I'm Evan.
I live in NYC with my wife Diana & 2 kids (Alice and Alfie). I love cities, startups & history.
I’m the founder of Okra Labs, helping companies supercharge their OKRs for growth and supporting the journey to scale.
I have experience in every phase of the startup journey, from founding thru exit & integration. For the past 10 years I’ve started, scaled, sold, restructured, and pivoted high growth, globally distributed businesses. Prior to building companies I worked for nearly 10 years as a growth equity investor and technology investment banker.
Highlights
Context Travel. Hired by PE fund as first external CEO of formerly family-run globally distributed travel experiences business (techcrunch). Redefined go-to-market, built exec team, led pandemic-era restructuring, pivoted to industry leading online events business.
onefinestay. co-founded garage-to-exit zero-to-one hospitality brand. Raised $80m and bought for $200m. Hired and managed hundreds from warehouse to C-level. Created US biz (NYC/LA) and owned P&L. Pivoted countless times to keep up with short term rental regulation.
Kennet. $1bn growth equity fund. Learned every conceivable investment structure, how to write memos, understanding different cultural contexts (US/UK/Continental Europe), investor-side board dynamics.
Broadview. Tech M&A banker. Hired in the boom, joined in the bust. Complex financial modeling, insane attention to detail, and scrappily sourcing deals. $750k fees generated as a 24 year old.
Portobello Road Street Trader + D2C underwear entrepreneur in the ‘pre-Warby’ days of digitally native brands.
Near college drop-out starting early version of Menupages in Ann Arbor. Flew a banner across Michigan Stadium on game day.
Chicken parm specialist learning the beauty of entrepreneurship at Maria’s Pizza in high school.
Investor in various hospitality startups (and one hotel), including Collective Retreats (glamping) and Remote Year (full stack travel programs for remote workers). Created founder interview series about the daily lives of high achievers www.thebalance.io
Approach
I believe in servant leadership and have developed POVs about the nuts and bolts of building companies, including OKRs, hiring, org structure and meeting structures.
I’ve thought deeply about the role of the CEO and personal effectiveness. I look for non-standard sources of wisdom and have read a lot about history, business and self-care which I apply to my approach. I seek to combine the hard and soft: highly focused, data-driven, metrics-led combined with the softness of managing people and creating team & individual accountability.