West Stringfellow

About West Stringfellow

I founded a startup that Target acquired; built category-creating platforms at Amazon, PayPal, and Visa; launched a Techstars accelerator; and drove the digital transformation of Rosetta Stone. The pattern: find the market before it exists, then build and lead the team that creates the solution.🤖 AI/ML PRODUCT LEADERSHIP• Blackhawk - Championed Claude as the 1st enterprise AI platform, scaled adoption to employees. Trained product teams. My team of 5 PMs delivered 2x peer teams with 60+ PMs• HowDo - Built an AI-powered business mentor 5 years before ChatGPT• Rosetta Stone - Used AI (NLP/NLG) to power the core language learning product• Visa - Used device fingerprinting (ML) to grow VbV adoption 130% YoY• Amazon - Used ML to cut marketplace fraud losses 98% NEW PRODUCT LAUNCHES• Every -(acquired by Target) Founded social commerce platform 4 years before shopping on Instagram • Target - Created Target Accelerators, now a permanent business function at Target• PayPal - 1st omnichannel wallet and POS payments platform (12x TAM expansion)• Visa - 1st D2C payment product • Rosetta Stone→ 1st product for kids. Ranked #2 iTunes \"Free Kids\"→ 1st SaaS learning platform and B2B product line, became the primary focus for the company• Amazon→ 1st digital video asset and metadata operations team (now Prime Video)→ 1st billable web service (AWS\'s Historical Pricing API) BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION• Target - Cut $100M in low-performing projects, reallocated $30M to high-growth initiatives• Bigcommerce - Pivoted corporate strategy and hired new teams resulting in $50M in funding• PayPal - Redesigned Australia\'s compliance infrastructure and processes retaining 3M+ consumers• Rosetta Stone→ Transformed business model from packaged software to digital (80% COGS reduction)→ Launched 6 products in 1 year in a company that had not launched a new product in 6 years• Amazon - Proposed and built 1st fraud office in India RECOGNITION • Nominated by CEOs at Target, PayPal, and Visa for executive leadership development• 5 Technology Patents (Payments, Social Commerce, and Marketing)• 2025 - Products That Count Product Leader award• 2020 - Edmund Hillary Fellowship Fellow• 2016 - Minnesota \"Real Power 50\"• 2014 - iKids \"Best Learning App\" award• 2013 - PYMNTS.com “Most Innovative” award• Featured: Fast Company, Fortune, SF Chronicle (front page), Wired, WSJ GLOBAL• Lived and worked across 9 U.S. states• 8 years living and working in Australia, India, and the UK

Experience

1. Founder and CEO

   Howdo

   Apr 2017 — Present · San Francisco, CA, US

   Helping Fortune 500s, startups, and governments use AI to evolve with Fortune 50 rigor and startup speed- Founded and led AI/ML-powered business mentor platform 5 years before ChatGPT, assembling and self-funding 23-person team across product, engineering, data science, and content- Pioneered NLP, NLG, and reinforcement learning systems for strategic business guidance, solving the attribution problem by hand-curating data points from verified sources- Achieved 50K+ monthly visitors for 18 straight months with $0 marketing spend, registering organic users through product-led growth- Recognized OpenAI\'s $10B Microsoft investment validated product vision but invalidated technical approach (ML with IP attribution vs. hyperscale LLMs), pivoted- Translated proprietary ML training data into open-source innovation curriculum, now training innovators globally at HowDo.com- Selected as Edmund Hillary Fellow in recognition of global impact on innovation education.

Education

• University of Colorado Boulder

  BA, Political Science

Skills

• Team Leadership
• Open Innovation
• Cross-Functional Team Leadership
• User Experience
• Strategy
• E-Commerce
• Mobile Payments
• Executive Management
• Product Innovation
• Team Building
• Rock
• Product Management
• E-Payments
• Mobile Applications
• Start-Ups
• Leadership
• Analytics
• Product Development
• Go-to-Market Strategy
• Social Impact
• Crm
• Mobile Devices
• Customer Relationship Management (Crm)
• Strategic Partnerships
• Software as a Service (Saas)