SWIFT - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder
- General Partner
Brett Wilson is co-founder and general partner at Swift. He has been a successful entrepreneur and investor for two decades.
In 2007, after winning the UC Berkeley Business Business Plan Competition, Brett co-founded TubeMogul on the Berkeley campus. Under his leadership as CEO, Brett led TubeMogul through one of the top performing IPO's (NASDAQ: TUBE) of 2014 and a successful acquisition by Adobe in 2016 for $540 million at one of the highest premiums ever paid for a public company.
Brett's emphasis on a values-driven culture drove TubeMogul's growth and led the company to win numerous awards, including Glassdoor's "Best Place to Work" and Fortune Magazine's "Top 100 Places to Work for Millennials." Extreme self-awareness, swift action, celebrations galore and having a high "Do/Say ratio" are hallmarks of Brett's teams. Boosted by these values, TubeMogul brought automation and transparency to the advertising industry during a tumultuous era.
His candor and empathy make him a sought-after consigliere for fellow entrepreneurs. In this capacity, Brett has been invited to join the boards of many companies including Tubi (sold to Fox Corporation), Arize AI and WeTravel. Brett's superpower is helping entrepreneurs focus on the few things that really matter.
He began his career at Accenture, where he led ERP software implementations for Fortune 100 clients. He was also co-founder and CEO of YouCanSave.com, an early ecommerce company.
Brett received his MBA at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business and now serves on the school's Board of Advisors. A frequent speaker and commentator, Brett's thoughts on entrepreneurship and leadership have been featured in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.
Brett is happily married and has three loving kids. His passions include game night with the family, officiating weddings, champagne sabering and anything on the water or two wheels.
John is co-founder and general partner at Swift Ventures. He has been a successful entrepreneur, inventor and product leader for two decades.
While completing his MBA in 2007, John built an early version of TubeMogul that helped win the UC Berkeley Business Plan Competition. Throughout the next decade -- from John's co-founding of TubeMogul to the company's rapid growth, IPO and acquisition by Adobe -- John's unique blend of leadership and high standards for creativity and execution enabled a blistering pace of innovation.
Under John's leadership as CTO and President of Products, TubeMogul's automation and AI-driven platform helped marketers root out non-transparent business practices, fraud and waste in the $500 billion global advertising industry. Behind many of those industry-firsts was a highly cohesive team of hundreds of developers, designers and product leaders that John led and mentored. In all, TubeMogul won over a dozen technology-related industry awards including from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), AdWeek, Digiday and TheDrum.
John is relied on by top venture capital firms and technology companies for advice on product development, roadmapping as well as technical due diligence and hiring. He especially enjoys helping startups scale product development from garage to enterprise and creating initiatives to deepen company culture (his own hackathons remain lore among many former employees).
A constant tinkerer who built everything from the furniture in his home to a (now) app-enabled '80s-era Coke Machine, John is just as capable behind a table saw as he is a keyboard. He holds five patents relating to analytics and automation in digital media and advertising.
John lives in Lafayette in a home he and his wife designed together. They enjoy hitting the open road with their three children. An avid woodworker and cyclist, John is happiest when he's creating, learning and exploring.
Michelle is a Principal at Swift Ventures. She leverages her startup experience, operational expertise and international roots to support entrepreneurs and evaluate investment opportunities.
Michelle comes from a family of entrepreneurs in agriculture, import/export, retail and speak-easy restaurants. She grew up in South America, where her parents, without speaking a word of Spanish, brought over merchandise from Taiwan to sell in the streets of Bolivia. Michelle learned the importance of tenacity, humility and empathy watching her parents and her grandfather, who started one of the largest seed companies in Asia and went on to build a non-profit hospital in Myanmar to help local farmers.
Motivated to blaze her own entrepreneurial trail, Michelle spent a decade in the startup world with leadership roles in Customer Success, Training & Development and Product Management at TubeMogul and Adobe. In these roles she helped significantly expand the international customer base, launch an industry-leading digital advertising certification program with 17 courses and 1000+ professionals certified and drive product innovation across audience segmentation, data processing, identity management and data privacy.
Her background makes her uniquely positioned to help startups drive product innovation, manage large projects, achieve operational excellence and expand to new markets.
Michelle holds a B.S degree in Business Administration from the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business . She lives in the Bay Area with her husband and loves to travel, go on new adventures, explore national parks, do P90x sessions with friends, try new restaurants and watch international films.