Xcelerator

The Opportunity

I joined Emerald specifically to help build new businesses.

After years of operating established event brands, Xcelerator added a new level of discipline to the way I evaluate opportunities. I had always trusted my instincts and moved quickly. Xcelerator taught me how to pressure-test those instincts with research, customer insight, financial modeling, and a more disciplined investment process. Our job was to study markets, identify emerging opportunities, and determine where Emerald's capabilities, customers, and platforms could create something new.

The new team and their processes were a completely different way of working for me and required learning how to bring much more rigor to instincts I had developed throughout my career.

What We Built

We developed a structured methodology for taking opportunities from initial market research through business planning, financial modeling, executive approval, and ultimately commercialization.

That meant studying industries, talking directly with customers and market leaders, testing assumptions, developing concepts, building P&Ls, creating partnerships, and presenting investment cases to executive leadership.

My work spanned launches, relaunches, acquisitions, and extensions of existing businesses across sports, technology, design, fashion, and emerging markets. Projects included WNBA Live, NBA Con, reMind, Workplace Design, Futurist Conference, and the relaunch of COLLECTIVE SHOWS.

Some started as a blank sheet of paper. Others involved finding new potential in something that already existed.

The Legacy

Xcelerator changed the way I think about innovation.

Entrepreneurship had taught me to trust my instincts and move quickly. Xcelerator taught me how to pressure-test those instincts with research, customer insight, financial modeling, and a much more disciplined investment process.

Not every idea worked, and not every business was meant to exist forever. That was part of the job. The real discipline was learning how to determine where to invest, when to adapt, and when the evidence was telling you to stop.

I still bring that combination of entrepreneurial instinct and commercial discipline to the way I evaluate opportunities today.