Thumb: Hadley Harris

About The Company:

A few years ago Thumb was incubated with the goal of helping people get instant opinions while shopping. After launching the concept in 2010, we were surprised to find that people wanted to use the Thumb to get and give feedback in virtually every area of life (music, artwork, shopping, hairstyles, relationships, movies, food, etc.). When combining the breadth and speed of these shared opinions, tons of simultaneous conversations were sparked around things that mattered. And just as quickly, those conversations turned into meaningful connections between like-minded individuals.

About Hadley Harris:

Hadley is a Founding General Partner at ENIAC Ventures and the Chief Business Development Officer at Thumb. He has been actively working at the intersection of business and technology for more than 13 years. He is a noted expert in user acquisition, monetization and seed stage investing.

At Thumb, Hadley runs all business Development and Marketing activities. Thumb boasts the 2^nd highest user engagement of any social network, next to Facebook, with the average user spending 4 hours per month on the platform. Prior to Thumb, he was an executive at Vlingo, acquired by Nuance Communications for $225,000,000, where he held the roles of Head of Business & Market Strategy and Vice President of Marketing. At Vlingo, Hadley was responsible for the firm’s user acquisition and monetization. Since joining in 2007, Hadley also led Vlingo’s efforts in business development and finance. Before heading to Vlingo, Hadley worked at Charles River Ventures where he spent time helping with mobile investments while looking for a startup team to join. Prior to that, Hadley held a variety of roles at large organizations including Corporate Strategy for Samsung and Product Management at Microsoft.

Hadley has been quoted or profiled in Forbes, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, GigaOm, Business Insider, MIT Technology Review and interviewed on Fox Business News. He was also named New York’s Best Early Stage Investors by Business Insider in 2012.

Hadley holds an MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelors of Science in Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania.

Q&A With Hadley

Why are you an entrepreneur?

There’s no better way to have a deep impact on the world than being an entrepreneur. We’re creating things that never existed before. I’m particularly focused in starting and funding startups in the mobile space. There are almost 6 billion phones in the world today. Our companies have the unique ability to reach a majority of the world’s population. Its easy to get out of bed in the morning when you know you can have a tangible impact on the lives of 6 billion people.

What can a fellow learn from you?

The advantage of working with me is that I’m involved with a broad set of projects so my fellow will get exposed to lots of different stuff. Right now I’m an executive at one company, board member of another and investor/advisor in 32 others. Although all our companies are mobile, they play in a wide range of areas including: social, education, enterprise, commerce, big data, cloud and adtech.

Additionally, I really enjoy teaching and mentoring people so I hope that my fellow will learn a lot from me.

What Will Your Fellow Be Exposed To?

They’ll get exposed to everything I work on:
Business development
Sales
Marketing
Finance
Product management
Fundraising
Board management
Getting pitched by start ups

What do you expect out of a fellow?

I’m looking for someone who:

Works hard

Wants to learn

Likes to have fun

Has really big goals

What makes your startup unique?

I split my time between Thumb and Eniac. Both are unique and exciting organizations. Thumb is a mobile social app with super high engagement per user. It allows users to get instant feedback to any question. Thumb has the potential to change that way people make decision in their daily lives, allowing them to instantly crowd source any question they might have. Eniac is the world’s first venture capital firm focused exclusively on mobile companies. We work with entrepreneurs at the very earliest stages of their startups. With 34 companies in our portfolio with more to come, we uniquely get exposed to a ton of different exciting startups.