About me:
I have a passion for creating things. Useful experiences, interactions and products that make life richer and fuller, hopefully making it easier to connect with friends, family and to do more of what I love. I love spending time in nature and keeping my body moving through recreation. I love thinking about new business concepts and I like to think of myself as more of an artist than a business man, and there is an art to doing business well. I enjoy my personal time and time away from technology as well. Doing business well to me means creating trade and commerce around artists and their art, around passion, and other people, aligning energy and dreams. I like to be as close to the original idea as possible. I choose to create rather than conform.
I am a lifelong athlete. I played collegiate lacrosse and I have run 3 marathons and hope to run more. My first marathon was in 2014 when I took the bus from SF to LA and then took public transportation through Compton and Watts to camp out on Catalina Island where my fellow runners helped rejuvenate my outlook on life, teaching me that it doesn’t matter how fast or slow I was, or what I looked like, just as long as I was in the race. The Catalina Eco Marathon is 26.2 miles on trails with 3,862 feet of vertical and I surprisingly placed first in my age group. My second marathon came about on a whim in 2015 while visiting the Hawaiian islands for the first time for a good friends wedding, where I got first in my age group and 11th overall in the Maui Marathon. My third marathon was in 2017, running through the historic cobblestone streets of Jerusalem’s old town and next to some of the world’s holiest sites while I was out in Israel for a work trip. I just finished a 90 mile bike race and am an avid cyclist. You can checkout my 2017 Year in Review here: https://lesavage.com/year-review-2017
My past experience draws on many lessons across many different industries and they all have one thing in common, which is about making a meaningful connection. I have a successful track record of launching scalable sales and marketing strategies for innovative companies, like where I was the only marketing hire at an Internet of Things company that was acquired by Autodesk.
- I was previously the inventor and co-founder of Shopsy, the first shopping from Instagram app and desktop experience with clients like Lululemon, Tieks, and LornaJane. I have intellectual property, software systems and frameworks that would be extremely beneficial for any social media or e-commerce company after thinking about how to pair pictures to commerce for many years.
- During my time as the Head of Growth for uMake, a 3D sketching application, it was featured in the Apple App Store and we increased the App Store Rankings by 100+ places and often into the top 10 in many key categories through ASO and paid advertising. I left after a year because we lacked a cohesive product marketing vision.
- Most recently I was the Marketing Manager for Spirit Rock, a meditation center with a $8 million a year operating budget where I managed all of the marketing operations. I set out to converge my marketing skills with my desire to meditate on a daily basis and after a year of doing so I learned a lot about non-profits and am ready to get back into helping innovative startups grow.
I learn from everyone and I find that learning from these people, both past and present – resonates with me the most:
- Naval Ravikant (Naval retweeted me)
- Seth Godin (I have been receiving an email a day from him for 6+ years)
- Joe Rogan
- Jordan Peterson
- Steve Blank
- Michael Dearing
- Derek Sivers
- Alan Watts
- Jiddu Krishnamurti
- Marcus Aurelius
- Joeseph Campbell
- Carl Jung
My favorite books are:
- Meditations
- Total Freedom
- The Celestine Prophecies
- Heart Blown Open
- Dream Yoga
- Let My People Go Surfing
I like exploring what can be done in this life.
Thank you for visiting lesavage.com
-Andy
