James Raybould

Speak

After 7 years helping lead LinkedIn Learning and 4 years intensively learning Spanish, working at Speak is a great fit. I'm helping Speak reinvent the way we learn anything, starting with languages. I'm helping across product and go-to-market as Speak approaches $50M ARR at growth rates well north of 100% YoY.

Fractional GM Exec

Stealth AI Startup

Partnering with a co-founder/CEO who already co-founded one of the defining AI companies.

Fractional Exec at StealthCo

inVest Ventures

I was one of the co-founders to launch inVest Ventures: our ~$2M VC fund connects LinkedIn alumni founders with LinkedIn employees past and present as not only a source of funding but also a source of advice, relationships, and support. I'm inVested.

Advisor and inVestor

Blueprints

Alongside my longtime LinkedIn colleague, John Mayhall, we geek out about frameworks from our favourite operators: the shortcuts and heuristics they use to turn uncertainty into a clear path forward.  

We publish a new Blueprint every few weeks - there are 20+ as of September 2024 - weaving in our own experiences + some cartoon design fun into each one.

Co-Founder and Co-Creator

Stage 2 Capital

The Stage 2 Capital Catalyst supports early-stage B2B software companies in scaling their businesses by combining Venture Capital and Go-To-Market, empowering founders with hands-on coaching from a network of go-to-market leaders.

Limited Partner, Stage 2 Capital Catalyst

WisdomAI

After spending my Bain and LinkedIn days using data in all manner of ways, I loved partnering with the WisdomAI team to put data insights at the fingertips of every employee. Mainly helped on the GTM front, creating marketing assets across core website, videos, blog posts, analyst decks, PR, and more.

Fractional GTM Exec

Getting Super Fit Again 

After my 30s largely revolved around work and our then infant kiddos, on turning 40, I decided to return to my endurance athletics roots. I strove - and largely succeeded - to get as fit again in my 40s as I was aged 18-25 when my life largely revolved around competing in Stanford Crew and semi-professional triathlon:

MARATHON SWIMMING (July 2022 - Aug. 2023): I spent ~20 hours/week training for a range of marathon cold water swims without a wetsuit:
* San Francisco Bay: Candlestick Park to Ghirardelli Square (10 miles), Golden Gate Bridge to Bay Bridge (6 miles), Around Angel Island (5 miles)
* Other locales: Lake Tahoe Full Width (12 miles), Portland Bridge Swim (11 miles), Croatia Coast (10 miles), Half Marathon in a 25-yard pool (13.1 miles). Started but didn’t complete crossing the English Channel (21 miles); I picked a bad day to have a bad day.
* Watched the entire “The West Wing” (156 episodes) in 40-minute, up-to-the-neck, cold-plunge soaks in 12 degrees C/53 degrees F water to acclimate my body to cold water. Not recommended to anybody.
* Gorged on cheese and ice cream to gain ~15 pounds in the "wrong places" to mimic the blubber found in sea mammals to acclimate to cold water. Also not recommended to anybody.
*[For the nerds] Got resting heart rate to 41. 

HIGH VOLUME PUSH-UPS (Jan. - Aug. 2021): During pre-vaccine COVID, while housebound, I decided to do too many push-ups, highlighted by:
* 1,000 push-ups in <1 hour (5-6 every 20 seconds)
* 3,000 push-ups in <6 hours (8-9 every 60 seconds)
* [For the nerds] For 1,000 in <1 hour: 6 every 20 secs, then 5 every 20 secs 

ROAD BIKE RACING & TOURING (Oct. 2017 - June 2019)
* Raced for SunPower Alto Velo cycling team in ~30 Northern California races, ending abruptly with a nasty crash, broken scapula, and immediate “retirement” (see pic)
* Biked 850 miles from LA to Albuquerque over 7 days
* [For the nerds] Reached Functional Threshold Power (FTP) of 340 Watts (~4.5 watts/kg) + climbed Old La Honda in 17:05

Elite Endurance Athlete

LinkedIn

After 5+ years on the Go-To-Market (GTM) side of LinkedIn, first in sales and then in marketing, I spent 7 years in LinkedIn's product team, building out a complementary R&D and then General Manager skill set.

My first product leadership role was plugging into Lynda.com following LinkedIn's 2015 acquisition, building, launching, and scaling LinkedIn Learning. My team's primary focus was our Enterprise business, where we grew revenues >10X from 2015-22, becoming the market leader in Enterprise learning. 

Starting in mid-2020, I added product responsibility for Glint, a 2018 acquisition in the employee engagement space, and acted as the primary Point of Contact with LinkedIn's executive team after Glint's two co-founders departed. I partnered closely with Microsoft leadership, culminating in Glint fully moving from LinkedIn to join Microsoft in April 2022 as part of its Viva product suite. 

Apr 2021 - Sept 2022: Senior Director of Product. Spanning LinkedIn Learning and Glint, I led a team of 13 PMs, including managing Product Directors and LinkedIn's only Senior Principal Product Manager (SPPM).

Apr 2018 - Mar 2021: Director of Product. Led the Enterprise Growth product team within LinkedIn Learning.

Apr 2017 - Mar 2018: Group Product Manager. I shifted from being an individual contributor Product Manager to managing a team in 2017. 

Oct 2015 - Mar 2017: Senior Product Manager. Following LinkedIn's $1.5B acquisition of Lynda.com, I returned to an individual contributor (IC) role. I led the Enterprise side of our Learning Solutions product team, taking "LinkedIn Learning" from inception to a fully launched product in September 2016.

Senior Director of Product, LinkedIn Learning

I enjoyed partnering with the incredible LinkedIn Learning content team to author a 30-minute "What's the So What?" business writing course, building on some of the ideas I learned at Bain and LinkedIn.

LinkedIn Learning Instructor

After 3.5 years in the Analytics & Insights world, I took the "intelligent risk" to take a role leading marketing for LinkedIn's Talent Solutions (LTS) business, a $1B and then $2B business, ~60% of company revenues. I was drawn to the role to learn how to take over an existing team and to build out my marketing skillset.  I was also excited to continue as a member of the leadership team for LinkedIn's Global Sales Organization (GSO), representing all of marketing. Highlights included:

* Expanded our team to ~100 with very high employee engagement scores and very low attrition 
* Product mktg team won several MVP awards, drove go-to-market for multiple major launches
* Grew mktg sourced bookings by >80%, lifting mktg's share of total new $ from ~25% to ~40%
* Introduced customer lifecyle mktg at meaningful scale via digital, automated nurture programs
* Built LinkedIn's first dedicated pricing function

Team's scope spanned PMM, content & digital channels, demand gen & customer mktg

Senior Director of Marketing, Talent Solutions

Looking to develop my management and leadership abilities by bringing together our research and analytics efforts, I co-founded and led Insights for LinkedIn's Global Sales Organization (GSO), spanning 2K+ employees: our 70+ person team's mission was to create research & data-driven insights to power the world's most effective sales & marketing. Team highlights included:

* Some of highest employee engagement scores across entire Global Sales Organization
* Launched "Merlin," an internal website offering easy access to compelling insights for our sales teams to share with prospects and customers. At year-end, Merlin was chosen as one of LinkedIn's Top 10 most transformative stories of 2011 by our executive team 
* "Magic Wand" to automate creating highly customized PPT presentations for sales & execs
* The InDemand Rankings & Talent Brand Index (TBI) to measure companies' talent brand
* Received the 2011 "Leverage" award (one of 3 top global awards) as voted by ~1K-employee Global Sales Organization (GSO) for the extent of the impact on our field sales businesses

Director of Insights & Business Analytics, Global Sales Organization

I was lucky enough to have a huge life change when a former Bain colleague, Dan Shapero, called me up one day and offered the opportunity to join LinkedIn during a phase of hypergrowth. Wanting to move from consulting others to learning how to do, myself and with teams, I excitedly joined a ~500-employee LinkedIn as part of its Talent Solutions business on a combination of business analytics & strategy:
* Partnered with analytics & sales operations to create and operationalize our “Size of Prize” methodology, which meaningfully changed our global approach to account allocation & prioritization 
* Co-developed a series of methodologies and tools to help our sales teams grow our business, including “Bullseye" & "Futurama" for account and lead targeting
* Individually received the 2010 "Leverage" award (one of 3 top global awards) as voted by the global Talent solutions team for the extent of the impact on our business

Strategic Solutions Manager

Bain & Company

I returned to Bain San Francisco after HBS for ~18 months:
* Worked with UC Davis's "Wine School" on its growth plan
* Advised leading private equity firm on ~20 investment opportunities  
* Led Bain's Stanford 2009-10 undergrad recruiting to record # of applicants & accepted job offers
* Received all performance ratings in the top "bucket"

Consultant

The Bridgespan Group

During my business school summer, I consulted on strategy for non-profits, specifically the nation's largest provider of mixed-income housing + the nation's largest state-based educational organization

I'm currently enjoying being a fractional exec at two AI startups - Speak and a Stealth Company - while still having time to work on inVest Ventures, a Community VC fund connecting LinkedIn alumni founders with LinkedIn employees past and present, and to partner with my longtime colleague John Mayhall on Blueprints - Frameworks from our Favourite Operators at https://blueprints.guide/

Overall, I'm a Generalist. After Consulting at Bain before and after HBS, I joined LinkedIn in early 2010 and spent 12.5 years moving across functions and leadership roles: I started in Sales Strategy and Analytics before moving to Marketing, then to Product Management, and finally to General Management. 

To tell my longer story, 3 dates from 3 decades help:

Sept. 22, 1995: I travelled 5,000 miles from my London hometown to Stanford. I was drawn to studies, sports, sunshine, and a Bay Area culture more focused on creating the future than curating the past. I rowed on the Stanford Varsity Crew team and studied psychology for my B.A. and M.A. And I've stayed close: I can see the Stanford campus from our backyard.

Sept. 13, 2004: I joined Bain Bay Area as an entry-level Consultant. After a few years of racing triathlon and working in sports business, I was drawn to Bain’s entrepreneurial culture and fast-paced learning environment. Looking back, my strategy and comms chops were forged at Bain, as was a lifelong love of Excel, PowerPoint, and Cinnabon.  

March 8, 2010: I left Bain to join a pre-IPO LinkedIn with ~500 employees and ~$100M in revenue. I was initially drawn to the hypergrowth environment but quickly learned I’d found far more. First, a vision that deeply resonated - to create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce - and, second, a set of inspiring leaders teaching me how a culture and values focus could underpin incredible businesses. Over the next 12.5 years, my roles and responsibilities varied: in function from sales strategy, analytics & insights to marketing to product to GMing; in scope from being an IC to leading ~100 person teams; and in scale from helping run our largest, multi-billion dollar recruiting business to jumping in to help lead our acquisitions of Lynda.com (2015) and Glint (2018). 

Outside of work, I'm a long-term elite endurance athlete (rowing > Ironman > marathons > bike racing > marathon swimming) and compulsive reader and film-goer. Here's ALL my books & films (bit.ly/z2D1sX) and I publish a "What's the So What?" newsletter distilling favourite books and experiences into what matters most (bit.ly/3q188jL)

Founding Member & Advisor

I’m excited to be a founding member of Round, a newly launched community for tech’s most thoughtful leaders. Since joining I've benefited in a major way from small "core group" meetings, special events with luminaries, connections with other tech leaders, and more. Starting in early 2023 I've also begun to help the Round leadership with a range of projects to help them grow their impact.

Always fun to sit down with Daniel Shapero to talk AI - in this clip - and more

I chatted with my former colleague, James Raybould, SVP & GM of Turing, about how AI adoption is a struggle for many companies, but can be a huge win with the right leadership, tech stack, and building daily workflow habits across the team. #ThinkAboutIt

75 years after Alan Turing created the Turing Test, this piece from Turing's CEO, Jonathan Siddharth, encapsulates how quickly AI is evolving and society is responding to it

Last week Anthropic released Claude Sonnet 4.5 and yesterday OpenAI unveiled Apps, an Agent Builder, Sora 2, and much more.

Could we experience more AI progress in the next 75 days than we've made in the past 75 years? 

That's almost certainly hyperbole, but if we expand to 75 weeks, doesn't start to feel not only likely but potentially conservative?

Open article: From Turing’s Question to Today’s Reality: Why the Turing Test Was Only the Beginning by Jonathan Siddharth • 3 min read

From Turing’s Question to Today’s Reality: Why the Turing Test Was Only the Beginning

Always nice to see the value we add to the world’s leading frontier AI labs and Enterprise companies being recognized, here by Fast Company

Turing was named to Fast Company’s Next Big Things in Tech! 🚀 

Turing helps enterprises train AI on data that goes beyond the basics. We focus on the capabilities that matter: multimodality, agentic systems, and human-in-the-loop, paired with evaluation-first loops that surface real failure modes and drive faster improvement.

➡️ Full story on Fast Company: https://bit.ly/43eUFLC


#TechNews #TechAward

Tailor AI

Cofounder & CEO

Magical

Led Engineering for Magical 🚀⚙️🪄
- grew eng team from 14 to 21 & balanced team diversity
- established 3 product tracks with em/pm/design leads
- built out full data stack (segment, snowflake, DBT)
- pivoted company to gen-ai
- completed SOC2 certification
- significantly improved app performance & quality
- drove user engagement with key features by simplifying experience
- rolled out self-serve & sales-assisted monetization

More about Magical: With no integrations and a simple keystroke, Magical lets anyone automate soul-crushing tasks by moving data between tabs. Populate messages, sheets & forms without the time-consuming copy-paste. More magic coming soon! 🪄

Install and set up in seconds for free --> getmagical.com

hiring awesome people --> getmagical.com/careers

Why join? 
🚀 Early hyper-growth Series A start-up with $41M in funding
📈 Product Led Growth with 0 → 500,000 users at 18,000 companies in under 2 years 
🌱 Career growth. Be the first and lead as the team grows!
💚 BIG vision. A+ team.

Head of Engineering

Led engineering for LinkedIn Learning. Responsible for the Learning Experience for both the Consumer & Enterprise businesses, along with Growth engineering for Consumer and online Enterprise monetization. Leading 75 engineers across Web, Backend, iOS and Android platforms.

Additional roles:

Tech diligence & integration for EduBrite acquisition (powering learning assessments)
Modernized Learning Search AI stack and experience.
Deeply integrated Learning with core LinkedIn experience (feed, profile, notifications, search).
Interim Director for Enterprise Growth org, including enterprise integrations/auth/activations/product configuration/insights. Focused on creating a strong Eng + Product partnership. 
Bootstrapped & led the Consumer Growth org.
Built the original Learning team and Alpha/Beta/GA of LinkedIn Learning product.
Co-led integration of Lynda team / product into LinkedIn ($1.5B Acquisition)

Director Of Engineering

Led engineering for LinkedIn Learning MVP, bringing together LinkedIn & Lynda. Responsible for eng design, implementation, & launch of LinkedIn Learning. Led scrappy team of engineers across Web, Backend, iOS and Android platforms. (Sept 2015 - Sept 2016)

Led engineering and product for the Pulse Relevance team. Leveraged LinkedIn's unique data to surface timely, must-read, professional content. (Jan 2015 - Sept 2015) 

Led Pulse App engineering through acquisition and evolution into LinkedIn Pulse. LinkedIn Pulse delivers timely information and insights to all professionals on mobile, web, email, and embedded into other LinkedIn products. (Apr 2013 - Dec 2014) 

Led acquisition & integration of Newsle to power detection of connections mentioned in the news. (July 2014)

Senior Engineering Manager

Led Pulse App engineering through acquisition and evolution into LinkedIn Pulse. LinkedIn Pulse delivers timely information and insights to all professionals on mobile, web, email, and embedded into other LinkedIn products. (Apr 2013 - Dec 2014)

Engineering Manager

Pulse

Pulse is a beautiful application that makes reading news fun and engaging. It has been named to Apple’s App Store Hall of Fame, chosen as an Android Editor’s Choice app, selected as one of TIME’s top 50 iPhone apps of 2011, and honored with an Apple Design Award.

Pulse was acquired by LinkedIn in April 2013.

Role / Highlights:
- Founding engineer, architect, and backend team lead.
- Scaled backend systems from 200K to 25M+ users.
- Directly responsible for growing backend / data / machine learning teams.
- Architected scalablible and fault tolerant systems that leverage a distributed architecture from the beginning.
- Focused on rapid product iteration and minimizing dev/ops time.

Major projects / systems:

Content Serving - Efficiently fetches, stores, and serves mobile optimized content from thousands of feeds to 25M+ users, with the ability to insert targeted promoted content.

Mobile/Web API - Provides users with a consistent identity and experience across mobile devices and the web. Efficiently synchronizes user-customized source subscriptions, preferences, premium services, and real-time social conversations. Provides a curated and personalized source catalog.

Switchboard - Server-side configuration and A/B testing for mobile applications.

Event Logging & Data Products - Collects event logs directly from millions of mobile devices and prepares them for large scale analytics via EMR and Hive. This data is then used as the basis for algorithmically curated content feeds, personalized source/story recommendations and custom analytics.

For more detail on projects see:
- http://eng.pulse.me/category/backend/
- https://github.com/gregbayer
- http://gbayer.com/blog/

Press for Backend Engineering @ Pulse:
- http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2012/02/pulse-using-big-data-analytics-to-drive-rich-user-features-.html
- http://googleappengine.blogspot.com/2011/11/scaling-with-kindle-fire.html

VP Platforms / Backend Engineering Lead (acq by LinkedIn)

Sandia National Laboratories

• Led Hadoop-based data mining and graph algorithms research team.
-- Researched and implemented algorithms for large power-law skewed datasets.
-- Developed interactive graph visualization tool based on Prefuse vis package.
-- Developed machine-learning capability via Apache Mahout.

• Led development of terabyte-scale network packet analysis capability.

• Led research effort to integrate Hadoop and HPC systems.

• Purchased, deployed, and administered 70 node Hadoop cluster. Administered two smaller clusters.

• Compared Hadoop to commercial big-data appliances from Netezza, XtremeData, and LexisNexis. Published and presented results: http://bit.ly/d10lTy

• Developed capability to extract and collect malicious urls from spam and botnet generated email.
-- Efficiently collected over 5 million unique domains and urls.

Senior Member of Technical Staff

Lightspeed

Prototyped and launched mobile messaging app (ZapText) that allowed users to quickly compose context-aware messages. Role: Co-Founder & CTO

Lightspeed Summer Fellowship Program

Stanford University

Programmable Open Mobile Internet (POMI) Research.  http://pomi.stanford.edu/

- Platforms for mobile/social interaction
- Visualization of Distributed, Shared, Mobile Data
- Attribute-based Access Control
- Semantic Web

Computer Science Research Assistant

Member of Technical Staff
- Project Lead for enterprise workflow project: 
Led team of 5 developers. Customized J2EE Business Process Management (BPM) engine.  Interfaced system with Sandia's infrastructure and 15+ custom applications.

- Technical lead for radiation dose calculation application:
Developed J2EE application to support Sandia's dosimetry lab and 3000+ dosimeters.

- Application deployment access control and tracking.
Developed J2EE inventory and access control application. Supports 150+ applications.

- Developed web-based reporting application.

- Taught regular classes and tutorial sessions on J2EE software development.

Software Engineer / Project Lead

Building something new! 🚀 

Previously: 

🪄 💻 Led Engineering for Magical - Magical lets anyone automate soul-crushing tasks by easily moving data between tabs.

🎬 🎓 Director of Engineering for LinkedIn Learning - helping professionals & organizations develop the skills they need to succeed. 

📰  🧠 Led Pulse News Relevance for LinkedIn. Delivered timely, must-read, professional content to the LinkedIn Feed via AI and human curation.

📰 🕸️ Led LinkedIn Content Distribution & Pulse App including iOS, Android and Server engineering teams. Helped build an exceptional mobile-first experience to deliver timely information and insights to all professionals.

📰 📱Founding engineer, architect, and the backend team lead at Pulse. Scaled backend systems to 25M+ users, was directly responsible for growing backend / data / machine learning teams, and architected scalable and fault tolerant systems that leverage a distributed architecture from the beginning.

🔒🐘 Senior staff member at Sandia Labs. Started/led the Hadoop research program. 

📲 Masters research at Stanford focused on platforms for mobile/social interaction.

Specialties: Technical Leadership, Engineering & Product Management, AI, Team Culture, Design Thinking, User Experience, Architecture, Performance, Scalability,  Data Products, Relevance, Hadoop, Google App Engine, AWS, Security

taplio

The Battle

James Raybould

Greg Bayer

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taplio

The Battle

James Raybould

Greg Bayer

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);}James Raybould's LinkedIn Performance

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Performance ScoreJames Raybould's LinkedIn Performance