At KOM Partners, we help companies unlock hidden growth potential in their people, products, and processes. We do this by leveraging 20+ years of operating experience at top companies across all stages of the growth curve. We are focused on being the very best Operating Partner for growth stage companies backed by Private Equity and Venture firms.

We provide pre-deal sourcing & diligence, and post-deal operational support including serving on boards of directors. We like to roll up our sleeves and work with these companies to solve complex problems where technology is a disruptor or lever.

The name KOM Partners was chosen for a reason. It’s “K – O – M”, and any fan of endurance sports knows that it’s short for “King of the Mountain“. We derived our name from the world of endurance sports because of our deep love of the process required to prepare for extreme endurance sports.

We bring this same level of experience, endurance, and excellence to any project on which we work. Through partnership with KOM Partners, companies can confidently navigate the difficult path to becoming the KOM in whatever endeavor they undertake.

Operating Partner

When facing operating challenges, having an operating partner who can jump into the fire, build trust with management teams, dive deep and diagnose problems, and help chart a path to success can mean the difference between success and failure with your investments. We support all deal phases from during sourcing, to diligence, to post-deal operations and board membership.

Our area of focus is anywhere that software is lever to change the landscape of a business. We can help you define the WHAT and the WHY of a customer-first plan with a clear execution path by leverage best practices from years of experience at companies such as Microsoft, Amazon, and Datalogix. Here are some scenarios where KOM Partners can be your trusted Operating Partner:

• You want the firepower of a seasoned product executive, but you’re not yet at the place where you can confidently afford and hire that person. Preserve your cash.
• You want to bring a fresh look at your market, your customers, your internal processes, or your team to reinvigorate your product development. Sometimes it requires a completely new way of thinking or approach, like the Amazon working backwards process.
• You want to bring technology into your business to disrupt your own model, or that of your industry. What do you need to build? What technology to use? What hires do you need and how do you hire them? How do you even get started when you don’t have a tech background.
• You want to dramatically alter the cost structure of your customer acquisition, but don’t know where to start.
• You want to use advanced BI techniques for profitability analysis or customer segmentation, but it all seems overwhelming.
• You want to modernize manual and error prone processes which are a drain on productivity, but haven’t yet considered automating via software.
• You have rising stars within your organization or teams looking to dramatically increase their velocity and outcomes, and want to provide them with the structure of coaching without corporate therapy.

With professional experience from working at a private equity fund, we know how to speak the language you need for your investment committee memos and diligence reviews. With past technology product leadership experience across industry leaders in multiple industries, we’ve run teams spanning orgs and countries. We have immediate credibility with any management team by asking the right questions and can get to the heart of any nuance. We help investment professionals represent as more credible with management teams, and we help investment teams make smart funding decisions.

We focus on extremely time boxed projects with clear victory conditions. We are 100% aligned with investors and want to hand the reins back to the leadership team, not pad our pockets with ongoing consultation work.

Recent Activity

Bestop: working with management on performance management of e-commerce business with issues related to user experience and yield optimization.

RxTE: working with management team to build critical technology stack. Acting as virtual CPO to define product, roles, initiate and ramp hiring, and deliver product.

[undisclosed]: working with a medical services company pre-acquisition to build Machine Learning based system to identify drug usage patterns across member clinics.

[undisclosed]: working with a municipal waste hauler to dramatically improve lead gen call sheet quality and timeliness, and more quickly identify and score potential customers based on publicly available data.

Advising Kinderhook Industries on diligence for a control position investment in a healthcare services company.

GlobalHealth: worked with management on alternative data-driven digital marketing channel plan to reduce cost of customer acquisition.

Stratus Video: performed diligence and analysis related to software platform.

ZVRS: worked with operations team to design and implement software to reduce costs and errors related to on-going utilization reporting and tracking.

SendGrid: worked with product team to evaluate opportunities for a new product development initiative.

Advised Goldman Sachs & Advent International on a public market take private transaction. [did not close, competing bid won]

Advised Kinderhook Industries on diligence for a control position investment in a healthcare services company. [closed Jun 2017]

VP Product Management: [coaching] objective goal: be hired as Chief Product Officer in next role.

SVP Product Management: [coaching] objective goal: improve ability to guide and manager technical resources to grow into a multi-discipline leader.

 

Analytic Thinking Leads to Powerful Product Decisions

Summary: Deep dive into analytics process at Amazon on the Kindle team to determine sources of new product innovation which drove millions of dollars worth of customer acquisition.

We are always looking to connect with amazing leaders, entrepreneurs, business operators, professional investors, and technologists. If you want to discuss how we can help you, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

KOM Partners, LLC
bwatson@KOMPartners.com
Boulder, CO
425.985.5568

Brandon Watson, Managing Director

Brandon Watson has been on both sides of the table as an operator and an investor. He’s also started and sold his own software company (IMSafer), been on multiple management teams that raised money and had exits (AskMe, RLX, Datalogix), and run product for a multi-billion dollar revenue business (Kindle at Amazon). Having started his career at Microsoft in the early 90s, he has served in roles increasing complexity and scope. His last professional role was Vice President of Product Management for Oracle.

Brandon has also served as an investment professional, working for George Soros at Soros Private Equity Partners, sourcing and funding transactions, and representing the fund on multiple boards. During his time there, Brandon worked on transactions in aggregate value of over $300 million.

Brandon completed his undergraduate work at the University of Pennsylvania in the Jerome Fisher Program in Management &Technology. Brandon’s course of study included a degree in Systems Science Engineering, and dual degrees in the Wharton School in Finance, and Operations and Information Management. Brandon also holds an MBA from the Wharton School of Business, with a focus on New Venture Creation & Management.

Brandon is also a dedicated endurance sports athlete. You will get the same dedication, focus, and tireless work ethic he dedicates to his training to on any project on which you work with him. His dedication to endurance excellence has resulted racing two Ironmans, 12 half Ironmans, and multiple international mountain bike stage races. In 2018, Brandon will be taking on Ironman Boulder.

Professional Recommendations

	Christian Michalik Managing Director, Kinderhook Industries I have known and worked with Brandon for over 15 years. For me and Kinderhook it is simple: Brandon is honest, direct, diligent, efficient and relentless is getting to the right answers. If he can't get to the right answer he says "I don't know"...which is rare. Brandon is extremely intelligent and thoughtful, but probably what makes him most unique is his ability to discuss a business solution with business people and then to communicate that to engineers, and at the same time communicate the options and limitations around software and what can be done to business people so they understand it.
	Elie Seidman CEO, Tinder Work performed while CEO, OK Cupid KOM Partners provided us a thoughtful, precise and succinct point of view on how to define excellence in the product management function. We take the idea of individual and organizational performance very seriously; while ideas matter, they don’t matter at all if they’re not executed creatively, quickly and meticulously. The time we spent with KOM Partners has helped us be sharper in articulation of that standard.
	Jerome Chiaro Founder, VP of Clinical Site Operations, StudyKik What I like about Brandon is that he makes in impact instantaneously on a real day-to-day business level. The first 5 minutes after meeting him at a private equity acquisition meeting, I knew I wanted him on our team. Soon after he joined our company as an invaluable Board Member and Strategic Advisor. His technological know-how is beyond impressive; he has dissected and quickly added value many different facets of our business including but not limited to: Facebook Bots, Adtech, Engineering Best Practices, and Hiring and Interviewing Top Tier Tech Candidates. HIGHLY recommend Brandon to any project that requires relentless Customer Obsession, high IQ Problem Solving, and scrappy Work Ethic!
	James Renna Chief Integration/Restructuring Officer, ZVRS When we first engaged with KOM Partners, we were in the midst of a difficult merger/integration. That complicated things, but we did have a pressing problem which we didn’t know how to solve. We had a very manual and error prone process for utilization maximization reporting for our Visual Interpreters. The process was extremely expensive from a cost of resource point of view. Brandon was able to very quickly dive deep with our team, build trust with them by understanding and outlining the problem, and then proposed a workable solution. It was clear he had no problems rolling up his sleeves and working directly with the impacted team to ensure that the software solution did exactly what they needed. The solution was delivered on time as expected. The outcome was pretty simple, but outstanding for the business: almost 100% reduction in time to execute reporting (days to seconds), and 100% reduction in error rate.
	Maureen Huber COO, CFO, Stratus Video What we valued was the ability of KOM Partners to get up to speed on our product, customer needs, and technology base, and then help us scope out the true cost of developing additional features for our platform. Without software platform advisory from KOM Partners, we would have potentially gone down a different path which could have cost us millions more.
	Steve Sloan Chief Product Officer, SendGrid Here's what I love about working with Brandon. You get to the answer - fast. There's no sugar coating and he goes directly to the core issue, which means we can engage very directly and efficiently. Together, these mean I can trust Brandon to help us when we have particularly hard problems that need immediate solutions. Where he really excels is his ability to identify the issues at hand, with very little information, and then create a framework for how to think about that problem, address it, and define the conditions for success. Brandon has served as an executive coach for our team members and has helped SendGrid define new product initiatives based on ambiguous opportunities in front of the company. Brandon has been successful in very large product organizations and has been an entrepreneur which means he has the ability think about problems on multiple levels and communicate with everyone from Board members to individual contributors. We have used KOM Partners on multiple engagements, and will keep them front of mind for future engagements.
	Kevin Klausmeyer Board Member at Hortonworks, Callidus Brandon is a very effective executive who quickly developed a deep understanding of our products/solutions, and then intensely learned how they were perceived in the marketplace. He, therefore, had a huge impact at RLX not only in crafting and then communicating the go-to-market strategy, but also in driving the direction of the (quite technical) solution itself. Brandon also is highly analytical and data-driven. He works well with all departments, and pushes himself very hard, thus motivating those around him. I really enjoyed working with him!
	Tommy McClung Chief Technology Officer, TrueCar, Inc Brandon has been a trusted adviser and mentor for me during multiple phases of my career. As a co-founder of IMSafer, he was a mentor and instrumental in helping me learn how to raise money, hire smartly, and build software products that delighted our customers. As an adviser to me when I was CEO of Carwoo! (acquired by TrueCar, Inc), he helped me see around the corners with management issues, fundraising and product and strategy decisions. Finally, I’ve asked him to help advise my management teams multiple times over the years so we can make smart decisions about how we invest in our product strategy and people development. Brandon really shines in his ability to quickly get to the answer with ambiguous or incomplete information. You can count on him for high quality work, valuable frameworks and insights, a deep network, and high integrity.
	Charlie Kindel Director, Alexa Smarthome, Amazon Brandon was the right addition to the Windows Phone Developer Platform team at the right time. More than anything, his deep customer empathy for the developer audience allowed him to build trust and credibility with developers, and he was able to rally the Microsoft developer base, as well as new developers, to build apps for the new Windows Phone platform. Brandon is a passionate leader, with a rare mix of engineering, business, and product skills that made him a great addition to our leadership team. I identified Brandon for the role, recruited him, and never regretted it.
	Bob Roth Engineering Director, Amazon Brandon is an incredibly driven, focused, and passionate leader who has a strong bias to drive teams toward delivery of customer focused products. He skillfully balances breadth and depth for features and isn't afraid to dive in hands-on to make sure the right thing gets done for his customer. As a team leader he provides both guidance and shielding to his team, and generally does his best to make sure they grow and develop in their craft.