Dan Engel
In 2000, at the age of 24, Engel served as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Idealab, the leading incubator of the dot com era, after having started GrapeApe.com, a consumer e-commerce company, while in college. From 2002 to 2003, Engel led customer acquisition/revenue generation for GoToMyPC and GoToMeeting software. Revenue growth over the two-year period help lead to a $225M acquisition by Citrix in 2003. In 2014, the Citrix Online division generated over $600 million in revenue as the #3 global SaaS company. Starting in September 2003, Engel was VP of Market Development at Picasa, a digital photo consumer software company. Engel led Picasa's customer acquisition, marketing and business development initiatives, again significantly boosting revenues. After Google acquired Picasa in 2004, Engel joined Google and led online customer acquisition/advertising for Google’s AdSense and AdWords products, through Google’s 2004 IPO. From 2005 to 2013, Engel was CEO and co-founder of FastSpring, an e-payment platform for 3,000+ desktop software and SaaS companies worldwide. Engel grew FastSpring's revenue from zero to over $100 million with $30,000 in total investment. FastSpring (acquired 2013), known for its customer service, had a very low annual churn rate of 1.3%. It was the fastest-growing company in the Greater LA area during 2006-2010, according to Deloitte, 13th fastest-growing in N. America during that time, and ranked 41 and 53 on the Inc 500 for 2010 and 2011. While CEO at FastSpring, Engel led corporate sales, marketing and finance. The founders and original investors in FastSpring earned an ROI of over 600-fold on their original investment. In 2015, Engel co-founded and as CEO currently leads Mobile1st. The principal product of Mobile1st is Mobilizer Mobile Performance Platform, a SaaS solution that enables companies to manage, monitor, and improve their mobile web page performance across popular mobile devices. Mobilizer's remote device lab and software tie together visual renders of web pages on actual phones/tablets (which are displayed side by side simultaneously to aid in render issue identification) with mobile data analytics across those devices. Prior to building start-ups, Engel's business passion was the investment management industry. Starting in high school with Smith Barney, he had a variety of internships. Following Smith Barney, he worked with Sanford C. Bernstein (today Alliance Bernstein), creating their first website. At the age of 19, Engel sought out and learned from legendary investor Philip L. Carret, founder of one of the first mutual funds in 1928. During college, he interned for four years at Merrill Lynch, working along Jim Mangum, a veteran value investor who became his mentor. Later, at Fidelity Investments' Fund Management and Research Company (FMR), Engel worked with some of the industry's investment industry legends, including Ned Johnson, Peter Lynch, William Danoff, and others.
Career
He has been in the e-commerce and software industries since 1997. Engel led customer acquisition at Picasa, Google, FastSpring, GoToMeeting and GoToMyPC. Starting in 2015, Engel co-founded Mobile1st and serves as CEO of the cloud-based mobile web performance optimization company.