Ted Cahall

Ted Cahall

Digital Transformation
E-Commerce/Payments
Online Media
Internet

Bio

Ted Cahall is a U.S. business and technology executive.  He has served as a Named Executive Officer of three U.S. publicly-traded companies.  Ted has held executive level roles including President, COO, CTO, Corporate Vice President and Executive Vice President of several well known U.S. brands.  He has also been the CEO and co-founder of a FinTech start-up.

Ted has worked at world-class companies such as Microsoft, Bank of America, and AT&T Bell Laboratories as well as the innovative mid-sized internet and e-commerce companies: AOL, CNET Networks, Digital River, and United Online.  He has also worked at smaller VC backed firms such as OpenVision and Clear Communications.  At Microsoft, Ted was hired by and reported to Satya Nadella prior to Satya's ascent to CEO.

An animal advocate, Ted selects rescue animals as his pets. His favorite charities include animal rescue and protection services including Tabby's Place in NJ.  Ted relaxes by participating in competitive amateur automobile racing with the SCCA.

An executive, entrepreneur, and engineer, Ted still enjoys hands-on software development.  He combined his passion for automobile racing and cloud-based software by inventing the marrspoints points tracking system for the Washington DC Region of the SCCA.  He built and operates this system as a volunteer to give back to his community.

Experience

Chief Operating Officer - EOS Network Foundation, Inc - 2/22 to Present

Chief Operating Officer of the EOS Network Foundation.

Managing Partner - Kernel Digital Advisors, LLC - 3/21 to Present

Managing Partner of Digital Strategy Advisory firm.

Chief Operating Officer - Block.one - 7/19 to 3/21

Chief Operating Officer - 02/20 to 3/21
Responsible for operations, product and technology execution, helping to bring the company’s enterprise products and services to market.
Executive Vice President, EOSIO Business - 7/19 to 02/20
Executive Vice President of US and Hong Kong based EOSIO blockchain business.

CEO / CTO - TheSubtractor.com - 3/18 to 7/19

Co-founder of SaaS Consumer FinTech start-up. Led all aspects of business and product development. Adaptive web application leverages secure bank API data to provide consumers with critical insights into their subscription and recurring spending patterns. Drove AWS implementation of TheSubtractor.com from EC2, RDS, S3, SNS, SES, CloudFront infrastructure to architecture, design and engineering of mobile first, adaptive consumer FinTech web application and tools. Managed SMM, SEM, and SEO strategy and integration into platform and P&L.

COO / EVP Product, Technology & Pro Services - Digital River, Inc. (NASDAQ: DRIV) - 10/13 to 3/18

Number 2 executive and SEC Section-16c Named Executive Officer for one of the largest, profitable, global Cloud/SaaS-based, e-commerce companies in the world with operations in 230 locales. Led and managed Product Management, Engineering, Information Technology, Data Center, and Professional Services divisions for $3.5B annual Gross Sales Value (GSV) e-commerce and $37B annual GSV payments businesses.

Led the company's business transformation to a product-centric engineering and professional services organization from a customs solution / delivery organization raising net profit by over $32M annually. Instrumental leader in taking the company private with PE firm Siris Capital (sale completed February 2015). Hired new key executives in the Engineering, Product Management, Professional Services, Business Operations and IT divisions to aid in accelerating the business transformation. Drove offshore staffing transition. Added key commerce operations functions of Client Ops, Fraud Management, Call Center Management, and Digital River University during tenure.

SaaS platform handles marquee clients such as Microsoft globally (230 locales), Lenovo (EU), Samsung (US), HTC, Logitech, Asus, Adobe, Avast, Kaspersky, TrendMicro, VMWare, McAfee, etc. Drove increased system capacity and throughput that enabled Microsoft to double their previous highest single day sales record during the 2014 holiday season. Microsoft continued with flawless holiday execution in 2015, 2016 and 2017 setting new online sales and order volumes each year including the first hour of 2015 being larger than 2014's second largest day.

Lowered SaaS Commerce overall defect rate by 40% year-over-year and reduced P1 (most severe) defects by 80% year-over-year. Took transaction throughput up 10x from previous record levels. Further 10x scale uses hybrid cloud with burst capacity to Amazon to handle peak seasonal loads. Platform currently runs on VMWare and OpenStack private cloud plus Amazon and Azure public clouds. Personally drove shift to open-source technologies such as Hadoop, Cassandra, Kafka, ELK, Zabbix, to enable lower costs, while increasing scale and availability.

Corporate Vice President - Microsoft, Inc. (NASDAQ: MSFT) 09/10 to 10/13

Executive leader of one of the largest online media networks in the world, with over 500 million monthly unique users in 50+ countries worldwide. When decoupled from other Microsoft sites, MSN is the 4th largest US website (behind Facebook, Google, and Yahoo) in terms of page views. Role reported directly to Qi Lu, President of the Online Services Division, who reported directly to Microsoft's then CEO, Steve Ballmer. Responsible for the global P&L, business strategy, product management, engineering, content strategy, and media teams of the profitable, $1.1B revenue business unit. Originally hired by Satya Nadella prior to his Azure/STB President and CEO roles.

Drove MSN three year re-vitalization plan (strategy) that produced record levels of Bing search queries originating from MSN while simultaneously growing display ad revenue. Implemented the first unified media platform in MSN's 18 year history (TMX) with common UI look and feel and common back end delivery systems across ten channels in 52 countries. Project was delivered on time for the Oct 2012 launch of Windows 8 and was exclusively available on Win 8 with IE10. New media platform also powered all of Microsoft's Win 8 media applications.

Produced ground breaking and Webby award winning "MSN Now" news channel that used cloud-based real time analytics of Bing searches, Facebook and Twitter trends to automatically show top stories as well as aid in the demand generation of original content that helped drive increased SEO and accompanying unique visitors and page views. Promoted from Level 80 CVP to Level 81 CVP in May 2012 due to business and platform accomplishments.

Drove modernization of the MSN platform from XSLT based delivery system to .Net MVC system that helped attract new talent and allowed faster software development and integration with key services and features. Allowed responsive design for mobile and tablet operations and well as Windows Phone and Widows 8 MSN applications.

Board Member of MSNBC.com 2010-2013 - drove dissolution of MSNBC relationship, ending board role.

Divisional President - Time Warner, Inc. (NYSE: TWX) / AOL, Inc. (NYSE:AOL) 01/07 to 05/10

President and Executive Vice President - Products and Platforms Business Units - 01/07 to 08/09
Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer - 8/09 to 05/10
Held various executive leadership positions of increasing responsibility over three and a half year period. Staff responsibility grew from 900 to 3,700 with addition of multiple business units, product and technology groups. Reported directly to the CEO and managed 3,700 FTE and contractors globally in the US, Ireland, India, Israel, UK, China and Australia.

EVP/CTO and Section-16 Named Executive Officer that took AOL public from Time Warner in December of 2009. Centralized all Technology functions for all business units including: Advertising, Media, Consumer Applications, Paid Services (ISP), Corporate, and Ventures. Implemented 40%+ reduction in staff with approximately $200M in savings during restructuring in December 2009 and January 2010.

Previously held dual global operating roles as President of both the Products business unit and the Technologies division. Managed over $1B in global revenue. Full P&L responsibility and leadership of AOL Search, MapQuest, AOL Mail, Mobile, Local, Publishing, and the Commerce businesses: Shopping, Autos, Real Estate, Travel, Personals, and Careers. Member of the CEO's executive committee. Managed over 3,000 staff in multiple U.S. and International locations for a top-three Internet portal. Previously, as EVP of the Platforms Business Unit, grew revenue and eliminated over $100MM in annual expenses in 2007, 2008 and 2009. Managed: Search, MapQuest, Local, Publishing, and the Commerce channels.

  • Doubled Media BU page views with invention of DynaPub global publishing system (35 sites).
  • Publishing systems handle one billion page views per day and form the foundation of its web based ad business.
  • Added geo-distribution to Search architecture which produced material performance improvements.
  • Rebuilt AOL's e-commerce Shopping channel including integration of PriceGrabber and other feeds.
  • Rebuilt Autos and Real Estate channel in-house and terminated outsourced relationships.
  • Drove design and implementation of the "AOL Data Layer" using Hadoop for Search, content and Ad targeting.

Accepted additional role as head of the Technologies division in July 2007 when CTO resigned. Continued to manage Platforms Business Unit portfolio as well. Manage AOL's global datacenter operations, global ATDN backbone network, web and ISP infrastructures, network and systems management, information security, storage services, credit card billing systems, NOC, data warehouse, and data center automation. Responsible for the systems operations of all AOL business units, including the highly scalable AIM, AOL Mail, Bebo and Ad infrastructures. Managed AOL's CIO responsible for the development of the corporate finance, accounting, HR, data warehouse, security, corporate e-mail, voice and desktop services.

  • Managed Bangalore and Dublin Development Centers staff of over 1200 employees in India and Ireland
  • Implemented SAP "Order to Cash" integration with Ad systems for automated revenue recognition.
  • Managed AOL's ATDN (atdn.net) backbone network which handles over 200 Gbps of peak bandwidth.
  • Managed over 40,000 servers in multiple, Tier-3, 8MWatt data centers in U.S., EU, and Asia.
  • Appointed by the Virginia Senate to the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Investment Advisory Board (IEIA)
  • Greater Washington Board of Trade - Board Member, 2007-2010
  • Northern Virginia Technology Council - Board Member, 2007-2010

COO / EVP - United Online, Inc. (NASDAQ: UNTD) - 8/05 to 01/07

United Online was an ISP and global Internet company recognized for its NetZero, Juno, and Classmates.com brands. Served as top executive for United Online's Internet division. Reported directly to the CEO of United Online as a Section-16 Named Executive Officer and member of the Executive and Operating Committees.

Managed annual revenue stream of $120MM with 290 staff in the U.S., Europe, and India on a $90MM operating budget. Responsibilities included: all social networking properties in U.S. (Classmates.com, NamesDatabase.com) and Europe (Germany, Sweden, France), several hosting businesses (FreeServers, GlobalServers, BizServers.com, mySite.com, etc.) as well as the photo sharing business, Photosite.com.

  • Grew Classmates free member base from 38MM to over 50MM members.
  • Implemented features and infrastructure changes that grew Classmates' paid subscribers by 50% in one year.
  • Enhanced the Classmates platform to record levels of page views and unique monthly users within 4 months.
  • Doubled NamesDatabase paid subscribers in nine months during re-platform effort and billing migration.
  • Doubled Photosite.com's paid subscriber base in one year.
  • Implemented site search and quadrupled Photosite.com's page views and advertising revenue.
  • Designed and implemented world class data warehouse using Netezza, MicroStrategy, Informatica, and Oracle.
  • Implemented attribute based search and matching for Classmates dating. This technology leveraged the attribute and matching features from CNET shopping products against the scale of Classmates' 50MM users.

Chief Technology Officer - CNET Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: CNET) - 1/00 to 08/05

CNET Networks was a profitable, top ten, global Internet company that is now part of CBS Interactive. Member of the Executive and Operating Committees. Reported directly to the CEO. Responsible for all technology systems, strategies, and issues related to ongoing revenue production as well as the: search infrastructure, data warehousing, site operations. Directly managed all CIO related functions including: finance, HR, legal, IT, and MIS systems.

Managed dozens of technology M&As. Presented to the board of directors on multiple occasions. Managed over 335 staff (peak) in the U.S., Europe and Asia with a peak operating budget in excess of $60MM. Web traffic was in excess of 100MM page views per day drawing over 3Gbps of bandwidth.

  • Responsible for over 27 web properties including: CNET.com, ZDNet, News.com, Download.com, TechRepublic, Webshots, Shopper.com, mySimon, GameSpot, MP3.com, TV.com, and Search.com.
  • Drove complex design/delivery of 3 e-commerce platforms (CNET, ZDNet, and mySimon). Required use of AI techniques for product matching, mapping, searching, scoring and attribute analysis of millions of products.
  • Led the re-architecture of the Webshots system post acquisition that doubled site traffic and tripled photo uploads in less than 90 days. Managed over 400MM photos in 100TB of online storage for Webshots.
  • Drove architecture, design, development, and delivery of enterprise scale, Internet publishing system.
  • Managed the design and development of Madison, CNET's 4th generation Ad Serving platform.
  • Drove implementation of Internet scale global data warehouse and web analytics systems.
  • Built two open source search infrastructures to replace vendor solutions. Won MySQL 2005 Application of the Year Award with ATOMICS and released SOLR to open source community: http://lucene.apache.org/solr/
  • Developed online credit card processing systems for business migration to paid service models.
  • Drove rapid three month migration of 400 servers from Sun Solaris to Linux based Intel platform.
  • Developed e-mail based marketing infrastructure for one-hundred+ newsletters requiring 21MM daily e-mails.
  • Managed over 2,000 servers in 5 U.S. data centers. Drove multiple large-scale data center migrations.
  • Managed the corporate backbone network designed using site-to-site VPN router connections over the Internet.
  • Integrated all acquired ERP systems (HR, Finance, Sales, Rate Card) and processes into a single unified system.
  • Developed new Rate Card and Sales Force Automation applications. Responsible for desktop and LAN systems, corporate e-mail, and voice engineering.

Vice President - Bank of America, Inc. (NYSE: BAC) - 10/94 to 12/99

Held multiple senior management positions in three divisions for the second largest bank in the United States.
Vice President, Systems Director - Merger Specialist - Interactive Banking Division - 3/99 to 12/99
Part of largest online banking integration in U.S. history between Bank of America and NationsBank. Managed matrix staff of 600+ associates for $50M project that integrated the two company's web, Quicken, phone based banking, e-bill payment / presentment, online credit card, and retail equity product lines.
Vice President, Systems Director - Interactive Banking Division 8/97 to 3/99
Responsible for development and delivery of the Internet based Home Banking product line. Managed 60 staff. Responsible for systems analysis, architecture and design of entire product line. Designed, developed, and delivered first successful, bank owned, Internet / OFX based Electronic Bill Presentment and Payment (EBPP) system
Vice President, Systems Director - Enterprise Architecture and Standards Division - 1/95 to 8/97
Managed 30 staff. Developed corporate technology vision, strategy for the entire Bank of America. Drove corporate architecture and standards across all 38 lines of business in 37 countries. Managed the infrastructure architecture groups for: Internet, security, network and systems management, PC/LAN, UNIX integration, and RDBMS.
Vice President, Systems Director - Decision Management Systems Division 10/94 to 1/95
Managed 60 staff. Packaged the technology assets of the global institutional trust business for successful sale.

Engineering Manager - OpenVision Technologies, Inc. - 11/93 to 10/94

OpenVision Technologies was acquired by Veritas Software Corporation (NASDAQ:VRTS) in 1996. Veritas was later aquired by Symantec (NASDAQ:SYMC). Product suite consisted of fourteen integrated systems management tools for: Performance Analysis, Storage Management, Security, and Operations Management. Reported directly to the CTO and senior member of the architecture council. Developed the data integration layer and services for all applications. Integrated numerous independently developed applications in the product suite. Product suite ran on Oracle, Informix, and Sybase across eight versions of UNIX. Position required interaction with corporate partners such as First Boston, Goldman-Sachs, GTE, and Wells Fargo.

Engineering Manager - Clear Communications, Inc. - 10/90 to 11/93

Manager of 15 engineer software development and QA teams. Created system architecture and product strategy. Modified the engineering and development processes to ensure higher quality and shorter delivery cycles resulting in a 10x performance increase and 24x reduction in upgrade and installation time. Created tighter integration with operations and support organizations that allowed lower cost product installation and field support. Product used by Fortune 500 companies: AT&T, MasterCard, Sprint, GTE, Northern Telecom, Fidelity, NASA, and Boeing.

Member of Technical Staff - AT&T Bell Laboratories (NYSE: T) - 3/85 to 10/90

Chief architect, program manager and lead software engineer on large R&D teams involved in development of IBM mainframe communications controllers. The 6500 system was a multiple microprocessor based data communications gateway that provided mainframe channel, SNA, BISYNC, CUT, DFT, async, and Ethernet connectivity. Developed under UNIX in C and run on an in-house real-time version of UNIX. Program Manager and chief architect of SNA based software distribution product. Conceived idea, wrote technical architecture, and managed development teams on three platforms: MVS, UNIX, and 6500. Lead architect for the Non-SNA local channel device driver. Modified the 6500 system process architecture to achieve six-fold performance increase. Developed the LIRAS and NERAS performance analysis tools. Granted U.S. Patent Number 4,982,349 for LIRAS system on January 1, 1991.

Education

M.S. in Engineering - Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

University of Illinois at Chicago

Concentration in software engineering and microprocessor based software development. GPA 4.7/5.0.

B.S. in Engineering - Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

University of Illinois at Chicago

Specialized in software engineering, data communications, and digital electronics. All electives in Math / CS program.

Non-Degree Executive MBA - Kenan-Flagler School of Business

University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill - 1997 - Non-Degree Program

Corporate MBA program for Bank America senior management.

Patents

Interests

profile for Ted Cahall at Ask Ubuntu, Q&A for Ubuntu users and developers profile for Ted Cahall at Stack Overflow, Q&A for professional and enthusiast programmers