David Joosten is Crimson Advantage’s Chief Technology Officer and a serial entrepreneur. He began his career in Google’s marketing rotational program, then went on to start a data company called Metria Analytics and a software company focusing on enterprise companies called GrowthLoop (formerly Flywheel Software). At Crimson, he contributes in engineering and analytics. David has learned much from his diverse experiences and enjoys bringing them to the table, with his central value of persistence.
From 6 Figures on eBay to Harvard
Joosten was always interested in entrepreneurship. In high school, he started his own business with his brother, Nicolas, as a power seller on eBay, selling DVDs and video games, and raked in over $100,000 in the first full year. When he was accepted to Harvard, he chose to study economics and computer science because he believed it would provide him with the skills to start his own business some day.
Over summers throughout his college years, David interned primarily at financial corporations such as UBS and Morgan Stanley due to his connections in the field and his interest in economics.
“These experiences ended up being important because I really was able to see how to operate in a corporate setting,” he reflected.
“Then, I took that education further by cross-enrolling in MIT for an accounting class. I was always a voracious learner, and I applied this in the corporate environment as well as in the classroom.”
Post Grad Life at Google and Stanford
After college, David entered an associate product marketing program at Google.
“This program ended up becoming a pivotal part of my career,” Joosten shared. “The peers I was placed with were the smartest people I’d ever met, in a practical way.”
While there, individuals such as Astro Teller (head of GoogleX) and Sundar Pichai (head of Google Chrome at the time), inspired him most. Their common thread? Stanford’s Masters program in Computer Science.
He knew that if ever were to follow his dream of starting a business, he would have to find a technical co-founder to develop a product, or become a technical co-founder himself. So, he ultimately pursued the same program at Stanford. This educational step would prove vital when he started his first business, Metria Analytics.
Metria Analytics’s Lifetime
Metria, started in 2014, designed a privacy-friendly way to aggregate and anonymous consumer credit card data to report on trends. This information gave small businesses critical customer insights, such as the zip codes of store visitors.
“We were giving small businesses the visibility that big businesses have,” Joosten explained. He programmed the app himself and did sales through his own network.
Beginning in 2017, Metria had an increasingly difficult time licensing and accessing the data it would need to serve its customers.
“We realized that you can’t build a sustainable long term business on someone else’s platform,” Joosten reflected. “So, we made the difficult decision to wind it down, which came to an end earlier this year.” Upon closing, investors had a 10-12x exit.
Joosten’s Career Today
With Metria winding down, Joosten started GrowthLoop, his latest startup. He started it with Chris Sell, a friend of his from the Google program. GrowthLoop provides a customer audience platform that applies data science for large marketing teams.
“It ties into what we do at Crimson but our customers have a different profile,” Joosten explained. “GrowthLoop is more for companies who have millions of active customers and build out large cloud data systems to support their marketing efforts.”
From an official business standpoint, Joosten is the CTO of Crimson. But he also brings significant experience and insight from his other roles, specifically in the application of data science. In short, he focuses on engineering and analytics when they come up.
“I do a lot of what’s in the ‘everything else’ pile,” he noted. “Operational responsibilities, such as accounts receivable, payable, legal, taxes, and sales.”
Joosten Outside the Business Realm
On a personal note, Joosten has a one year old son named Liam.
“He helps me rediscover a lot of the wonder that we all had as kids, when everything was new,” he reflects.
And as for Joosten’s values, it’s all in thoughtful persistence.
“Persistence and perseverance are the greatest indicators of entrepreneurial outcomes,” Joosten added. “There’s a quote that says you have to eat an elephant one bite at a time. So much goes into a successful business, and you have to focus on just a few things every day.”
That’s why he originally named his latest company Flywheel: when there’s specific pressure applied in the same direction for a long enough period of time, unstoppable momentum occurs. Joosten believes that this is the key to getting anywhere, in business and in life.
