Sean Bauld, Interim Chief Executive Officer at VerdeCode, was our guest of Humanizing Software, where we explore the concept of software and its relationship to humans. With over 20 years of experience as a senior marketing executive with various leadership roles in top-ranking media companies, we’re thrilled to talk to Sean about business models, technology, and people.
Sean is a decision scientist, a new product expert, and a marketing leader. He is an expert at product-market fit, growth, and scaling for products. Prior to his diverse career, Sean received his MBA from the Texas McCombs School of Business and studied at the LBJ School of Public Affairs.
A Master at Strategizing and Driving Competitive Change
Sean has deep corporate experience launching products and business units while conducting brand reviews and audits to improve brand equity. As a Senior Executive in Marketing Strategy, Sean has spent many years strategizing to identify market drivers and expand companies in novel ways. As the Director of Market Intelligence at IBM, he conceptualized innovative initiatives for the brand while changing company culture. As a result of his outcome-driven method, he launched Aptiva and altered the segmentation and distribution of the ThinkPad product line. This resulted in the IBM share price increasing from $25 to $75 during his time. His impact on Wall Street didn’t stop there, Sean also developed a sales forecast modeling as a tool for the IBM CFO, who used this for quarterly presentations with key decision-makers in the financial industry.
After seven successful years at IBM, Sean went on to work as the EVP of Marketing at Thomson Reuters. At Reuters, he launched SaaS products growing premium subscription seats by 15% to over 100K and boosting division revenues to $3.2B. Yet again, Sean identified new revenue opportunities for the company after a thorough brand audit and analysis. During his tenure, IBM’s share price went from $1.5 to $25!
Revenue-minded collaborative leader
Working collaboratively as a leader comes naturally for Sean. He has skillfully consolidated different tools and products from various markets into one while identifying spaces of disconnect in a company and filling in those gaps with revenue generation. As the VP of Creative Professional Market at Avid Technology, Sean used storytelling to inspire customers while launching new products like digital and social media tools and apps. For example, he collaborated with numerous stakeholders and even students to design and launch a digital tool specifically for music composers.
If you aren’t impressed with Sean’s experience yet, he has more under his belt. After his time at Avid, Sean went on to work as the COO at Sempulse, a medical device company headquartered at Texas State University STAR Park. Specifically, he was invited to work at Sempulse to create Army and DoD contracts. With a unique team of scientists, SOCOM operators, regulatory, and manufacturing partners, Sean raised $2M+ in pre-seed financing and generated $3M in revenues!
Moving Operations Forward with Market Intelligence
Sean doesn’t stop there! He also serves as the Chief Experimental Officer at Spxk, a company he founded in 2012. Spxk is a leader and influencer in digital transformation, competitive intelligence, market research, customer support, SaaS products, growth marketing optimization, and strategy execution.
By pushing the way forward with innovation with his expertise in the market, Sean has launched multiple projects with successful exits. He is a unique individual who has years of experience using strategy and data to grow companies into new markets and leading digital transformations, by creating in-depth marketing strategies with proven growth in the national and global markets. We had a blast chatting with Sean and we hope you enjoy our conversation.
Listen to guest Sean Bauld and host Andrew Tull dive into innovation and human-driven technology on Humanizing Software podcast!