Erik Kjell
Companies
My co-founder and CEO (Amazon's first VP of BD) George Aposporos secured $1M of seed funding from Dan Nordstrom in 2012 and we built Playmark, first online royalty payment platform. Playmark revolutionized the NFL Player Associations' sub-licensing of digital assets from brands like EA and Topps, and streamlining royalty payments—directly remitting 8% of sales revenue to athletes.
Beyond enhancing revenue streams, Playmark dramatically reduced licensing approval timelines from 6 months to just 6 weeks and enabled 1 licensing manager to perform the work of 10, a 900% increase in efficiency.
My co-founders and I worked with 100+ attorneys nationwide to make the estate planning process DIY for middle-class Americans. The Tomorrow app grew 216% year-over-year to help 1 million people prepare for risk with ready-to-sign medical directives, wills, trusts, and term-life insurance (to fund the trust). Far beyond fill-in-the-blank online forms, every decision made was family-centric. All the legal documents were programmatically tailored to each family situation, however complex, and the legal statues of all 50 states.
On our path to Series B, Tomorrow was acquired by all-digital insurance company Ethos in 2022 and is now fully-integrated into their core business, helping Ethos increase its customer lifetime value (CLV).
Solutions
To raise retention rates for the world's most popular subscription service, I led an independent engineering team that helped economists at Amazon curate global data to make more informed financial projections for the executive team (details are protected by an NDA). The project was renewed 4x.
To improve conversion on Dior.com, I just did a comprehensive UX evaluation on the pre-checkout user interface to deliver a strategic A/B testing roadmap for Q4, 2023 and into 2024. Each hypothesis aims to improve KPIs to lower cart abandonment, increase average order value, or accelerate transaction time. Update: The first 2 solutions are already projected to surpass 10x ROI.
Investments
I invested in Coinbase's seed round because I believe decentralized cryptocurrency should be as native to the internet as its foundational protocols. Even though the Coinbase marketplace is centralized, its marketplace increases the probability that a cryptocoin winner emerges and makes internet money mainstream.
I invested in Instacart's seed round because I felt the timing was right for online grocery shopping to finally work. Warehouses, vans, and scooters weren't enough. It required the widespread adoption of smartphones. People with extra time are happy to do the grocery shopping for people who don't have the time. Upward economic mobility via grocery delivery.
I invested in Substack because I thought anything so good at taking my money must be a good investment. Its sampling-to-subscription strategy truly is a thing of beauty. But not for the money. If authors are worth reading, they get paid-subscribers. If authors aren't getting paid-subscribers, they level-up their writing. This creates a natural feedback loop that encourages better outcomes on both sides.
Availability
If you have a working product that needs to perform better, I can help you do product design a bit differently. I'll show your team how subjective UI+UX decisions map to objective business value. In just a few months time, your most important metrics will be on the rise.
If you need a Chief Product Officer (and I'm in-between companies), tell me how your company shapes the future. If you inspire me to join, I will shape your product org, create systems that scale, and recruit a world-class design and dev team to "operationalize" product-led growth.
If you're the founder of a venture-scale company with an ambitious product vision, grab a time slot on my calendar and let's do a video call. Send your deck ahead or wait to present it—either way works. After we meet, I'll give you a go/no-go decision in 2 days.