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

Rob Humphrey

Senior Account Executive, Education Vertical

Canva

Canva is on a mission to empower the world to design. Visual communication is critical to stand out and be remembered. With Canva Enterprise business teams (sales, marketing, HR) can self-serve create on-brand visual content at scale. Creating faster time to market. Less reliance on agencies. More time back for in-house designers.

Strategic Accounts 

Managed strategic sales initiatives as a founding member of LinkedIn's fastest-growing vertical.  Experience in SaaS and Ad-tech sales. 

Achieved $500MM in net revenue throughout my career, showcasing exceptional sales acumen.  

Honored with LinkedIn's prestigious MVP award, recognizing outstanding contributions and leadership.  

Co-created the "Get Hired" video series, engaging over 50,000 students through keynote talks at 100+ universities.

Strategic Account Executive

Transformational tour stop number three, I lead a high performance team of digital media experts. I support awesome customers in the ultra fast growing  Higher Education vertical. My speciality is helping schools reach prospective students, ensure current students harness the power of networking, and to make the connection with alumni more of a two-way street. I love to crush silos, do work, and dream big.

Co-created "Talent Connect Live" - a live stream experience for virtual attendees. In 2014 the stream was watched 15K viewers, in 2019 several million watched the stream.

Senior Manager, Creative Content Marketing

Annual quota busting sales leader that was hired to get shit done. That's it, that's all. I transformed the traditional thinking about the sales relationship, pioneered social selling strategies, and significantly impacted the creation, growth, and scale of LinkedIn's first and largest business - Talent Solutions. 

The numbers: Top 1% global revenue producer, #1 sales rep in category, ranked #1 in media solutions every quarter for 14 straight quarters, most highly recommended internal speaker (sales kickoff etc) 80+ NPS.

Senior Enterprise Account Executive

Conceptualize, produce and deploy specialized programs for NGOs, Non-Profits, Government, and private sector organizations globally. The majority of what brain power I have is dedicated to global initiatives that ensure educational and economic opportunity for everyone.

The  numbers: #1 in terms of performance in North America (AE), #5 Globally (AE), #1 Rated speaker at annual global sales meeting.

Talent Solutions Account Executive

Harmonix Music Systems

Supported engineering and art hiring for Rock Band 2 and other projects. Created social recruitment strategy, executed on strategy, and reached key milestones. Among first users of LinkedIn Recruiter

Game Art and Engineering Recruiter

Strategic Sales @ Canva | LinkedIn MVP | Snowboarder

I dream big, do work, and have fun. 

At LinkedIn I became the top rep in the world setting records unmatched, and named MVP during an epic 18 month sales year. I delivered  $500,000,000 net to LinkedIn. I did it without losing my soul.

Much of my success was based on a building a trusted personal brand. I spent years attempting to visually tell my story, and almost gave up. Then I started using Canva. It became almost like cheating. People were excited to see what ideas I came up with and I could really devote my energy to creating mutual success. 

My best sales year at LinkedIn was when I abandoned Powerpoint and started using Canva. So, joining the Strategic Sales team at Canva for me is a dream come true.

Global Client Director

Entrepreneurial creative sales professional and founding member of the fastest growing vertical at LinkedIn. Delivered $200MM to the business inside 5 years, recipient of the most coveted sales award at LinkedIn (MVP), and friend and mentor to many. 

Co-Creator of Get Hired  - A video series focused on our student and young professional member base

Traveled to over 100 colleges and universities completing keynote talks to over 25,000 students. High NPS sales keynote and sales kickoff speaker.

Former LinkedIn MVP discovers previous accomplishments mean absolutely nothing.

Back at LinkedIn, I went rogue and ditched PowerPoint entirely for Canva. Every. Single. Presentation. 

That same year? I became a LinkedIn MVP in an 18-month competition eclipsing $100 Million in net revenue during that period. 

Coincidence? Nope. I finally found a way to tell a story and really convince customers to dream big, not just spend money with LinkedIn.

Now I'm on the other side of the table, selling what people think is "just a consumer design tool" to the enterprise. 

I am watching Fortune 500 teams realize they can move at the speed of creativity, performance marketers can catapult ROAS, and sales teams can get more creative without the "brand police" calling!

Coach K wrote about "shared confidence" in his book—the idea that when one person believes, it lifts the entire team. That's exactly what I'm seeing here...

We're not just building a new sales org; we're building something that makes people more productive and successful.

The real MVP? This team.

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I am still here. 

That is what my mother says every single time I call her.

I recently updated her fit with a bunch of "I am still here" swag - she wears it proudly.

Also, she just celebrated her 93rd birthday, so I updated her LinkedIn headline to match the swag.

The message is this: You are still here! So, enjoy this beautiful day.

In a sales role, your direct manager has more impact on your mental health than your partner, bff, or therapist. 

Think about it 🌈

Canva. Enterprise Edition. 

Think about it.

So you have a LinkedIn profile. Congratulations on completing this crucial step in your unpaid full-time job of looking for a job that requires 5 year

Open article: Your LinkedIn Profile: A Beacon of Hope in the Void by Rob Humphrey • 3 min read

Your LinkedIn Profile: A Beacon of Hope in the Void

We have a crazy big dream that by the end of our lifetimes, everyone on this planet will have their basic human needs met. Canva 🩷

A few years ago, we shared our 2 Step Plan:

1. Build one of the world’s most valuable companies
2. Do the most good we can do

We have a crazy big dream: that by the end of our lifetimes, everyone on this planet will have their basic human needs met. It’s terribly sad that this is still considered a crazy big dream, but thanks to the support of our community, the Canva Foundation is committing another $100 million USD to support people living in extreme poverty to take another step towards this.

Since 2021, our partnership with GiveDirectly has provided $50 million in direct cash transfers to more than 85,000 people in Malawi. Families have used this support to send children to school, access healthcare, start small businesses, and invest in livestock and tools that help create long-term security. Each story is different, but all prove a simple truth: when people are trusted to decide what they need most, the impact is extraordinary.

This new $100 million commitment will reach another 185,000 people, helping families transform their lives, while creating ripple effects that strengthen entire communities. It is, without a doubt, the best money we could ever imagine spending.

We’ve created a short documentary from journalist David Begnaud's visit to Malawi: https://lnkd.in/gpDpkW8h

We’re still very much on a learning journey, if you’d like to learn alongside us, visit our blog: https://lnkd.in/gn4TTJrg

With over 30% of Canva’s value dedicated to doing good, every subscription and every design fuels this mission. Thank you for being part of it ❤️

Open video: On the Ground in Malawi: Stories of Change with Canva & GiveDirectly on youtube.com

On the Ground in Malawi: Stories of Change with Canva & GiveDirectly

In mere weeks the white room will be calling, who is with me?

Tired of  an endless stream of talking heads videos with three tips on [insert topic}?

Then hit that follow button and ride with me this winter…

❄️

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