment,
technical requirements, regulatory compliance, performance objectives, and
agency profitability.

Account Manager

• Specialized in behavior-based email marketing campaigns achieving open rates up to 81%, click-through rates up to 35%, and order rates up to 10%. 

• Implemented user personalization using various tools like Klaviyo, Privy to leverage cross-platform marketing automation for hyper-relevant customer experiences leading to up to purchase conversion rates up to 7.8x the site average.

• Refined analytics skills through the advanced implementation of Google Analytics and Quantcast to measure impact using, unified session tracking for cross-device data clarity, event/destination-based goal tracking, and custom report and dashboard building

Digital Strategist

BulkWhiz

Third employee.

Reporting to the CEO:
• Designed and executed a 360-degree D2C digital marketing strategy
(email, content, paid social, organic social, SEM, and affiliate marketing).
Drove monthly-on-month user growth of 104.36%, 61.73% top-line revenue
growth, 77.31% reduction in cost-per-acquisition, and a 31% increase in
average order size.

• Developed tactical digital marketing campaigns. Collaborated extensively
with the offshore development team, design team, and management
stakeholders to deliver marketing and promotional media to targeted segments.

Ecommerce Manager

Javazen

First employee.

Reporting to the CEO, I:
• Designed and executed an omnichannel D2C digital marketing strategy
that built the brand from dorm-room concept to hundreds of grocery stores
across the United States. Executed successful “guerilla marketing” product
launches that sustained 400%+ month-on-month increases in in-store and
online sales.

• Led branding and conversion rate optimization projects that contributed to
a 45% increase in traffic and increased conversion rate 2136% from
0.11% to 2.46%.

Marketing Manager

Falcon and Associates

• Completed, with distinction, year-long consulting fellowship with the Ruler of Dubai’s economic development entity.

• Received coaching and training from McKinsey, Booz, and PwC (Strategy&) mentors while completing four months of MBA-level coursework via European business school ESMT.

Major Consulting Projects:
• Developed comprehensive, 5-year growth strategy for the largest tech incubator in MENA (DTEC) and delivered recommendations to the DSOA Freezone executive board.

• Designed executive succession planning and talent development strategy for Jumeirah Group (>$1B hospitality management firm) for use in the firms first transition of corporate leadership

Associate Consultant

Leading beehiiv’s meteoric growth + spreading good vibes // Come thrive with the ‘hiiv // Dubai Business Associates Alumnus, Cohort Y2

Experienced growth leader with a track record of scaling digital + consumer product brands (SaaS, eComm, D2C, B2C) from zero to millions.

Edward W.

Am I the only one who's receiving work from agency partners that was clearly AI-generated?

I get it, everyone is using AI these days, but I'm talking about clearly egregious examples - like a junior employee took output straight from the LLM to the client deliverable. 

I'd love to hear opinions. My approach is one warning then they're gone, I don't have time or patience to police this sort of thing, and I'm certainly not going to waste the budget if I could get the same result with a Claude prompt. 

Am I being too harsh?

I build growth teams that deliver outlier results. // ex-beehiiv 🐝, Dubai Business Associates Alumnus

We get this question in practically every call - "What does Brightwave do that can't I just use ChatGPT?"

In 2025, virtually every PE team is integrating AI to their deal flow process, often with mixed/poor results.

Here's what happens:
❌ Ask ChatGPT to analyze a data room → Gets basic summaries, no IC-ready deliverables
❌ Ask Perplexity for covenant analysis → Searches public info, misses private docs
❌ Ask Claude for management risk assessment → Generic frameworks, no specialized context

To start Brightwave processes 2,000+ documents with zero loss in fidelity.

Recursive, multi-agentic analysis leaves no stone unturned, flagging every risk and opportunity.

We generate share-ready, sourced reports in your firm's custom formatting.

With one click, you can transform any research into high-fidelity, polished PowerPoint presentations.

All in a secure, private platform that never trains on client data.

The difference? Purpose-built vs. general-purpose.

Your LPs expect investment committee-quality work, not chatbot responses.

taplio

The Battle

Rob Norris

Edward W.

Followers

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Performance ScoreRob Norris's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreEdward W.'s LinkedIn Performance

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taplio

The Battle

Rob Norris

Edward W.

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

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);}Rob Norris's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreEdward W.'s LinkedIn Performance

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Performance ScoreRob Norris's LinkedIn Performance