Conversion Rate Optimization - SF Techworks

Chris Neumann - Founder and Principal

Background

Chris started his career in entrepreneurship in high school selling candy to fellow students in study hall. His entrepreneurship continued in college when he co-founded a desktop publishing company which is still operating. After receiving a Mechanical Engineering degree from Bucknell, Chris followed his passion for bike racing to become director of marketing for Spinergy, a venture-funded manufacturer of carbon fiber bicycle wheels. He eventually realized his passion for technology would be a better career path and moved to San Francisco in 2000. He started First Person Software, later acquired by Migo Software, which created and patented software which resides on USB drives and allows personalization of any other computer. The software has the distinction of Walt Mossberg saying he "really likes it" in his review. Chris also founded Dovetail TV, an Internet-based distributor of high quality independent films and Face It (now Appsorama), a Facebook application company and has done product management for Sling Media, ScanCafe and other startups. Chris has his pilot’s license and over 300 hours of flight time, and enjoys road and mountain biking in Marin County, CA where he lives with his wife and daughter.

Career Highlights

• Founded, funded and ran OEM software company – sold for $5MM.
• Specialty in growing SaaS businesses. Achieved 500% growth in 18 months while maintaining profitability.
• Several success stories practicing lean startup techniques including low cost market validation for new products and split testing for optimization.
• 10+ years developing web- and desktop-based OEM and consumer software applications.
• Strong knowledge of social media and marketing – worked on several top 10 Facebook apps.
• Deep experience and success in recruiting and managing outsourced US and overseas-based software engineering teams.

Key Resources

Engineering

Eugene Pyvovarov is our developer. We have worked with him on WordPress, PHP, and Python/Django projects across multiple companies. Eugene is a co-founder of Ultimate Blog Security, and has a unique ability to understand both the engineering requirements as well as the end-user need.

Additionally, we have built engineering teams for several companies, primarily sourcing offshore talent. If you need additional engineering talent, or your existing team is unable handle additional projects, we can recruit additional engineering capacity for you. We have close ties to oDesk and are generally able to source talent from their marketplace.

Graphic Artist

Rob McLay is the graphic artist on the team. He has deep experience in making beautiful, usable designs for SaaS apps. You can see his work featured on the home page of SF Techworks clients such as TextMarks, JobScore and Schedulicity.

Copywriter

Matt Villano is our copywriter. Since copy can make a huge difference in your site's conversion rate, it's important to have top talent available for this. Matt has written for the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Entrepreneur Magazine, Parenting, and many, many others.