Lisa Besserman

Managing Director, Head of Innovation & Product Strategy, Operations

2023

Managing Director

2021 - 2022

Expa is an early stage VC fund and startup studio. Founded in 2013 by Uber co-founder Garrett Camp, Expa is a team of experienced investors and entrepreneurs dedicated to identifying the next big idea and partnering with startups to build great companies. Our community of builders includes the founders and leaders of Uber, Virgin Galactic, Twitter, Current, and more. • Oversee and manage day-to-day operations of $350M venture fund and startup studio. • Develop deep relationships with portfolio companies, intermediaries, and other venture funds to generate and assess a broad investment pipeline. • Work closely with portfolio company founders in a "high touch" mode to determine best ways to support them with strategic advice, key introductions, next stage fundraising, etc. • Implement infrastructure that assists with the identification, assessment, and monitoring of portfolio investments. • Manage a team of high performing cross-functional leaders: finance, legal, communications, HR, recruiting, platform, strategy, product, operations, and LP relations. • Conduct continuous reviews of investment processes, portfolio/fund management practices, and decision modeling to enable consistent improvement, scale of fund, and team performance. • Build reporting and communications infrastructure for investor / LP relations. • Translate high level strategic goals into executable tasks for strategy and operations teams.

Head of Program, Corporate Incubator / Venture Studio

2019 - 2021

Indeed Incubator works to envision, prototype and validate new product innovation while following a venture capital metered funding model. Our team is an internal product accelerator, charged with pioneering new ideas and assessing their viability through fast launches and empirical learning. With 15 cross-functional startup teams situated around the world, we are able to explore interesting concepts and new businesses, while fostering a culture of innovation and intrapreneurship. • Responsible for driving successful delivery of the Indeed Incubator- from program definition through go to market execution and new product innovation strategy. • Serve on global PMO leadership committee to establish company-wide processes, methodologies, and infrastructure to enable scalability across multiple organizations. • Responsible for bringing together and facilitating cross-functional teams, ensuring end-to-end execution of business objectives and innovation initiatives. • Partner with Product, Engineering, UX, Legal, Sales and Marketing leaders to operate the Incubator business area and manage the portfolio of products, such as Hiring Events, a $100M product built within Incubator. • Lead a team of program managers who work with new product teams funded to investigate new market opportunities, user and market research, app development, experimentation through AB testing, refining business models, and data analysis. • Develop and manage operations including budget, staffing, global mobility and technology solutions. • Launched learning initiative program to disseminate learnings from Incubator across Indeed corporation. • Track record of owning programs from early concept design through tracking of key results, defining objectives, and scaling impact over time.

Google Accelerator Mentor

2017 - 2021

Launchpad Accelerator is a program to empower founders by supporting their startups through mentorship and education. The Accelerator leverages the Google network and resources to help participating tech startups reach their scalable potential. As a Mentor, I am part of an International team responsible for assisting startup tech companies currently operating in Latin America and the U.S.

Founder, CEO

2013 - 2019

Startup Buenos Aires is an early stage startup accelerator located in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Their objective is to inspire, connect, and support startups in Latin America and around the globe. Startup BA was founded with the mission to become the home-base, resource center and advisor for startup growth and innovation through its various educational and community development programs. SUBA connects members locally and globally, while cultivating a strong and sustainable startup ecosystem in Latin America. • Manage Startup Accelerator. Lead sourcing, curriculum, program development, and general management of fund. • Built the largest startup community in Argentina with 8,000+ global members from the ground up. • Evaluate company and employee performance by defining, tracking, and interpreting related metrics and KPIs. • Establish and implement a vision for investing, programming, operations, and community development. • Spearhead evaluation, strategy, and development for startup investments. • Create strategic partnerships with Argentina National Government, Facebook, Google, Uber, and Microsoft, etc.

Director of Product Operations

2010 - 2013

Direct and manage the operations and client accounts for AirKast mobile app development. Clients include media and Fortune 500 companies– Disney, ESPN, Bloomberg, DirectTV, Univision. Led day-to-day operations, set revenue targets, while scaling the company and creating strategic partnerships with industry leaders. • Act as primary point-of-contact for the client’s mobile app campaigns (iOS, RIM, Android) • Manage engineering and product teams • Play an active role in the optimization of client campaigns to maximize mobile app performance • Spearhead social media marketing initiatives • Educate clients on new advertising units, graphics, and app implementation

Economist

2009 - 2010

• Collect and analyze financial data from various companies and industries within the area of New York City. • Utilize financial data to verify Consumer Price Index, Rate of Inflation, and Economic Policies for the U.S Government. • Assume responsibilities of visiting various companies, as well as acquiring financial information through communicating with multitudes of people. • Proactively participate in government-led program initiatives and provide expert assistance in the productivity of the U.S Department of Labor. • Developed high-level relationships by collaborating with colleagues and supervisors. • Exceeded average satisfactory employee rating by obtaining 98.2% collection success rate.