TouchStone Software, a $20 million leading software utility company, wanted to expand its retail presence by co-developing and launching a radically new anti-virus technology with Trend Micro, a $15 million Taiwanese software developer with no domestic presence.

Developed and launched the PC-cillin product including feature set prioritization, positioning, messaging, packaging, channel promotions, ad strategy press, and analyst contacts.
Repositioned the product to focus on its ability as the first to protect against new vulnerabilities inherent in Windows 95.

Result:

Captured #1 leadership position in the retail channel against aggressive competitors including Symantec and McAfee.

Increased retail market share from 0 to 20% in less than 6 months.

Led all competitors in Editors’ Choice awards in major publications including: PC Computing, PC Magazine, Home PC, and Secure Computing.

“Look no further than PC-cillin.”
PC Magazine. 3/2003

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Everypath, Inc.
(Wireless Internet)

At the time Everpath launched, the wireless application playing field was already packed with hopefuls. Over 100 startups -- including wireless projects at Oracle and IBM – all competed fiercely for scarce customers.

Everypath needed rapid name recognition in order to quickly attract key venture funding, partners, staff and big name customers as fast as possible.

Within one week of hire, immediately pitched Everypath and secured key speaking engagements at Red Herring and Technologic Partners conferences and developed, within one month, early branding, collateral, website, press kits and staffing.

Planned and staged a press event at Internet World/Los Angeles that involved nearly 40 customers and strategic partners with demo stations surrounding the room. In a bold move, sent more than 40 partner/customer press releases in a single day on the newswire – giving the impression that Everypath was the only player with real product and customer relationships in a “me too” vaporware market.

At the height of the “dot com” boom, the focus was on building credibility and emphasizing the maturity of the company’s experienced CEO, angels, founders and management team and paying customers and consistently repeating the simple message that only Everpath could deliver one web site to virtually every wireless device.

Result:

This very early visibility – including getting chosen by Red Herring as “one of the ten companies that will lead technology in the next ten years” and “Investors Choice” by the investor audience at Technologic ricocheted Everypath to achieve early mindshare (and coverage in Forbes) as one of the 5 most important players in the crowded enterprise wireless market.

Launch was the lead Internet World story on CNN – and New York Times sent a photographer to the event. High visibility in key media, including reviews in Eweek and significant wireless analyst relationships attracted partnerships with Sun, HP, Siebel and Sybase; enterprise customers like American Airlines, Etrade and Accenture and $60 million in VC funding.

While most competitors have evaporated, Everpath still retains the early image we set for the company as a wireless leader, and is poised for growth when the infrastructure is ready for a mass market.

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First Aid, CyberMedia, Inc.
(PC Utility Software)

CyberMedia, a small startup software utility company, had launched a new product called First Aid 95, that was very well marketed and starting to sell in very high quantities.

However, the product itself was flawed in that the User Interface was too complicated, and the software had significant bugs that caused system crashes.

This caused significant product returns and much negative press, which was beginning
to escalate.

Drove the major re-design of the product and user interface, and re-launched it as First Aid 97.

Designed and deployed an aggressive PR and visibility campaign.

Assembled a highly coordinated product response team – capable of transforming competitive threats and other crises as they arose. This team included: Sales, support, engineering, and PR.

Result:

In six months…

• Captured #1 best-selling leadership position in the retail channel for Windows software. (Only Microsoft Windows itself was selling more than First Aid)
  
  
• Continuously beat out new competitive product launches from aggressive competitors like Symantec, Network Associates, and Quarterdeck, to maintain its 1st place position.
  
  
• Shifted the negative perception of the product to it becoming the darling of the press and receiving high customer satisfaction.
  
  
• Received numerous “Editor’s Choice” and “Product of the Year” awards in major publications including: PC Computing, PC Magazine, and PC World.
  
  
• First Aid was CyberMedia’s flagship product, whose success enabled it to do a successful IPO in 1996.
  
  Network Associates acquired CyberMedia in September 1998, which became the McAfee line of software..
  
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Norton Desktop for Windows, Symantec Corp.
(PC Utility Software)

Peter Norton Computing, which had just been acquired by Symantec, was the leading utility software provider for the MS-DOS operating system, the predominate OS for IBM PCs and clones. Its flagship product was the
Norton Utilities.

Meanwhile, Microsoft had just launched Windows 3.0, which was very quickly being adopted as the new operating system of choice. But at the time, neither Symantec, nor the leaders at Peter Norton Computing had any plans or expertise to quickly support Windows 3.0.

Additionally, Windows 3.0 had some serious user interface limitations, in that a user had to utilize two separate and very badly designed navigation tools called Program Manager and File Manager, to be able to access and modify their files.

Researched the viability of the idea based on one-on-one interviews with existing Norton customers, potential corporate IT customers, analysts, and others.

Successfully lobbied management to get support, funding, and staffing to develop and launch a Windows utility product.

Originated the concept for Norton Desktop for Windows, a Windows 3.0 product that provided a much more accessible user interface to Windows
(most of these ideas were later borrowed by Microsoft for Windows 95 and later versions).

Drove the design team to ensure that the product met or exceeded the user interface and product feature expectations, based on pre-launch meetings with early adopters, corporate customers, pundits, analysts, and reviewers.

Created and managed the entire marketing campaign and PR effort.

Result:

Norton Desktop for Windows became a huge software hit for Symantec.

Throughout the product’s life cycle, it maintained its status as the 1st place seller in its category, with an over 80% market share.

Received numerous “Editor’s Choice” and “Product of the Year” awards in major publications including: PC Computing, PC Magazine, and PC World.