Brands, then startups, now ecosystems.
Dave Knox has spent twenty years where big brands and startups meet. He started at Procter & Gamble in 2003, moving from brand management into digital innovation as a founding member of the company's Corporate Digital Strategy team.
In 2010 he became CMO of Rockfish, which grew from $8M to $70M in revenue and was acquired by WPP. The same year he co-founded The Brandery, ranked one of the Top 10 startup accelerators in the US for multiple years, and later Vine St Ventures, a seed fund with exits including VNDLY and Ahalogy.
Today he is CEO and Executive Director of Blue North, the Kentucky Innovation Hub for 17 Northern Kentucky counties. He writes Predicting The Turn for the Forbes CMO Network and wrote the book of the same name.
At P&G he served as board observer for the company's venture investments in Get Satisfaction and Smith & Tinker. In 2017 he was Managing Director of WPP Ventures. From 2019 to 2022 he led Nature's Willow, acquiring and repositioning the natural pain relief brand, growing revenue 4X, expanding to 6,000+ retail doors and selling to private equity.
Through Brand Fusion he spent ten years matching corporations with startups: 3,754 meetings between 335 brands and 485 startups. He is a 2003 graduate of Miami University and co-founded its Cradle of Marketers program.
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