Robbie is a senior executive with 20+ years of experience in technology, service delivery, and innovation in the U.S. and Europe.
Robbie was most recently CEO of Method for over a year in which he led major investment in the company which took the company to the next level of business development and operational activity. He also led the international expansion of the firm. Robbie is now a board member of Method working with the management team to continue to grow the business.
Prior to this Robbie was a co-founder, in April 1996, of Viant Inc., a web-services consultancy he helped build into an 850 person, $2.2 billion NASDAQ listed firm. Viant was one of a handful of firms that helped define the first generation of web experiences for Internet users in the 1990s by developing the online presence of firms such as Compaq, Charles Schwab,and Radio Shack. While with the company, he had a variety of operational roles, starting with running Viant's San Francisco office and leading its expansion internationally by opening the London and Munich offices. Viant was backed by leading venture capitalists based in the Bay Area, including Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, Mohr Davidow Ventures and Trident Capital.
Robbie has also served as the turnaround CEO of Ecast, a location based entertainment network. During his tenure, beginning in 2002, he stabilized the business and increased its footprint nationwide. Robbie worked with the founding team to create the company and was a board member from its inception. Ecast was originally incubated by Viant and backed by a variety of leading venture capitalists including El Dorado Ventures, DCM and Mobius Ventures.
It was while at Ecast that Robbie met with Chris Anderson in 2004, Editor of Wired magazine, and shared his ideas and observations of how consumers interact with content when it becomes available in a digital format, which became the basis for Anderson's worldwide best-selling business book, The Long Tail.
Prior to Ecast, Robbie co-founded Inspired Technology Group, a mobile entertainment company selling ring tones and other mobile content, in April 2001 in London, U.K. The company has become part of Inspired Gaming, an AIM listed company and Europe's largest networked entertainment provider.
Prior to Viant he held a variety of technology and service delivery roles for companies of various sizes, including Illustra, an Object-Relational Database Company in Oakland, CA (purchased by Informix in 1995); Oracle in Redwood Shores, CA; Booz Allen Hamilton in San Francisco, CA; First Boston in NYC, NY; and Morgan Stanley in NYC, NY. It was while working at First Boston that he had his earliest entrepreneurship experience as Co-founder and Director of Consulting for Seer, Inc., a CASE tools technology firm spun out of First Boston.
An active angel investor, Robbie has been an early investor and advisor to a number of early stage companies.
Robbie graduated from the London School of Economics in June 1984 with a B.Sc. in Mathematical Economics and Econometrics, and from the University of Warwick in 1985 with a M.Sc. in Management Science and Operational Research. He is based in San Francisco, CA, where he lives with his wife and two children.
