Ken Gordon
Verified Expert in Finance
Finance Expert
Washington, DC, United States
Toptal member since May 9, 2018
Ken is a finance expert with 25+ years of leadership experience at startups and Fortune 100 companies. He has supported a $2.5 billion Raytheon division and advised CEOs, private equity investors, Members of Congress, and senior DoD officials on finance and operating strategy. Ken enjoys freelancing as he seeks to leverage his decades of finance and advisory experience on new and exciting challenges.
Career Highlights
Education Highlights
Case Studies
Industry Expertise
Other Expertise
Work Experience
Founder and President
The Granada Group
- Identified, measured, and tracked critical financial metrics driving performance, valuation, and operational efficiency. Helped a client grow operating margins by over 100% by defining, implementing and monitoring profit improvement initiatives including developing a lifetime analysis to isolate unprofitable customers as well as benchmarking overhead spending against peers to identify opportunities for cost rationalization.
- Built financial models to support internal projections and external fundraising activities. Provided a sell-side client with financial projections that helped to crystallize that the company was worth 60% more than the value reflected in a Letter of Intent under consideration.
- Supported client fundraising, built pitch decks, compiled financial projections, made introductions to investors, participated in negotiations and advised on term sheet submissions helping to raise $20+ million of capital for early-stage companies.
- Assisted companies and private equity firms in the identification of acquisition targets in targeted industries for five completed transactions; led outreach efforts to potential acquisition candidates to assess their interest; negotiated deal terms; developed the investment memorandum with comprehensive market analysis, operational assessment, financial projections, and post-close investment thesis execution.
Co-founder and CEO
VALR
- Co-founded this tech startup to use AI-driven algorithms in support of fitness training for endurance athletes. Developed an operating plan, competitive and go-to-market strategies, cost model, and developed relationships with key strategic partners.
- Completed three-statement financial projections, including a detailed expense model and bottoms-up revenue projections, as well as a capitalization table to support investor discussions.
- Led fundraising efforts resulting in more than $2 million raised from individual and institutional investors.
- Built the company to 11 employees, developing and executing against operational goals, leading and directing activities in support of critical milestones, and allocating resources to support execution.
- Co-authored two patents awarded on the use of a particular type of data to support athletic training.
Academic Dean and Adjunct Professor
California University of Management and Sciences
- Oversaw the academic curriculum across CalUMS's degree programs. Led the 32 members of the faculty teaching more than 800 students.
- Taught classes in operations, strategy, marketing, and management as part of the school's MBA curriculum.
- Directed the academic team certification process during a critical period, resulting in the University's recertification by both its accreditation authority and the State Council of Higher Education.
Chief Operating Officer
CSSI
- Held management role with responsibility for a $70 million revenue division and 300 employees.
- Grew revenues at a 22% annual rate with significantly higher increases to operating margin.
- Redesigned processes and IT infrastructure supporting business development, financial management, business operations, and human resources to successfully scale accelerating growth and establish a more competitive strategic position.
- Restructured the employee accounting framework after a significant decrease in spending from a large customer nearly resulted in a reduction of 5% of the company's workforce. The new framework enabled the company to avoid salary reductions and limited the number of employees impacted by this event by 66%.
- Identified and engaged with a significant, dissatisfied customer and implemented corrective actions successfully reestablishing and growing relationship, preserving 30% of divisional revenue.
President
Antelum Capital Partners
- Founded and raised capital for Antelum, a search fund focused on leverage buyout opportunities. Developed the investment memorandum, investor presentation, and financial projections, and sourced and built a pipeline of potential investors.
- Instituted a strategy consulting practice as an additional service, advising early-stage startups and small companies on fundraising, finance strategy, and capital structure.
- Created and managed a buy-side deal pipeline that identified 795 acquisition opportunities in 30 months.
- Completed financial analyses of potential target companies to assess ROI for contemplated transactions.
- Built and managed a business development pipeline process for a consulting practice, bringing on nearly five new clients per year.
Director of Strategic Accounts
Raytheon
- Managed the strategic planning process for a $700 million portfolio of information systems.
- Led teams in building and executing strategies to pursue opportunities in targeted industries and improving business development efforts by implementing a disciplined and quantitative approach to growth. These efforts led to 14% annual growth and a 9% increase in operating margin.
- Contributed to several successful multi-billion dollar business development opportunities, applying an understanding of the customer environment to help shape proposals and performing competitive analysis to evaluate the efficacy of Raytheon's differentiation relative to competing proposals.
- Supported the evaluation of acquisition candidates to assess their strategic fit with the Raytheon business unit. Assessed target company product offerings and mapped them to Raytheon product lines to determine strategic fit, the technological innovation opportunities from target company intellectual property, and the strategic value of the target company's customer base.
- Integrated acquired companies into Raytheon operations, enabling established product lines to incorporate the innovative technologies of acquired firms.
Special Assistant to the Under Secretary of Defense (AT&L)
U.S. Department of Defense
- Served as Chief of Staff acting on the Under Secretary's behalf to oversee $140 billion of the Department of Defense's budget as well as 237,000 personnel.
- Participated in the Defense Acquisition Board oversight of multi-billion dollar defense systems to incorporate private sector best practices.
- Oversaw strategies to engage Capitol Hill, the White House, and the media on major defense program procurement decisions, resulting in broader acceptance of major Department actions.
- Implemented the creation of an oversight board to address the Department of Defense's anti-terror data mining policies after international publicity surrounding these activities and was appointed as the board's first Executive Director helping to significantly reduce criticism for these efforts from Congress and the media.
- Appointed to this employment position by the President of the United States to serve as a member of the Senior Executive Service.
Professional Staff Member
U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science
- Drafted legislation and contributed to Congressional oversight of science and technology programs to improve management of these initiatives.
- Negotiated with senior agency officials to balance Congressional and Executive Branch priorities.
- Built an issue coalition to pressure NASA to enact significant changes in acquisition policy resulting in $674 million of revenue being made available to commercial providers.
- Intervened on behalf of a company disputing the unfair award of a $29.2 million contract, leading to a reversal of the decision and a final award in their favor.
Education
Master of Business Administration (MBA) Degree in Finance
University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business - Philadelphia, PA
Master's Degree in Aerospace Engineering
University of Southern California - Los Angeles, CA
Master's Degree in Aerospace Engineering
University of Michigan - Ann Arbor, MI
Skills
Finance
Private Equity Valuation, Statement of Cash Flows, Balance Sheets, Integrated Financial Statements, Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A), Fundraising, Seed Fundraising, Growth Capital Raising, Financial Modeling, Leveraged Buyout Modeling, Value Creation, P&L Forecasting, External Financial Reporting, Pro Forma Financial Statements, DCF Valuation, Valuation Analysis, Valuation Multiples, Valuation Modeling, Valuation, Startup Funding, Comparable Company Analysis, Forecasting, Revenue & Expense Projections, M&A (Sell-side), M&A (Buy-side), M&A Modeling, Budget Controls, Cost Estimation, Capital, Junior Capital, Equity Capital, Cost Benchmarking, Cost Management, Operational Finance, Corporate Finance, Private Equity, Capital Raising, Capital Budgeting, Growth Equity, Financial Reporting, Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A), Financial Management, Finance Strategy, Three-statement Modeling, Profit & Loss (P&L), Budgeting, Cost of Capital, Finance Operation Improvements, Venture Funding, Economic Cost
Industry Expertise
Aerospace & Defense, New Business Ventures, Government, Exercise & Fitness, Small Business, Early-stage Startups, Technology, Venture Capital
Geographic Expertise
United States, Europe, European Union (EU), Western Europe, France, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Brazil, China, South America
Output Software
Excel 2010, Excel 2007, Excel 2016, Microsoft Excel, Excel 2013, Microsoft PowerPoint
Data & Analysis Software
Capital IQ, VentureXpert, Thomson Reuters
Other
Operating Models, Business Models, Financial Statements, Financial Statement Preparation, Income Statements, Cash Flow Analysis, Leveraged Finance, Operations, Operations Strategy, Pitch Decks, Pitch Preparation, Pitch Presentations, Strategy, Growth Strategy, Revenue Strategy, P&L Management, Pitch Books, Business Strategy, Business Development, New Business Development, Government Contracting, Federal Government Finance, Fitness, Business Plan Consulting, Pitch Deck Consultant, Business Model Strategy, Small & Medium-sized Enterprises (SME), Education, Growth, Fundraising, Early-stage Funding, Business, Business Research, Business Planning, Exit Strategy, Product Strategy, Value Proposition, Budget Modeling, Annual Budgets, Project Budget Management, Capital Advisory, Private Placement Memoranda, Reg D Private Placements, Technology Sourcing, Leverage Analysis, Operating Analysis, Operations Reviews, Excel Modeling, Excel Reporting, Investment Capital Raising, Leveraged Buyout (LBO), Fundraising Strategy, Early-stage Venture Capital, Investments, Strategic Planning & Execution, Linear Programming, Regression Modeling, Excel Add-ins, S&P Capital IQ, Economics, Process Economics, Unit Economics, Economic Analysis, Marketing, Marketing Mix, Management, Communications Management, Marketing Communications (MarCom), Communication Management, Statistics, Organizational Design, Digital Marketing, Digital Marketing Strategy, International Development & Economics, Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP), Leadership
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