Meet the Team

John Fox

CEO, Venture Marketing

All you have to know about me is that I’m a devoted entrepreneur and business developer/geek. My #1 top priority is creating new sources of revenue for small-midsize businesses (SMB) by leveraging technology, social media and an overwhelming amount of relevant fresh content.

In my day job, I’m President of Venture Marketing, a marketing consulting firm I started back in 1996. Every day I get the opportunity to work with cool people who run technology start-ups and other tech-savvy businesses thirsty for top-line revenue growth. How fun is that?

As an aid to small businesses, I’ve written a ton of ebooks, white papers, articles and blog posts. But it’s the books I’ve published that have been the most rewarding. Nothing against ebooks, white papers, articles and blog posts…they’re terrific for what they are. But none have the staying power of real books. Besides, no one has EVER asked me to autograph any of my ebooks, white papers, articles and brochures. But bring out a book and everyone asks me for my autograph.

In 2005 I self-published The Marketing-Playbook—The Definitive Guide to B2B Marketing for Small Business. Endorsed by Seth Godin, Guy Kawasaki, Al Ries and Doug Hall, the Playbook provides detailed instructions for implementing more than 100 sales-driven marketing strategies for small businesses. Think of it as a marketing director’s cookbook for serving everything from appetizers to the main course to dessert.

In early 2011 I wrote my second book: 99 Questions to Jump Start Your Partner Channel Brain, endorsed by Jill Konrath, author of author or SNAP Selling, Scott Bekker, Editor in Chief, Redmond Channel Partner Magazine and many, many others. It’s a book filled with questions I challenge anyone to answer about their Channel Partners. If the term “Channel Partners” is a new one for you, Channel Partners are anyone selling your products and services who are NOT your employees. Think: resellers, reps, dealers, affiliates, OEMs, distributors, VARs, brokers…the classic middle-men. Since the majority of companies (of any size) go to market through channels today, I thought it was time for a book that stimulated neuron-firing and action.

Oh, and on the personal side, I earned my BS Engineering-Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an MBA from Keller Graduate School of Management. Ruth, my wife of 42 years, 3 months, 3 days and counting! We live in the Chicago 'burbs with our five (that’s not a typo: 5) entrepreneurially-minded children.

David Fox

CEO, OBTO Tech

All you need to know about me is I'm the guy who makes Flash games and web applications/sites like Twitter and Facebook tick. I stay up late at night thinking of ways to better scale applications, cool ways to use new technology like CouchDB and Node.js, or just making execution time .001 seconds faster.

Short and simple, I'm the kind of developer you see in comics like XKCD.