The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

The University of Texas at Austin

Co-founder at Merge

San Antonio, Texas, United States

<a href="http://www.mergeedu.com">www.mergeedu.com</a>

Merge provides augmented and virtual reality tools for education both at school and at home. Our flagship product is the Merge EDU Platform, which was awarded Best in Show at the prestigious 2019 ISTE Conference. This Platform leverages our world-famous Merge Cube, which has been sold to over 1.3 million educators and home users, and won Most Innovative Product at CES 2017 and Best Classroom Technology at the TCEA 2019 Conference.

Merge

Co-founder

Member of the selection committee of the South Texas RCIC, which reviews regional applicants for the Texas Emerging Technology Fund.

South Texas RCIC

Member, Selection Committee

The incubator is a part of the University of Texas at San Antonio's Texas Sustainable Energy Research Institute.

-   Launched this new incubator, as its first Executive Director.  Launched all strategy, operations and programs from scratch.

-   From this standing start, built up a portfolio of 10 member companies and secured multi-year funding for the incubator.

-   In this short history, member companies secured more than $10 mil in funding and one was acquired by a strategic investor.

-   Built a wide array of relationships in the political, business, academic/research (at multiple universities and laboratories), investor, entrepreneur and advocate/nonprofit communities.  Created new networks for facilitating partnerships amongst these groups, educate them on emerging trends and opportunities for commercialization of energy technologies.

-   Developed large portfolio of relationships with venture capital firms, strategic investors, and angel investment groups.

-   Identified, assessed and evaluated a number of candidate technologies and companies for membership in the Incubator, as well as suitability for inclusion into the aforementioned strategic plans for San Antonio.  Was requested to serve as the lead evaluator for the city’s investment fund, for any clean technology candidates.  Serve similar roles for Hemisfair Park redevelopment program, a local angel investor group, and UTSA (e.g., faculty/student-developed technologies).

-   As a part of all of the above roles, gave multiple presentations to a wide array of audiences, in events that were both planned and hosted by my Incubator, or as a guest speaker in others’ events.

San Antonio Clean Energy Incubator

Executive Director

- Helped launched multiple companies, one already profitable, others high growth and on path to profitability.

-   Developed business concepts, strategic plans and operational plans for multiple technology companies.

-   Served in acting senior roles including CEO, and head of Business Development.

Self employed

Independent Consultant

Co-founded Virtual Alert (which then became Global Secure Systems after we sold it to Global Secure Corp).  Led the sales efforts from startup until it became the dominant market leader in its industry -- preparedness and response software systems for public health authorities.

-   Led the sales, marketing and account management team that built the most successful software company for public health emergency preparedness & response, as measured by number of clients, population covered and number of projects.  

-   Accomplished everything with limited resources – leveraged only $200k angel funding to create a company that was profitable from 3rd month and subsequently sold for $20mil.

-   Grew client base from no clients to a 45% market share, which was 3x that of the closest competitor, despite a price that was up to 10x greater than competing alternatives.

-   As one of the top three senior managers, had direct input for entire company P&L, strategy, product management, marketing strategy and  programs, financial management and budget.

-   Co-managed the primary products through fifteen major development cycles and the addition of new products and services, which now contribute almost 50% of revenues.

-   Led contract negotiations on all sales/renewals and partner relationships.

-   Had direct roles in sale of the company to strategic acquiror.

Global Secure Systems

Vice President - Sales and Business Development

- Developed business plans and implementation strategies for multi-million dollar software projects, in partnership with large-scale clients in the Financial Services industries.

-   Helped to create two large strategic alliances with Accenture and IBM, involving software sales, services revenue, and platform assets. 

-   Built $90 million pipeline.  Served as Trilogy’s chief evangelist in the partner organizations, networking at multiple levels.

-   Led team that developed dedicated co-marketing strategy, dedicated marketing collateral and sales tools, and support for specific sales pursuits.

Trilogy

Director -- Alliances and Business Development

- Provided advisory services for business plans & strategy, capital raising, marketing, alliances, technology infrastructure, etc.  Helped several clients secure $12 million of early stage funding.

- Was primary decision-maker for Xcelerate’s equity investments in these startups.

Xcelerate

Head, Startup Services Group

- Promoted from Associate to Senior Associate to Partner, at one of the world's largest strategic management consulting firms.

-   Let many initiatives that involved identifying, developing, communicating and implementing large-scale strategic initiatives at very large companies, most of them in the financial services industries.

-   Experienced in many sectors of financial services including P&C insurance, life insurance, asset management and financial planning, retail banking, credit cards, wholesale banking, insurance brokerage, asset based lending, and foreign exchange. 

-   Strategy and business development -- strategic marketing plans, product management strategy, new market/ product/ division.

-   Financial analysis – corporate finance, competitor analysis, forecasting and tracking, activity based costing, budgeting.

-   Sales and marketing tools – quantitative research, focus group research, secondary research, multi-channel management, sales force effectiveness and compensation.

-   Information technology – strategy (including financial analysis and prioritization of candidate projects), product analysis, new product development, future visioning, partnering strategies, and vendor analysis.

-   Operations, organization structure and transformation – organization structure analysis/benchmarking, process analysis, project management, culture change, and compensation structures.

-   Other quantitative analysis – extensive spreadsheet modeling, database creation and analysis, multivariate regression, some familiarity with data visualization packages.

-   M&A transactions – both on buy and sell sides, involving both financial and strategic buyers.  Pre-transaction prospect selection, valuation and due diligence.  Post-transaction integration programs.

Mercer Management Consulting (now known as Oliver Wyman)

Principal

- Promoted from Analyst to Associate to Senior Associate.

-   Structured and managed over 50 capital markets financings, totaling over $1 billion, for a wide variety of issuers.

-   Actively sold securities to several of the largest mutual funds and institutional investors.

-   Was chosen from among 10 analysts for the New Product Team, which created several first-in-industry financing techniques.

Andrew Trickett