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

Vice President, Product Management

Head of LinkedIn's Marketing Solutions products.

Head of LinkedIn’s Premium Subscription, Commerce and Services Marketplace products.

Director, Product Management

Led product strategy, design and execution for LinkedIn Sponsored Updates, a key mobile monetization initiative launched in July 2013.  Early product manager on LinkedIn Ads team, led product development and managed revenue line for LinkedIn's self-service advertising products.

Group Product Manager

Led strategic pre-IPO analyses and projects for CFO, including headcount planning, market entry due diligence, and sales operations planning.  Early hire on the team, responsible for forecasting LinkedIn's advertising businesses and introducing business analytics support.

Senior Associate, Business Operations

The Aspen Institute

The First Movers Fellowship is an innovation lab and leadership development opportunity for intrapreneurs (change-agents within organizations large and small) who are working to create new products, services and practices that fuse business success with positive social and environmental impacts.

First Mover Fellow

Thomas Weisel Partners

Prepared quantitative financial analyses for technology clients in online media, communication equipment, enterprise computing and storage.  Ranked top of 2008-09 1st year analyst class; hand-picked by head of banking to research addition of new vertical in N. America.

Investment Banking Analyst

Merrill Lynch

Deployed risk management software tool for Merrill Lynch's Credit Risk back-end.  Selected by ML's Strategy & Growth team to research technology solutions for improving communication among far-flung teams.

Global Business Analyst

Chartered Semiconductor

Developed software application that analyzed Transition Line Pulse results for electrostatic discharge on silicon chips.

Software Development Intern

GlaxoSmithKline

Corporate Strategy Intern

I lead the Consumer Experience team at LinkedIn, which is responsible for creating and delivering innovative products in our app that help millions of professionals connect, learn, and grow every day. I have over 13 years of experience in product management spanning various domains such as advertising, subscriptions, marketplaces, payments, and consumer experiences. I am a First Mover Fellow at The Aspen Institute, where I collaborate with other intrapreneurs to develop and implement solutions that combine business success with positive social and environmental impacts. I am passionate about building products that improve people's lives in meaningful ways, increasing diversity in leadership ranks, and cultivating a growth mindset toward every opportunity.

Gyanda Sachdeva

Back with a Friday update. This time, instead of talking about a new product, I want to highlight one that has existed for a while but you may not have used it yet. It's the subscribe bell. Check out the video on how to use it - give it a try and let me know what you think.

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The Battle

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Gyanda Sachdeva

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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);}James Raybould's LinkedIn Performance

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Performance ScoreJames Raybould's LinkedIn Performance