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

Priyanka T.

Hack for LA

-Orchestrated a 3-year product vision and goals with a team of 15+ UI / UX researchers, designers, developers,  product managers, and analysts to improve onboarding, create scalable infrastructure, and build a skills assessment dashboard for cohorts.

-Collaborated on development of Research Plans, adding success metrics, refined the scope and requirements resulting in a reusable Research Plan templates and KPI standards for ongoing measurement of program year over year and creation of reproducible research, thereby reducing research turnaround time by 25%

-Draft one-pager project overview to clarify problem statement and 12-month roadmap to have project alignment with the parent organization and faster onramp for internal/external stakeholders

-Managed research team, conducting and synthesizing user research, revising and setting standards for survey questions, coding, and presentation to improve research program quality and design research ops strategy 

-Optimized onboarding in the 2nd pilot program and grew admission intake rate by 75% by conducting 9 user interviews, analyzing and synthesizing feedback and provided recommendations for program design improvement

-Created meeting framework and documentation, resulting in improvement in workflow cadence, productivity and team collaboration

-Managed the prioritized backlog by writing issue tickets including 150+ user stories, story point estimation, roles identification, and feature assignment; evaluated team member generated issues for completeness, dependencies, time sensitivity, and provide clear guidance on next steps for all team members

-Worked cross-functionally to create a program of continuous improvement for the product including a prioritized roadmap with milestones

-Led the Product Management Community of Practice to facilitate knowledge sharing & support peer-to-peer mentorship among product managers.

Product Manager, Student product (TWE)

Dedicated Defined Benefit Services (Ascensus)

Led the Continuing Edtech webinar Product end to end, automated webinar invites, launched enhancements and redesigned the new sales and marketing page.

- Boosted CTR by 10% and reduced webinar invite turnaround time by 35%, saving $80K / month via rollout of marketing automation and an A/B testing program.

- Increased website traffic by 23% through the creation of various marketing assets like presentations for the webinars, whitepapers, and infographics.

- Reduced cost by 15% by streamlining the annual website content update process including scoping, planning, resource optimization, execution, and refining marketing collaterals.

- Streamlined the post-webinar and the sales process via implementation of a feedback loop.

- Improved conversion by 15% by revamping the sales and marketing page for the DDB website.

- Designed and built dashboards for e-mail marketing and website analytics and provided insights and recommendations for campaign planning management. Worked with senior management on the Quarterly Business Review and Marketing Strategy planning.

Growth Product Manager Consultant

Snapfish

**Promoted to Marketing Analyst and then co-founded the Analytics & Strategy team where I mentored, trained and grew the team from 2 to 6.

- Spearheaded a 3-month initiative to formulate and build the first-ever widely circulated business performance KPI dashboard across EMEA, APJ, and Americas that resulted in a 20% increase in productivity; cross-collaborated on understanding the drivers behind business performance and presented daily to 60+ functional heads and C-level executives.

- Worked closely with the Leadership to tell the ”Story Behind the Numbers” for presentation to parent organization

- Provided recommendations to the marketing team on promotional and pricing strategy. Doubled revenue surpassing P&L goals by devising monetization strategies for two flagship categories via new product introduction, competitive analysis and UX experimentation on shipping. 

- Acted as a liaison between Marketing and other functions of the organization to effectively communicate business requirements to the BI team.

- Led data democratization efforts with Data Engineering and Finance to provide a single source of truth for our data and worked with the Business Intelligence team to design, improve, automate processes related to reporting and tracking.

- Oversaw the implementation of Spotfire, a data analytics tool providing a holistic and uniform view of customers across web and mobile for 7 categories.

- Provide regular updates on product sales and make recommendations on data-lead cross sell / upsell opportunities and new product initiatives.

- Monitor website performance to identify key pain points, understand conversion rates for product purchase, and optimize ease of navigation in the customer journey for web ordering.

- Hired and managed consultants to support business objectives

Product Strategy and Analytics

Summary: Voice of the Customer (VOC) where I was a liaison between Customers and rest of our organization. Launched various customer service strategic initiatives; Increased CSAT to 85% and reduced contact center cost by diagnosing, addressing and incorporating customer feedback data in product and marketing decisions

-Reduced customer contact rate by double digits, improved CSAT and saved millions of dollars in refunds by leading the discovery and the launch of the single box promo code feature in an agile environment 
 
-Reduction in reorders and refunds by 50% via deep dive analysis of customer feedback data and cross-collaborating with CS, Vendor ops, UI / UX and Engineering to address cropping issues

-Instrumental in developing processes to oversee and ensure a seamless experience for our white glove B2B print to retail customers such as Walmart, Walgreens and Meijer. Regularly analyzed print to retail data and provided recommendations for improvement through customer feedback insights

- Created and managed VOC processes to enhance support experience and to ensure customer feedback was incorporated in product and business decisions

- CS Lead on Production Huddle; be a Voice of the Customer (VOC) to cross-functional teams; empower support teams to debug issues and use the bug prioritization, escalation and resolution process

Customer Support Strategy Analyst | Product Operations Manager

blueEnergy Group

Consultant - Impact Evaluation

University of San Francisco

Conducted empirical and behavioral research on how civil war in Sierra Leone impacted community water-source maintenance contribution 

•Pre-preparation involved conduct of literature reviews and design of survey instruments and sampling methodology to collect firsthand quantitative data from the war victims

•Fieldwork involved supervision of local enumerators, directing logistics, conducting of experimental and survey test rounds for the pilot and execution of the survey consisting of socio economic, health, water and sanitation variables.  I was also involved with conducting interviews with government officials (Ministry of Health and Sanitation - Sierra Leone) and NGOs to collect qualitative and secondary data

•Achievements involved management and successful conduct of 44 experimental sessions and preparation of data (500+ households and 20 villages) for successful hypothesis testing using advanced applied econometric techniques via STATA 10 software

International Development and Behavioral Economics Field Researcher in Sierra Leone, West Africa

Department of Economics - Global Economy (Prof. Harmut Fischer) Fall 2009
Department of Business and Management - Marketing Principles (Prof. Thota) Spring 2009                                                          

•Helped students from non-economics majors with difficult questions pertaining to economics
•Organized the logistics of student evaluations and recorded grades.
•Provided solutions to problem sets along with continuous feedback and scope for improvement in performance to students 
•Conducted review sessions for exam preparation
•Collaborated on examination planning
•Administered Exams and performed grade analysis
•Performed analysis using SAS and SPSS as a research assistant in the Business Department

Graduate Teaching & Research Assistant- Economics and Business Management

Jantaa

Micro finance start up in the bay area

•Conducted literature reviews for implementation of pilot education microloan program in India
•Developed and translated training materials for the local MFI partners
•Analyzed credit applications to assess microloan eligibility and default of borrowers

Research Assistant Internship

Product | Customer Advocacy | Behavioral Economics | Data | E-commerce & SMB | IPMA Fellow @ UW | Buddhism

Throughout my life, customer empathy has been ingrained in my heart and my inspiration for understanding the “why” behind customer behavior stems from my childhood experiences. As a little girl, I watched my father always put his customers first while selling rugs. I became passionate about community development, consumer behavior and wanted to help create an impact. Pursuing this goal, I earned a graduate degree in economics and International Development, and as a behavioral economics researcher, I conducted an empirical analysis and mixed methods research in Sierra Leone to understand the impact of war on behavioral attitudes toward health and community water maintenance contribution. 

I love taking a human-centered and data-centric approach to solving problems and currently, I have 7+ years of varied experience across product management, customer service, marketing, analytics, and behavioral research at non-profits, large corporations, and start-ups, specializing in E-commerce and education technology companies.

All my roles have entailed working closely with both internal and external customers so I am known to invest in building relationships and manage stakeholder expectations with empathy. I have successfully launched strategic product initiatives and cross-collaborated with various teams facilitating data-driven decision making to drive engagement and lead them on the path to monetization. I am also adept at breaking down complex concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences and have worked closely with senior management to tell the story behind numbers. 

Community development and understanding customers' motivations is at the core of my heart so I’d love to work for a mission-driven customer-centric organization where I can make a difference in the lives of the consumers.

I am looking for my next opportunity to collaborate and build with interdisciplinary teams to solve problems where we can move the needle on business metrics while creating an impact.


TECHNICAL SKILLS: GitHub, STATA (Econometrics), Miro, Salesforce, Figma, Python, Adobe Suite, Google Analytics, Jira, Aha, MixPanel, Hotjar, Spotfire (Vertica), SQL, Act-on Marketing Automation, Machine Learning

taplio

The Battle

James Raybould

Priyanka T.

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taplio

The Battle

James Raybould

Priyanka T.

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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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