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Meet Sam - Clearhead Skip to content part of Accenture Interactive What We Do Who We Work With Who We Are Contact Us Jobs Blog Meet Sam share Hi. I’m Sam Decker. Co-founder and Chairman of Clearhead. By way of background, you can look at my LinkedIn. But below is the story of how I became Clearheaded… I live in Austin, TX with my wondrous wife (CEO of her audio post-production company for TV and Movies), my four kids (from six to 19 years old), my stepson and our new dog. Yep, I have a clan. I suppose I’ve unchangingly kept my hands full. Early, Creative, Dot Com Startup Days I was entrepreneurial since I was a kid. I stock-still lawnmowers, sold test notes to friends, put on neighborhood festivals, and wrote computer programs for my dad’s business. Eventually, I discovered the ultimate tool I needed to launch these little businesses…the Mac SE! And that’s when I started playing with diamond and data. I unfurled to use the Mac to start businesses in college…carpet cleaning, placemat ads, typing papers, diamond consulting, and a signage business. The love for Mac led me to pursue and land my first job out of higher at Apple Computer. My first office in 1993 as VP Marketing and Sales for User Group Connection (a spinoff from Apple Computer). As destiny would have it, months without joining Apple, a few of us spun our our word-of-mouth marketing semester into a startup (User Group Connection). It was there, in 1994, I built my first website (see the 1996 version here). Pushing the fast forward button, I spent the next six years in three dot-com startups leading marketing and product development. As you can imagine, we were overloaded on ideas (at Clearhead we undeniability those ‘solution hypotheses’). At the time, I wasn’t practicing data-driven visualization making or prioritization. Yet… The Dell Deluge → Data +TranspirationIn 1998, I took a recruiting undeniability from Dell. At the time, the Dell culture was entrepreneurial (enough). I moved to Austin in 1999 to run ecommerce operations (and product management) of Dell.com consumer. There was still an overload of ideas, but I was moreover drowned with data — web analytics, financial data and consumer data.  Excel became my weightier friend, followed by Powerpoint. Over the next four years we built the Dell digital team from four to 40 people, launched 250 projects, redesigned three times, quadrupled conversion, grew online sales to $3.5B (from 20% to 55% of revenue), and created weightier practices in product management and analytics. I drank from several firehoses those years, and I learned (and preached) how data can be used to modernize prioritization and decision-making. There were other things I learned running digital in a large corporation. Maybe you can relate?… Imagine this line chart… When revenue drops, executive creative input goes up (such as suggestions to add pop-ups, dot bursts and red buttons to the site). In most meetings, ideas start flowing by the 6-minute mark. The realization that we didn’t know the problem we were solving hits well-nigh two minutes without the meeting. At the end of a meeting the “Action-Item-Repeaters” (or A.I.R.) seem to get the upper hand in deciding what we unquestionably do. It seemed the positioning to be the final A.I.R is what makes meetings go long. The minutiae team may increase telescopic with a left-brain cost-benefit tideway explaining how the project delivers EPS and stock growth. The minutiae team can moreover increase telescopic with the right-brain tactic of having a requirements meeting over a margarita happy hour. It is the rare employee who can persuade the highest paid opinion in the room without data. I discovered Excel spreadsheets don’t paste well into Powerpoint.Moreoverclip art has an opposite effect on persuasion. As you grow into ‘executivehood’, your Outlook timetable blossoms to triple-booked. You spend 30% of your emotional topics on the career implications of those meetings. A one-on-one powerpoint on your big transpiration initiative to an executive has the same effect on him/her as a healthy dose of Ambien. The actionability and memorability from your research, usability studies or excel-based data wringer has a half life of one to two days. I navigated my way through a multi-billion-dollar organization as an intrepreneur. Being early in our digital transitioned into me leading other big changes, such as our consumer centricity program, retail strategy, profitability segmentation, and hispanic marketing pilots. And I ran marketing for a $1.5B (B2B + B2C) semester (a “startup” in Dell terms). Looking when at these experiences, I cultivated the tideway of being “middle-brained”. Combining the analytical/logical position with the design/artistic side yields the weightier results.  In fact, today on the when of my computer, you will see a yin yang sticker symbolizing this philosophy.Whento Startups: CreatingTranspirationThrough TechnologyWithouta seven-year career at Dell, I returned to startups on the technology side of online retail. In January 2006 I launched Bazaarvoice as founding CMO, running marketing and product development. It felt like we moved even faster than Dell, which I didn’t think was possible. In my five years we launched consumer reviews into 500 online retailers such as Walmart,WeightierBuy, Home Depot, Tesco and others. My primary job was helping executives understand the problem of low consumer trust, and persuading them to implement a validated solution of the customers’ voice on their site. It was there, working wideness many corporations, that I discovered the challenges of innovation was not unique to Dell. Working wideness many industries, the cultural factors that slide or restrict launching the weightier (data-driven) ideas were similar. “…the challenges of launching innovation was not unique to Dell. Working wideness many industries, the cultural factors that accelerate or restrict launching the weightier (data-driven) ideas were similar.” In 2010 I was founder and CEO of flipside SaaS technology visitor called Mass Relevance. Here again, I was evangelizing the problem of low sustentation and engagement in marketing, and how the social voice in all marketing channels was a validated solution. The Clearheaded Moment My path to Clearhead was meeting Matty Wishnow in 2011 while running Mass Relevance. He wanted to move to Austin from NYC. He was moreover an ecommerce entrepreneur, but most importantly, he was a unconfined guy. I may have invested in any merchantry with him, but our conversation centered on how far analytics and testing tools had come, yet how organizations have not wilt data driven.  I was on the workbench of a testing/analytics SaaS visitor at the time. We both identified the REAL problem of driving data-driven progress was not the technology, but rather the capability, capacity, process, and culture. The tools were just that: tools. Like a hammer lying on the ground. What online retailers needed most was a hand. “We both identified the REAL problem of driving data-driven innovations was not the technology, but rather the capability, capacity, process and culture.” Joined by co-founder, Ryan Garner (of Warner Music and JetBlue.com), we were three former ecommerce executives who started the kind of organ we would have hired in your seat. The purpose of Clearhead was to help forward-leaning online brands momentum data-driven growth and lasting change. We tideway our work with “middle brains”, valuing the data as much as the data story. Our team has wilt expert at the tools and technology, but increasingly importantly, we deploy the Clearhead methodology to execute optimization programs and build systems for sustainable ROI (10x to 50x ROI in fact. Client referrals available.).Withoutmerging Mass Relevance with Spredfast in 2014, I put my mouth where my money was, moving from investment to sweat, joining Matty and Ryan as zippy Executive Chairman and CMO. I play a unique multi-function role helping scale Clearhead as the leader in digital optimization and helping our entrepreneurial digital clients do largest every day. I hope to see you soon! increasingly stories Read Matty’s Story Read Ryan’s Story Read Sam’s Story Austin 3601 S. Congress Ave. Bldg. C302 Austin, TX 78704 United States View on Map Cincinnati 1311 Vine St Cincinnati, OH 45202 United States View on Map London 14 Grays Inn Road London WC1X 8HN United Kingdom View on Map Let’s talk. Services Partners Team Contact Us Jobs Blog Facebook Twitter LinkedIn © 2018 Clearhead. All rights reserved.