SO

Sam Odio

2x founder with 10 years of building user-centered ML/AI products.

San Francisco Bay Area

Invests in

Stages:

  • Min Investment:

    $0.00
  • Max Investment:

    $0.00
  • Target Investment:

    $0.00

Education

Work Experience

  • Husband, Father, and SPC Member

    2023

    Learning how to be a phenomenal husband and father. Reanimating interests and relationships. Seeking hard questions @ South Park Commons (joined April 2024).

2021 - 2023

  • Senior Director of Product Management

    2021 - 2023

    Built out a sunkworks team of top talent to rapid prototype GenAI productivity products within the Office of the CEO.

2016 - 2021

  • Vice President, Head of Product

    2016 - 2021

    I joined Fivestars with the mandate to discover and execute an organizational pivot (as our loyalty business was approaching a plateau). I was supported by an incredible team of designers, user researchers, product analysts, and PMs as Vice President & Head of Product. Our team identified and validated a new strategy, pivoting the company from loyalty to credit card payment hardware. Some highlights of our payments strategy (a loyalty-integrated credit card terminal): - Key hypotheses were validated using lean hypothesis testing before we "bet the farm" on a risky hardware play. - We brought the credit card hardware to market in < 18 months (an industry-leading timeline). - Product processed more than $500M+ GMV at small businesses, becoming the fastest-growing product line through COVD-19. - Resulted in a successful exit to SumUp for $320M. Simultaneously, we grew the legacy product to influence 50+ million consumers and $2bn in annual spend.

  • Co-founder & CEO

    2011 - 2015

    Freshplum used ML to help some of the world's largest retailers understand and personalize online promotions. The tech increased retailer revenue by 15% by predicting demand elasticity, using targeted discounts to turn site visitors into new customers. Funded by YCombinator, sold to TellApart (which was then purchased by Twitter). Post acquisition we facilitated the integration of a personalized retail promotions pilot program (using Freshplum's machine-learning technology) into the TellApart (and later Twitter) ad product offerings.

2010 - 2011

  • Product Manager (Photos, Video and Photo ML products)

    2010 - 2011

    PM responsible for all of Facebook Photos & Video. Grew product to average 100 million+ daily photo uploads and 10 billion+ daily photo views. Incrementally relaunched the entire product, which included releasing: - Auto-tagging via facial detection & recognition ML (included a build-out of Facebook’s machine learning image-processing stack; processing over 100M photos / day) - New photo viewer - New photo uploader - New album interface - Hi-res photos

  • Founder & CEO

    2007 - 2010

    Divvyshot fixed photo sharing with one of the industry's first iOS photo-sharing apps. Funded by YCombinator, sold in 2010 to Facebook.