Growth Infrastructure Architect · 2× Acquired Founder
I build the acquisition systems behind growth.
Attribution, activation funnels, paid acquisition engines, and product instrumentation — designed and shipped hands-on, not handed off as specs. 28 years from pre-product startups to a 500,000-customer platform, with two acquisitions along the way, by Yahoo and Constant Contact.
- 2×
- Acquired founder — Yahoo & Constant Contact
- 43K+
- Active accounts across 4 markets
- 500K+
- Customer base served at Constant Contact
- 2.5x
- ROAS on $1.2M/yr Google Ads
Built for & with
- Budweiser
- Toronto Blue Jays
- Hard Rock Cafe
- Montreal Alouettes
- Four NHL franchises
- Coachella
- Sanofi
- U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
- Natural Resources Canada
Acquisitions
Two acquisitions, built from the inside.
Three companies built before the market was ready. Two became acquisitions — carried from first line of code through to the deal.
- 2024
Txtify
Co-Founder & CTO
Acquired by Constant ContactAcquisitionBuilt a mobile-first, zero-friction lead-capture platform from zero to acquisition — owning product, enterprise sales, and the entire technical stack, with early OpenAI integration for intelligent routing. Enterprise customers included Budweiser, four NHL franchises, the Toronto Blue Jays, and Hard Rock Cafe. The technology became Constant Contact's Lead Magnet.
- 2002
Lasoo
VP, Operations
Acquired by Yahoo (via Overture)AcquisitionHelped build one of the first internet mapping and location-based search platforms — geospatial discovery before Google Maps existed — leading a team of 13 across engineering, data, and infrastructure through the company's acquisition.
Case study
Turning a startup acquisition into a growth operation.
- 01
The situation
Constant Contact acquired Txtify and its lead-capture technology to offer as Lead Magnet — an AI-powered lead capture and activation product for a 500K+ SMB customer base. The job: make a startup product work as a growth engine inside a large company.
- 02
What I built
Attribution infrastructure connecting paid channel behavior to in-product activation signals and downstream pipeline. An experimentation framework, a reporting cadence, and cross-functional accountability. I owned attribution, CRM instrumentation, and campaign infrastructure alongside product strategy — no separate technical team required.
- 03
The result
43,000+ active accounts across the US, Canada, UK, and Australia in under two years — and a post-acquisition ramp measured in weeks, not quarters.
- 43K+
- Active accounts
- 4
- International markets
- <2 yrs
- From acquisition to scale
What I do
Designed and shipped, hands-on.
The growth stack I own end to end — without a separate team to execute what I design.
Attribution
Connecting paid channel behavior to activation signals and pipeline, so spend decisions are made on what actually converts.
Paid acquisition
Long-tail search strategy and daily performance discipline. CAC is the deciding metric — every channel is a hypothesis.
Activation & onboarding
Closing the gap between arrival and first value — funnel diagnostics, onboarding friction, time-to-first-value.
Product instrumentation & CRM
Event tracking, CRM wiring, and the data plumbing that makes growth measurable instead of theorized.
Experimentation & operating rhythm
Experiment frameworks, reporting cadence, and cross-functional accountability that turn insight into repeatable growth.
Full-stack engineering
Infrastructure, DevOps, and early LLM integration — I write, deploy, and iterate the systems myself.
Track record
Three decades of building growth.
From pre-broadband internet mapping to AI-native SaaS — operating across product, growth, and infrastructure.
- 2026 — Present
Activate
Founder
Building AI-native products in public.
- 2024 — 2026
Constant Contact
Sr. Director, Growth & Product
Led Lead Magnet; scaled to 43K+ active accounts across the US, Canada, UK, and Australia.
- 2017 — 2024
Txtify
Co-Founder & CTO
Built the full stack; clients included Budweiser, four NHL teams, and the Blue Jays. Sold to Constant Contact.
- 2010 — 2017
Qool Media (a System1 company)
Director, Growth & Monetization
Ran paid acquisition across 15–23 properties: $1.2M/yr Google Ads → $3M revenue at 2.5x ROAS.
- 2007 — 2010
PickupPal
Co-Founder
Peer-to-peer ridesharing before Uber and Lyft; partnered with U2 360, Dave Matthews Band, and Coachella.
- 2002 — 2007
HGN
Co-Founder
Custom software for Sanofi, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and Natural Resources Canada.
- 1998 — 2002
Lasoo
VP, Operations
Led a team of 13 on internet mapping before Google Maps; acquired by Yahoo via Overture.
Recommendations
What colleagues say.
“Eric has a rare ability to cut through the noise and operate with a real bias for action. Having built an impressive product that Constant Contact acquired, Eric joined the team and helped guide us through scaling and proliferating that work. He consistently made the people around him better and pushed us to think more intelligently about our projects.”
Aaron Cougle
Worked with Eric at Constant Contact
“Eric delivered the key campaign management framework in the span of 6 weeks from inception to roll-out, ahead of expectations. He worked closely with the development team, challenging them to quickly evaluate and prototype difficult components of the architecture.”
James Lee
Worked with Eric for 10+ years, including PickupPal
About
Who you'd be working with.
I build growth infrastructure — not as a strategist who hands specs to a team, but as the operator who designs it and ships it. My edge is compression: I can own attribution, CRM instrumentation, paid channel strategy, and product experimentation at the same time, without a separate technical team to execute what I design. That collapses the distance between insight and implementation.
I've built three companies before the market was ready for them — internet mapping before Google Maps, ridesharing before Uber, AI-powered lead capture before it was a category. Two became acquisitions, by Yahoo and Constant Contact.
Right now I'm building Activate in public while exploring my next operating role — VP Growth, VP Acquisition, or Senior Director at a SaaS or AI company where acquisition and activation systems need to be built, rebuilt, or scaled. If that's you, let's talk.
What I bring
- 2× acquired founder (Yahoo, Constant Contact)
- Scaled an AI product to 43K+ active accounts across 4 markets
- 7 years running a $1.2M/yr paid engine at 2.5x ROAS
- Full-stack operator — growth, product & engineering
- BES, University of Waterloo · English & French
Get in touch
Start a conversation.
The fastest way to reach me is a message on LinkedIn. I read every one and reply personally.
Good reasons to reach out
- VP Growth / Acquisition & Sr. Director roles
- Fractional growth & operating help
- Advising & founder coaching
- The Activate products