AU

April Underwood

Managing Director and Co-founder, Adverb Ventures

United States

Skills

Team Building
Product Management
Strategic Partnerships
Partnerships
Software Acquisition
Strategy
Search
Business Development
Program Management
Business Strategy
Product Development

Work Experience

  • Managing Director and Co-Founder

    2023

  • Board Director

    2017

  • Board Director

    2022

  • Co-Founder

    2015

    We are an investment collective of experienced operators and the authors of The Gap Table. We’ve backed over 150 companies to date. Learn more: http://hashtagangels.com

Nearby

2020 - 2022

  • Founder and CEO

    2020 - 2022

    I founded Nearby in the beginning of the COVID pandemic to help local retailers make the transition to e-commerce and give shoppers the choice to shop local while shopping online. My team and I raised over $25M from GV, Obvious Ventures, and Redpoint. In fall of 2021, a portion of the team joined Twitter through acquisition and I wound down the business.

2015 - 2019

  • Chief Product Officer

    2018 - 2019

    Led product, platform, user research, and design organizations as business matured and company prepared to become a public company as Slack’s first CPO. My staff of talented leaders included VPs, Senior Directors, and Directors whose teams were responsible for all aspects of the product as well as functional organizations including Design and Research. Many of those leaders are still in their roles today (and have grown in their roles and titles since the IPO).

  • Vice President of Product

    2015 - 2018

    Joined company at 150 employees to build and oversee the Slack Platform. Stepped up to run all of product as Slack’s first VP of Product after launching the platform in December 2015.

2010 - 2015

  • Director of Product

    2010 - 2015

    I joined Twitter in 2010 as a Product Manager on Platform / API when the company was 175 employees. Over my 5 years there, I wore a number a number of hats. I was PM on the suite of platform capabilities which served publishers (e.g., Tweet Button, Follow Button, etc). I was a founding Director on the Business Development team where I ran a team of 5. I returned to Product roles and helped build the Ads Product suite from its earliest days, including building the Ads API and its ecosystem from 0->1. As a Director of Product, I grew into cross-functional leadership, managing Ads Product Marketing in addition to my Product Management team, on an interim basis in 2014. Finally, I ran the Data Products team which had joined us via the acquisition of Gnip. I built a wide variety of functional, managerial, and external comms skills while the company grew from 150->4000 people.

  • Product Manager, Travel

    2009 - 2010

    Joined company at 20 employees. Drove market assessment and product definition for a new consumer product aimed at helping travelers manage their weather-related risk. Launched in summer 2010 as raincheck.com and was later sunset in favor of agriculture product suite.

2007 - 2009

  • Senior Partner Technology Manager

    2007 - 2009

    Management of content acquisition and monetization programs for Google products including Product Search, Maps, News, Finance, Blogger, Book Search, Groups, and more. Contributed to strategy for Travel vertical which resulted in the acquisition of ITA Software.

2006 - 2006

  • MBA Intern

    2006 - 2006