Jeff Haynie is a serial entrepreneur with a career rooted in scaling tech products. With over three decades of experience in the tech industry, Jeff has been a co-founder, a CEO, a CTO, and so much more. He has a deep understanding of the startup world, and the Shopmonkey team will lean on his expertise to bring Shopmonkey’s platform to new heights.
“Given Jeff’s experience scaling complex products and systems, I’m certain he’s the right person to drive further growth and innovation at Shopmonkey,” said Ashot Iskandarian, CEO and Founder of Shopmonkey.
We caught up with Jeff to learn more about his background and his vision for the team at Shopmonkey.
You’ve started multiple businesses at this point, which one are you the most proud of and why?
Yes, I have been at the helm of numerous venture-backed software companies. If I had to choose, although it is difficult, I would have to go with Appcelerator. I started the company in 2006 and sold it ten years later to Axway. For some background, Appcelerator created a widely known open-source software called Titanium. Titanium powered over 500M mobile devices, 100K mobile apps and was used by over 1M developers worldwide.
What drew you to Shopmonkey? What differentiates this team that made you join?
The vision and opportunity to scale at Shopmonkey captured my attention from the very first conversation I had with Ashot. As my conversations with Ashot progressed, what really sealed the deal for me was the opportunity to lean on my past experiences and introduce machine learning into the platform. I am confident that machine learning will expedite Shopmonkey’s ability to solve complex problems that will significantly improve auto shop owners' growth and ability to scale their businesses — creating additional revenue streams for Shopmonkey.
Tell us a little bit about your vision for the future of the Shopmonkey platform? And what is your immediate focus?
Strategically, I have decided to focus my efforts on scaling existing capabilities and adding new security features to the platform. We need to fully support the thousands of small businesses that rely on Shopmonkey to run their day-to-day operations as we start to deepen our technological capabilities.
Looking forward though, in the not-so-distant future, I plan to deepen Shopmonkey's ability to leverage analytics and machine learning which will significantly improve the performance of our software development efforts — ultimately expanding the platform's overarching ability.
By adding in machine learning capabilities, how will this further Shopmonkey’s software?
Staying at a high level here, machine learning will enable our team to create an intelligent software platform that enables our customers to service their end customers faster. And on the back end, it will increase administrative efficiency which in turn results in higher profitability.
Before we wrap up, can you share a fun fact about yourself?
Well, I am unsure how fun this is, but this is something that I am immensely proud of. I spent almost four years in the U.S. Navy as an Aviation Electrician, and I had the honor of serving — with distinction — during combat in the first Gulf War.
Interested to work with Jeff and his team? Visit our career page for more information.
