Neil Mix

Fractional CTO / Distinguished Engineer

(920) 915-0647
neilmix@gmail.com
Appleton, WI

I'm a human toolbox of software product development. A veteran of several venture capital backed startups, I've had the fortune of co-founding an exit to Microsoft and building Pandora Radio from inception to household name to IPO. My professional experience spans every aspect of software engineering and company development, from hands-on coding and UX design to product management, executive leadership, business strategy, and capital allocation.

 

How others describe me:

  • thoughtful
  • strategic
  • pragmatic
  • approachable
  • creative
  • conscientious
  • problem solver
  • coach
  • effective communicator

Seeking hands-on leadership of software product development that is focused, creative, and iterative. Available to help companies with R&D, prototyping, strategic planning, technological assessment, and much more.

Experience

Quadrant
2017 - present
Founder

New product development; research, development, and commercialization; and process automation and improvement consulting.

Thread.one
2022 - present
VP of Engineering | Strategic Advisor

Led engineering for a team of 20 as the company prepared for rapid growth and expansion. Voluntarily transitioned into an advisory role to accommodate business restructuring resulting from the 2022/23 capital markets downturn.

TitletownTech
2019 - 2022
Partner

Founding partner of a venture capital firm formed from a partnership between Microsoft and the Green Bay Packers. Our firm raised $25 million from 17 limited partners and invested in 23 companies, of which I led 7 investments deploying $4.5 million in capital.

Xensr
2015 - 2017
VP of Software

Responsible for the full stack of software product development from inception through release. Brought the company's long overdue products to market across several platforms with limited resources.

Pandora
2004 - 2015
Director of Engineering

First engineer to code Pandora’s Internet radio service. Built web, iPhone, and iPad apps. Built and managed advertising platform to $1 billion annual revenue run rate.

Kenamea
2001 - 2004
Principle Engineer

Built and managed numerous initiatives as part of Kenamea's enterprise messaging platform.

Idealab
1999 - 2001
Director of Engineering

Built software and managed engineering for newly launched companies and products.

Merchant Planet
LinkExchange
Microsoft
1997 - 1999
Co-founder

Built e-commerce shopping-cart capabilities for small business websites. Acquired by LinkExchange and subsequently acquired by Microsoft in 1998, it was incorporated into Microsoft's online small business offering.

Board Memberships

Fork Farms, 2021-present
Bovisync, 2017-present
Liveality, 2015-present
Allergy Amulet, 2020-2022

Education

University of Minnesota
Bachelor of Music, 1997
Piano Performance major
Computer Science minor

Project History

This is a list of numerous projects that I have personally coded and/or managed. While they cover a wide range of responsibilities, technologies, and capabilities, they all share in common that I was responsible for their inception, design, build, test, and release.

 

1997 - e-commerce shopping cart and transaction processing
1997 - WYSIWYG business card and stationary designer
1997 - digital asset management UX
1998 - cross-domain integrated authentication system
1998 - platform native database connection library
1998 - separation-of-concerns HTML templating library
1999 - REST API for e-commerce shopping cart
1999 - e-commerce integration with 3rd-party website builder
1999 - fraud research tool for payment system
2000 - site-agnostic authentication system
2000 - rapid-development ORM library
2000 - consumer reward web surfing plugin
2001 - enterprise messaging command-line interface
2001 - enterprise messaging management UX
2001 - enterprise messaging latency visualizer
2002 - AJAX development framework
2002 - COMET app development library
2003 - enterprise app documentation compiler
2003 - infinitely scalable AJAX tabular display widget
2004 - enterprise notification and inbox UX
2004 - enterprise retail pricing management UX
2005 - Pandora web app
2006 - automated UI test harness for Flash-based Pandora web app
2006 - asych-to-synchronous compiler for JavaScript
2007 - advertising infrastructure for Pandora
2008 - Pandora iPhone app
2009 - advertising infrastructure for Pandora iPhone app
2010 - Pandora iPad app
2010 - Pandora desktop application
2011 - bluetooth protocol to connect Pandora iPhone app with car dashboards
2012 - custom advertising order management system
2014 - next-generation ad server migration
2015 - web, iPhone, and Android 3D athletic performance measurement apps
2015 - 3D athletic performance visualizer
2016 - next-gen kalman filter 3D position tracking algorithm
2016 - next-gen flash memory disk driver
2016 - Android Wear athletic performance measurement app
2017 - athletic performance highlight reel auto-generator
2017 - general-purpose festival guide consumer app design
2017 - festival data import management system
2017 - metabolic health management app design
2017 - metabolic muscle health calculator
2018 - enterprise inventory management app
2018 - enterprise inventory management prediction algorithms
2018 - rapid development framework for enterprise applications
2018 - AI-based trucking carrier recommendation engine for shipping routes
2020 - regular-expression-like language and tool for parsing complex and recursive data
2023 - sump monitoring and uptime dashboard