Larry Pendergrass
Verified Expert in Finance
Management Consulting Expert
Larry is an expert in product development and has commercialized 200+ products. With 40 years in high tech, including 20 years as an executive, he specializes in complex combinations of hardware and software. He has leadership and direct experience in all aspects of product development, including engineering, manufacturing, and marketing. Larry's enterprise experience includes HP, Agilent, and Keithley, which was purchased by Tektronix/Danaher. He has an MBA and a master's degree in physics.
Career Highlights
Education Highlights
Case Studies
Expertise
Work Experience
Owner
ExecNPD Source, LLC
- Performed executive management consulting for new product development.
- Served board members and executives from primarily high-tech companies.
- Consulted on new product development pipelines: product management, including strategy and project portfolio management; engineering execution; and leadership training and development.
- Published a book entitled Core Tenets for New Product Development Leaders, available on Amazon.
VP of WiFi Development | Site General Manager
Keysight Technologies
- Served as the wifi test systems business owner and site GM, owning the P&L, wifi engineering, product management, and manufacturing. Managed 70 people in five sites in the United States, Canada, and Europe and an $11 million annual budget.
- Integrated an acquired company with a startup culture into Keysight, bringing the necessary structure and process to make it a successful division. This was a major change management project.
- Spearheaded a complex re-engineering plan to improve product strategy, planning, and development; manufacturing; and customer focus. This included massive changes in processes, training, tools, equipment, leverage/reuse, and platform management.
- Replaced the entire management team in engineering, increased communications to the team and sponsors, and nurtured executive-level relationships with key customers.
- Implemented changes that significantly improved teamwork, morale, shipment quality, assurance of supply, customer-focused design, and cross-functional decision-making while reducing attrition from 20% to 2% per year.
- Created a NIST traceable manufacturing test process, reduced the backlog by 10x, and improved manufacturing quality by 5x.
- Revealed design philosophy issues inherent in the architecture and plotted a course toward future improvements, including high leverage/reuse across the entire company. Execution led to 2x revenue growth and gross profit in two years.
EVP of Engineering | CTO
uBeam Inc. (Now SonicEnergy)
- Served as an executive team member, officer, EVP of new products, and CTO. Owned research, engineering, and creation and management of the product management department. Managed around 25 people at two sites with a $7 million annual budget.
- Led significant aspects of this late-stage, pre-sales startup focused on wireless power transfer to cell phones through airborne ultrasound.
- Performed managerial and technical work, including system and non-linear acoustics modeling, airborne ultrasonic transducers, phased arrays, a vision system, beamforming, firmware, and software.
- Produced a POC model used for technology validation, public demos, and fundraising of $10 million+. Drove a change in strategy from the initial target market and product to a more practical product-market fit.
SVP of Engineering
Loud Technologies, Inc. (Now LOUD Audio)
- Served as an executive team member, officer, and SVP of new products, sharing P&L responsibility with the executive team and partnering with the product management team.
- Managed around 60 people in four sites in the United States, Canada, and China and a $12 million annual budget.
- Led new product engineering, including digital and analog audio mixers, PA and studio monitor loudspeakers, recording interfaces, and guitar amplifiers.
- Advised a less experienced product management director on product strategy, roadmaps, and project portfolio management.
- Completely re-engineered the organization. Devised and initiated a significant change management project to create a world-class product development organization.
- Transitioned toward modern design and development techniques, including Lean, Agile, and Flow. Increased design outsourcing, rapid prototyping, platform management, and financially and metric-driven actions.
Principal
TechZecs, LLC
- Completed around 40 consulting assignments over three years. Generated new executive-level contracts and executed project-based consulting.
- Served as one of 15 senior executive consultants, providing consulting services to executives from high-tech companies.
- Consulted on M&A targets and partnerships, corporate and product strategy assessment and training, product management, project portfolio management, operations and execution improvements, and leadership development.
EVP of New Products | CTO
Keithley Instruments (Purchased by Tektronix/Danaher)
- Served as an executive team member, officer, EVP of products, and CTO. Shared P&L responsibility with the executive team and partnered with the product management team. Managed 200+ people in the US, China, and India and a $37 million annual budget.
- Increased revenue by 35%, gross margins by 10 pts, and revenue from new products to 35%.
- Created new capabilities in RF wireless, ultrafast pulse, and CV, adding $30 million in annual incremental revenue.
- Launched two new-to-company product categories (an RF vector signal analyzer and source) within two years of the first hires, delivering $10 million in first-year revenue. The products were recognized for leadership and received numerous awards.
- Significantly reduced project cost and cycle time by introducing forward-looking platform management; rapid prototyping; and Lean, Agile, and Flow methods.
- Improved schedule accuracy by more than 3x, reduced cycle time by more than 30%, and increased the number of product releases by 5x for platforms and 10x for extensions.
- Improved the quality of products 2-4x while eliminating manufacturing burn-in.
- Completed pre-offer research for 65 potential acquisitions with annual revenue ranging from $10 million to $700 million.
- Improved EAR compliance and established an ITAR-compliant product development process, reducing annual revenue at risk by $10 million.
- Nurtured relationships with key customer executives, contributing to $10 million per year in salvaged contracts.
Engineering, Science, and Management Roles
Agilent Technologies (Previously Part of HP)
- Progressed through design engineering, physics, product management, team lead, and management positions up to director level.
- Led or contributed to breakthroughs in a wide range of industry solutions: medical imaging, semiconductors and other discrete devices, materials research and crystal growth, test and measurement, and wireless communications.
- Played a pivotal role in innovations and advances in diverse technologies: electronics, photonics and optics, acoustics, magnetics, DSP, RF and microwave, and embedded and application software.
Education
Master's Degree in Business Administration (MBA)
Case Western Reserve University - Cleveland, OH, USA
Master's Degree in Physics
University of California - Davis, CA, USA
Bachelor's Degree in Physics
California State University - San Diego, CA
Certifications
Leadership Development Program
Eckerd College
Strategic Marketing Management
Stanford Graduate School of Business
Management of High-Tech Companies
AeA/Stanford Executive Education
How to Work with Toptal
Toptal matches you directly with global industry experts from our network in hours—not weeks or months.
Share your needs
Choose your talent
Start your risk-free talent trial
Top talent is in high demand.
Start hiring