David Linhardt · Track Record

Eight companies founded. Five Fortune 500 business units. Eight products shipped with AI this year.

Everything on this page is a thing I built or ran, with the number it produced. Where a number is a plan rather than a result, it says so.

02 — New lines of business inside Fortune 500 companies

Five business units, built or turned around.

Company	Role	What I built or turned around	Result
Amazon2019–2020	Senior Leader & Entrepreneur-in-Residence (L7)	New B2B custom-merchandise business, from blank PRFAQ to funding approval and launch Case study →	$350MM year-one revenue plan at 35% margin, approved; launched with early customers
AT&T Wireless1996–1998	Director, Marketing & Product	Created Digital One Rate, the flat-rate national plan that moved the industry to digital Case study →	$1.5BN added to market cap in 90 days
Experian1998–2001	VP, Marketing, Product & Strategy — TEC	Turned around a $57MM division by asking its customers what the team had stopped asking Case study →	–15% to +12% annual growth in under ten months
Yesmail2001–2003	SVP, Data Services	Repositioned from email list manager to omnichannel data business Case study →	First profitable year in company history: –$6MM to +$1.2MM EBITDA in 15 months; sold to InfoUSA
Procter & Gamble1992–1994	Product Development Engineer	Oral care product development (Crest, Scope, Peridex)	Business case and roadmap for a U.S. launch

03 — Companies founded

Eight founded. Seven profitable. Three exits.

Company	Years	What it was	Result
e360Insight	2003–2008	Email performance-prediction platform, 500M+ emails/month Case study →	202% annual growth, 48 consecutive profitable months; acquired
BargainDepot	2003–2008	E-commerce with in-house fulfillment Case study →	Profitable in month one; bootstrapped to $3MM revenue; acquired
Acquisition Science	2004–2021	Opt-in consumer database, 250M+ records Case study →	Profitable for 17 years; exited
LegitLead	2013–2016	Lead-scoring SaaS for education Case study →	Outperformed the category leader 5×; profitable; sold
Datalove	2020–2021	Life-event targeting for custom audiences	Profitable; pivoted to loyalty
ComeWith	2021–2023	Real-world social platform Case study →	30K users, 20K in-person meetups across 60 cities
Joyride	2024–	Rideshare model built around drivers Case study →	Profitable
FounderDojo	2013–	Startup validation program and the Founder's Workbench SaaS	83% of trained founders profitable or exited twelve years on (n=6)

The studio behind them.

Maverick Direct Marketing / MCDM Holdings (2003–2018) built five profitable companies in a row on about $5K of invested capital, a 1,460× cash-over-cash return.

InsightStudios (2021–) is the current studio, and the vehicle for the sponsor-backed AI venture studio.

Eight companies founded. Five Fortune 500 business units. Eight products shipped with AI this year.

Eight production products since February. Just me & AI.

i12s

FounderDojo

Boost

Beefcake

Freethought

Joyride

davelinhardt.com

Journal

Five business units, built or turned around.

Eight founded. Seven profitable. Three exits.

The studio behind them.

Harvard MBA. Purdue engineer.

Harvard Business School

Purdue University

Integrate customer insight into product and business model design.