Coaching and advisory for early and growth-stage companies.
ABOUT
OVERVIEW
Grace Chen is a technology company veteran, with twenty years of product and business experience, including at two of the largest and most successful tech companies (Google, Meta), a pre-IPO growth stage company (Square, now Block), and an early stage venture-backed start-up (Common Networks).
Grace has an B.S. in Management Science in Engineering from Stanford University and after schooling, living, and working in the SF Bay Area for 20 years, she is happy to now be residing in beautiful Camden, Maine. She plays pickleball as much as she can and loves swimming in Maine lakes.
BUSINESS LEADERSHIP
As the co-founder, Chief Product Officer, and eventual CEO of Common Networks, Grace led a 75+ person team consisting of departments across software and hardware Product & Engineering, Field Operations, Marketing, Design, Sales & Partnerships, HR, and Support. Common Networks served thousands of home internet customers in the Bay Area and raised over $40M in equity and debt funding from top Silicon Valley investors. In 2021, Grace led a complex division and acquisition of Common Networks by two separate entities, one of which was Meta (formerly Facebook).
At Meta, Grace challenged the strategy and vision of the 200+ person Facebook Connectivity team and was quickly elevated to a leadership position within the org; she led a task force to revamp the organization’s strategy, structure, goals/metrics, and operational model.
PRODUCT STRATEGY & EXECUTION
Grace defined product strategy and led execution of a variety of consumer and business facing products, including Google Offers (now part of Google Ads), Square’s Point-of-Sale and Invoices products, Meta’s VR Fitness and Media products, and a home broadband internet service.
At pre-IPO Square (now Block), she helped lead the transformation of a simple mobile phone credit-card reader into a full featured cloud-based Point-of-Sale system. Grace and her teams launched Square's first employee feature - allowing employees to take payments on behalf of an employer. Their launch customers were the Obama and Romney campaigns in 2012 and within a year the feature quickly grew to account for over 5% of Square’s gross processing volume. She then led the strategy and launch of Square Invoices, which is now a key component of the Square suite of solutions, as well as the international expansion of Square products in Canada, Japan, and Australia.
As a product leader, Grace believes that it is not only important to launch great products, but to know when and how to sunset products. She has worked closely with executive teams at Square, Meta, and Common Networks to retire strategies and products responsibly.
Grace holds multiple patents for her work at Square and Common Networks.
PEOPLE MANAGEMENT
Grace has directly managed teams of executives, product managers, engineering managers, designers, sales, and operations staff. She fosters healthy, diverse teams, while driving hard to meet business goals and managing investors. She believes in being kind rather than nice; clear rather than agreeable. Grace builds trust with her team members by giving and accepting direct feedback, while always assuming good intent. Above all, she holds a high bar and motivates her teams to achieve their highest potential. Grace has years of experience promoting employees and exiting employees for performance issues or otherwise.
Colleagues, direct reports, and managers consistently describe Grace’s style as energetic, open, direct, and growth-minded. As an advisor/coach, Grace helps individuals leverage their strengths to address challenges and opportunities, and she draws from her experiences and creativity to brainstorm solutions.
ORGANIZATIONAL PLANNING
Throughout her career, Grace has built teams from scratch as well as adopted legacy hires, and in both scenarios she has molded high performing teams. She does this by setting clear Objectives and Key Results that map to company level goals, structuring small and nimble teams, and then giving teams and individuals the freedom to creatively reach their goals.
Grace has designed the hiring process and job ladder structure for numerous job functions, at all levels. She believes that every person, regardless of their educational background, could have potential and therefore designs flexible hiring processes to support building a more diverse team that better represents customers. At Common Networks, this included having a completely transparent compensation program and project-based interviews.