Nice to meet you.

I'm Will Clark, a Product & Technology Leader, Designer, Engineer and Artist living in the Pacific Northwest

Throughout my career I have specialized in taking early stage ideas and companies and scaling them in to full fledge products and businesses. I love building  and leading teams while collaborating with creators and executives alike to align organizations around outcomes and achieve real success.

Recently, I led the creation of Stellar Tickets: an industry shifting product that helped live entertainment creators sell $7m+ in tickets since the beginning of the COVID19 pandemic and raised $5m+ in seed funding.

Download Resume
Past Companies
Personal Abilities

Technology leadership with a broad set of skills and experience

I have spent my career in companies with less than 200 headcount and excel at "wearing lots of hats" and contributing to whatever aspects of product development need attention.

Zero to One

It's easy to come up with an idea, but it takes a unique skillset to turn it into working software shipped to customers

Outcome Focused

By starting at the end, I help companies better achieve the outcomes that matter

Broad Experience

The best leadership is trailblazing and I can contribute to all aspects of software product development

Systems Thinking

I approach problems as broad and complicated systems and build strategy to address known and unknown challenges

Solving Hard Problems

I don't believe in "low-hanging fruit" and enjoy taking an approach that isn't a "first idea"

Team Leader

I specialize in building high performing teams and growing high impact team members

Experience

20+ years of Technology Company Experience

I have spent the bulk of my career working both remotely and in-person as a leader building new website, products, and companies mostly in the ecommerce and billing industries

CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, Stellar Live, Inc.

January 2022 ─ Present

Led the spin-off of Stellar from Goldstar Events, seamlessly transitioning the product platform, creating corporate infrastructure (finance infrastructure, vendor agreements, HR/Payroll operations, etc.), and leading the culture building of the new team and company. Managed all product related functions and employees including Engineering, Design, Product Management, Product Marketing and Infrastructure. 

  • Conceptualized and led the implementation of industry-leading product capabilities such as Hybrid Ticketing, hardware contribution encoder integration, top-level-domain website builder, fully secure video rental and web-scale real-time chat infrastructure replacement.
  • Led marketing for more than 6 months creating an Account-based marketing funnel, product marketing website and collateral and culminating with recruiting a new Head of Marketing from a unicorn company. Also led the sales cycles for the three largest customers acquired in 2022 (Oregon Shakespeare Festival, BroadwayOnDemand and Bandai Namco).
  • Personally engineered numerous video-centric industry first features including Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision ticketed live streaming, a unified workflow for both playout-based live and on demand video with live closed captioning, and live streaming with alternative video tracks supporting American Sign Language overlays.

Goldstar Events, Inc. / Stellar

November 2009 ─ December 2021

CHIEF PRODUCT OFFICER – STELLAR (5/2020 – PRESENT) 

As sole Product Manager, propelled nimble response to COVID by refocusing Product and Development teams on new Stellar platform for live-streaming live events while balancing priorities between product innovation, P&L management, team building, business operations, and leadership.

  • Provided hands-on contributions to back-end architecture while concurrently leading art direction for brand and product design.
  • Implemented video technology by monitoring trends in virtual events, evaluating technology solutions, and planning for current and future business needs to allow for initial launch and scalability. 
  • Sold the first ticket 29 days after writing the first line of code. Delivered first paid show to people on 4 continents 60 days after product conception, streamed live show to 8,000 concurrent viewers in 10/2020, and delighted 37,000 people viewing 8 concurrent shows in 12/2020.

HEAD OF PRODUCT (10/2016 – 5/2020) 

Oversaw ¼ of entire workforce, including 5 Product Managers, while leading design, engineering, and product management of mobile apps and other technologies.

  • Delivered visionary change leadership as company grew from start-up to 5 distinct, enhancing performance of product teams by implementing enterprise-wide OKR-based strategic planning and championing Dual Track Agile methodology.
  • Nurtured staff engagement and satisfaction by creating career advancement ladder and professional development plans with final say across 45-member Product and Engineering organization.
  • Influenced CEO to adopt new program based on The Culture Code, improving overall company culture and delivering unprecedented loyalty with an average employee tenure of 4.3 years in my department.
  • Advocated for creating Data Science and Machine Learning (ML) team ahead of competitors, which has unleashed 3 generations of ML-based recommendations systems, yielding 20% greater conversion rates and recognition by The Ticketing Business Forum in 2019 with “Insights & Analytics Award.”
  • Partnered with Consultant to create, present, and gain buy-in for new company vision and collaborated with Design Director and outside designer to successfully rebrand and relaunch business with modernized image.  
  • Upon being forced to lay off 1/3 of staff due to 99% COVID-related revenue losses, networked throughout industry and landed 6 former employees new jobs within 60 days.

DIRECTOR OF PRODUCT (3/2012 – 10/2016) 

Assumed additional management responsibilities while continuing to drive strategic product innovation and launch.

  • Identified, negotiated, remodeled, and launched 3 Portland offices, instituting transformative processes as Regional Head.
  • Guided deployment of first mobile website, which accounted for 60% of total revenue by 2018.
  • Hired staff to build first native mobile app, providing product management and art direction, resulting in 4.8-rated, wildly popular app with 32K reviews and increased LTCV for app users.
  • Pioneered industry-leading ticket fulfillment innovation garnering direct relationships with Ticketmaster, AXS, Cirque du Soleil, and Broadway Inbound, unlocking opportunity for $20M investment from strategic partner.

NEW PRODUCT / R&D CONSULTANT (12/2009 – 3/2012) 

Helped develop internal product organization, including team, policies, products, roadmaps, and strategies in collaboration with C-suite and multidisciplinary teams.

  • Recruited, hired, and trained top performers to conceptualize, build, and launch new product beta, with full accountability for budget compliance, project management, and art direction.
  • Dramatically enhanced adoption of premium recurring subscription product from <100 subscribers to $1M+/year profit by re-designing discovery and buying process.
  • Spearheaded addition of new “voucher” ticket that freed organization from legacy will-call system, facilitated real-time emailed .PDF tickets, and came to account for >60% of sales.
  • Developed novel “Sit with Friends” feature as primary designer, which was successfully patented (US20120265564A1).
  • Significantly influenced team and culture by hiring first front-end developers and championing CI/CD, which transformed deployment capacity from 1X every 2 weeks with hours of downtime to up to 10X/day with no service interruptions.

LEAD DESIGNER AND DEVELOPER, Chargify

August 2009 ─ December 2009

Helped design, develop, and launch recurring billing service and energize creation of next Grasshopper Labs project as second employee of company.

  • Led end-to-end product conceptualization and design through to initial launch at Techcrunch 50, helping business raise VC funding from Mark Cuban and others before achieving lucrative acquisition.

Early career success in product design & development roles at Entermotion, Inc., J-Squared Media, Inigral (Later Uversity, Acquired by TargetX) , and AboutUs.org. I created my first website in 1995.

"I'm happy to speak for Will. His knowledge and interests are broad and deep. He has a strong sense of craftsmanship and style and enthusiasm for applying this to the benefit of the user community. He stays current with the rapidly evolving architectures required of high volume web properties and has the chops to deliver solutions within that space."

~Ward Cunningham, Inventor of the Wiki

"Will isn't just a competent product designer, he's an articulate, passionate individual that effectively communicates his strong and bold visions. A one man show or a team member for a team moving forward with purpose and speed, I highly recommend him.

~Michael Staton, Investor, CEO COlearn

"I had the privilege of working alongside Will for eight years, and I can only hope that we get the opportunity to work together again in the future. Will is a unique combination of creative and business, which makes working with him on tough problems or new opportunities so exciting. He's truly a champion for the users of his product, a master of the agile process and a guy of many talents — given his background in design and development. He has truly helped transform Goldstar both visually and technically, yet still has a vision for so much more. Outside of the day to day work, BJ impressively built the Goldstar Portland team (of mostly developers and designers) from one to 31, and created an office vibe and company subculture that delights employees. Not surprising since he's an all around good guy."

~Kristen Oldham, Former VP Content and Marketing, Goldstar Events
Contact me

Let's Get in Touch

I love meeting new folks who have something interesting to discuss and ideas to exchange. If you've made it this far, please send me an email!