About Me
If you know me, you probably call me Ferf. But unless you are really close to me, you don’t know much about me. Let me fill you in.
I grew up in a small town, population around 3,000 people. I graduated from Purdue University with degrees in Computer Graphic Technology and Computer Programming Technology. This is where the ride begins…
A serial entrepreneur, I am always trying to find ways to help people and to make the world a better place, hence my interest in product & graphic design. I believe the design and usability of a product, weather physical or digital, has immense impact on a persons choice to use that product. I have spent years learning and testing how small changes to products can have huge impact on usability and adoption. I love doing this more than anything, it is my true calling.
I honed my skills working in family businesses straight out of college helping move companies from traditional marketing and product testing, to having more of a progressive digital influence. While I was given freedom to explore emerging technologies and marketing channels, I was also given business guidance from family and industry leaders, while working within the multi-million dollar manufacturing business.
After a few years of physical product development (physical goods, packaging design, marketing collateral, etc) I decided to strike out on my own. I started a consulting firm and moved to Chicago to create progressive online marketing packages for the bio-sciences industry. I had always freelanced on the side, but this was my first time leading a company of contract designers and developers (10+) from around the world. This company, Anrovia Design (now closed), was my first true successful start up.
Concurrent with my consulting company I founded another company called Shirts By Mail. Before many others existed in the space, including companies like Threadless, we were selling tons of custom and one-off tshirts to a highly engaged market and accepting submissions from artists. We sold globally to audiences looking to buy satirical goods based on up to the minute news stories. This company is still a functioning business, but 7 years later we are mainly doing large orders to companies as opposed to single item prints to the mass market. This decision was made when I launch my largest and most well-known company to date: Podcast Alley.
Podcast Alley was born in November 2004, days after I heard about podcasting. Distraught with the inability to find more indie content to enjoy, I filled the void by creating the first index of podcasts in the world. The site has been around now for 5 years in pretty much the same state, and still gets millions of page views a month, but acts as the leading community in podcasting. In late 2004, after being featured in TIME magazine, I received a call that would change the direction of my life.
In early 2005 I partnered with a company who was setting out to create a venue where podcasters could make money from podcasting, without all of the technical hassles that set most producers back. That company was PodShow (now Mevio). I spent 4 years in San Francisco, CA working with Mevio not only acting as the voice for independent producers, but also helping refine their product and their marketing. I had the privledge of working with some of the internets thought leaders, and other rock stars as well, literally!
My partnership with Mevio was with Ron Bloom and Adam Curry, entrepreneurs and successful business men both. I worked with our board of directors from Kleiner Perkins (and other VC firms too) as well as Ron and Adam to create a social media marketing platform unlike any other. Mevio has changed the face of media and online advertising.
In January 2009, my life changed again. While I was challenged and happy at Mevio, I was getting the itch to use the knowledge I had built up for better things. I believe in the power of digital media. People need it, they rely on it, and they count on it to make them smile or to remind them of the past, and for that… companies like Mevio will continue to thrive. But I was looking for a new challenge that would impact peoples lives in a more aggressive way. As fate would have it, I got a call form my friend Christopher Parks. I met Christopher years ago when he was producing a Nashville based small business podcast, which he interviewed me for. His passion and drive has changed the world, and I decided to leap on board to help drive new product development for his new startup, change:healthcare.
change:healthcare helps people save money on their prescriptions and doctors visits. Using the internet, mobile phones and desktop applications as a delivery mechanism, we analyze the money people spend on medial expenses (from insurance claims), and push to them alerts on ways to save money. This is the perfect place for me to be now, allowing me to build apps and communities in what is considered traditionally to be a very stuffy and hush-hush arena. Only time will tell, but this is the kind of company most people would kill to work for… passionate, knowledgeable, sincerely-caring, and not taking shit from anyone about how healthcare is “supposed” to be done.
More recently, I have been the co-founder of a couple of awesome, local, startups: CarlSays & Check’d.In – Give them a peek if you have some time ;) And finally, but most interestingly to me (right now), Im acting as one of the managing directors of the Jumpstart Foundry, a Nashville TechStars Affiliate. We give startups $15,000, 14 weeks, and 60 mentors to build a company and prepare for funding. #intense.
Looking for Me on the Internet?
The Short Version
Chris McIntyre is a serial entrepreneur with companies spanning more than 10 years. Raised in an entrepreneurial and marketing home, Chris got a taste for using the internet to build huge dedicated audiences with family businesses selling gourmet housewares online, helping create a multi-million dollar online store for a traditionally in-store-only sales company. He has worked directly with the CEOs of large and small companies to help build strategies to convert their brick and mortar businesses to having an online authority.
Over the years Chris has founded, run, and eventually sold a number of successful small businesses. Most notably, however, was when Mcintyre launched Podcast Alley in 2004, the first and most well-known podcast directory. A pioneer in the podcast industry, McIntyre worked with iTunes to provide them with their first directory of podcasts to pre-populate their store and to foster the adoption of podcasting by their growing base of iPod users. Soon after, McIntyre helped launch PodShow (now Mevio) as a founding member along with MTV’s Adam Curry. Chris helped grow that company to over 50 million views per month (a comScore top 20 multimedia company) working with producers such as: GeekBrief, Cranky Geeks, Dawn and Drew and many other leading content producers. McIntyre has worked with companies such as GoDaddy, Acura, Marie Claire and Earthlink to build the model for how early successful podcast advertising models worked. Chris received a BA from Purdue University in 2001 and is currently Vice President of Product & Technology at change:healthcare.
In 2010, McIntyre founded both CarlSays and Checkd.in to help brands large and small create rewards for their customers and to engage their community at large. He was also founding member of the Jumpstart Foundry, a seed stage accelerator in Nashville, TN in 2010, and Managing Directory for the program in 2011 helping launch 13 companies.
