Transformation
“With a rare combination of high intellectual/emotional intelligence, I have seen Tom quickly gain the trust and confidence of boards of directors, investors, executive teams, and founders – multiple times. I have asked Tom to build, and occasionally rebuild, marketing and business development teams. He has an uncanny ability to attract and retain great talent while focusing the team on executing top priorities. Tom is a creative marketing visionary with exceptional branding, positioning, and messaging experience with a courageous drive for excellence.” Peter Meechan, Chief Corporate Development Officer, Automation Anywhere
“Tom is superb at helping companies investigate and resolve complex marketing issues. He knows how to get to detailed, actionable information.”
Jim Smith, Managing Partner, Mohr Davidow Ventures
“Tom is the ultimate “idea” man, creating new ways to look at things, yet he can also push his chair back from the conference room table and boil down the conversations of many into the key essence of what needs to be taken from the room and acted upon. His teams love working for him, as he is always in their corner yet pushes them to be their best, yielding great results for the companies and teams he works with.
His ability to work with technical experts and sales people alike makes him very valuable in the product management arena. Few can bridge the technical/ sales domains as well as Tom.” Bill Beyda, VP Engineering Intellectual Ventures
“Tom is an exceptional leader, manager, and product marketing expert. He has unique ability to find and present product marketing ideas in a powerful way that truly connect with the customer. Working with Tom was a tremendous education for me; he's and inspiring thought leader, who brings the best strategic approaches forward to any assignment. He is an amazing mentor who effectively works with start-ups and Fortune 500 companies. His years of experience, deep marketing knowledge, leadership and guidance are inspiring and grounded in delivering the results.” Kristina Serafim, Director at Verizon Ventures
“A great idea doesn't become a great business without understanding how to market and sell it. In this, Tom is a natural. I have seen him take the most complex product ideas and boil them down to their salient points; easily understood and valued by our customers and board members alike. If I wanted my business to be successful, I would want Tom running it.” William Harper, Engineering Director at Intellectual Ventures
“The validation due diligence service that Tom Garland put together was instrumental to Juniper Networks in a decision we made not to acquire a potential target. Time has proven him right – in retrospect, it’s clear that we dodged a bullet.” Spencer Greene, Vice President Corporate Development Juniper Networks
“Tom is an amazing business professional, brilliant at strategic thinking as well as tactical execution. For our early stage startup he was instrumental in creating the early bizdev deals and marketing programs that helped us create our market. He is just fantastic at creating business conversations that lead to deals. Tom is as good as they get! And, fun to work with too!” Gautam Bhargava Vice President, Visual Search at A9, an Amazon company (former Founder and CEO of Snaptell)
“What makes Tom so unique in the executive ranks is his humility and his ability to connect with people at different levels. I would really look forward to an opportunity to work with Tom in the future.” Utpal Thakrar, Sr. Product Manager at ServiceNow
“I have heard great things about Tom's work in the past in the venture and business community in the past. The whole engagement was fantastic. Tom's processes are extremely aligned to the needs of a seed-stage venture backed business. He worked with us to quickly determine the goals and non-goals of the project, put together the collateral and got started. The reach from his database was excellent - and we finished our goals of contacting the relevant people at 30+ targeted business prospects on-time. As a result of this market validation work, we are able to tune our product plan more appropriately to the market, prioritize the sequence of our launch plan and are able to get a great sense of possible sales strategies and partners. I have started three venture-backed companies in the past. I am a strong believer that early market validation can, very bluntly, mean everything between success and failure. This is the best use of seed money that I have come across.” Som Sikdar, CEO at Kodiak Data
“Our portfolio companies have worked with Tom at ACT Venture Partners to help validate their product strategy for funding and to nail 1.0 release features. It has really paid off. I would recommend Tom without exception. Tom has an uncanny ability to read early markets and help companies navigate the choppy waters of getting innovative products to market." John C. Occhipinti, Managing Director, The Woodside Fund
“Tom's connections with IT professionals, especially on Wall Street, helped drive a lot of our early momentum around betas and early revenue traction.” Tom Kemp, Founder and CEO, Centrify
"...they helped us figure out what NOT to do during a critical period of time in our early history." Ross Schibler, Topspin's founder, CTO, and VP of software (acquired by Cisco)