Dan Lane
- Based
- London, UK & Ohio, USA
- Experience
- 35+ years
- Markets
- 30+ countries
- Languages
- English, French
About
About Dan
Dan is a vision-driven, hands-on product leader, CEO, board director and operations expert. He left the board of Sony UK in 2008 to dive into the new app economy and has since spent more than 35 years moving between enterprise boardrooms, his own small businesses and a string of startups.
Whether supporting a CEO or serving as one, he stays close to the work: product and project management, business analysis, technical and digital services, operations, sales and marketing strategy, recruiting and mentoring, across global B2B, B2C and direct-to-consumer markets.
A product, user-journey and growth-focused voice in sports, technology and wellness, with deep experience across Europe, the Americas and Asia, Dan's passion is building useful, helpful things for people.
Selected work
Projects & accomplishments
UK Sports Business Council
Council member alongside DCMS, UK Active, governing-body CEOs, the British Olympic Association, McLaren, Nike and Virgin Active. Co-chaired by Premier League Executive Chairman Richard Scudamore and Sports Minister Tracey Crouch, the Council grew the value and visibility of UK sport, from IP, gaming and stadia to grassroots participation.
WOOOBA
Conceived, built and led the world's first pickup basketball app with a team of six: a sports platform that matches same-level players to challenge, chat and practise, finds or creates venues on Google Maps, and carries players seamlessly from search to venue, to invite, to pay and play.
Digital Sports Wallet
Solved one of grassroots sport's oldest headaches, organisers fronting court and pitch rental and then chasing players for money, by building the world's first frictionless peer-to-peer sports wallet with a clean UX and a set of fintech APIs.
Sports Rewards Token
Created one of the first blockchain tokens to reward people for playing grassroots sport, earning value for time played, distance travelled and simply showing up, integrated directly into the fiat sports wallet.
GB Basketball
Signed a partnership with the UK governing body of basketball to grow participation and revenue across more than 2.5 million grassroots players, while managing every technical aspect of the governing body's website.
Youth Sport Trust
Won the UX design work, then took over software development, leading an 18-month rebuild of the Trust's bespoke rewards platform from a monolith into independent microservices used by students, teachers and stakeholders.
OpenTrack
Designed and built the front end of a nationwide track and field platform used as the central race-monitoring system at events across the UK, capturing chip-timed results live in-app and in a made-for-TV broadcast overlay.
Speakers Trust
Engaged by Sir David Norris OBE to create an e-learning platform, based on the WOOOBA concept, that has since trained over 350,000 people through the Jack Petchey Speak Out Challenge, and helped secure its funding.
Career
Experience
- 2016 – PresentLondon, UK
Digital Services Consultancy
Technology & Digital Services Consultant
- Business operations, product development, scoping, UX and software delivery, and consultative business development for clients across many markets.
- 2022 – 2024Chicago, USA
Tackle App
Product Owner, Consultant
- Brought in by investors and the founder to own the product backlog for an automated analytics platform for small businesses.
- Led a fully remote Scrum team and ran face-to-face customer interviews for the UX team.
- 2015 – PresentLondon, UK
WOOOBA Ltd.
CEO, Head of Product
- Built a sports platform that connects, organises and rewards players.
- Devised sport's first peer-to-peer e-wallet and a blockchain-based rewards token.
- 2019Ohio, USA
Oberlin College
Entrepreneur in Residence
- Mentored 50+ students, alumni and early-stage founders alongside TechStars and JumpStart.
- Taught project management, P&L, forecasting and business-model design.
- 2012 – 2015London, UK
Buzzdeck
Partner & CEO
- Led the social-listening analytics platform spun out of AWAL.com (acquired by Kobalt Music).
- Closed deals with Jay-Z's Roc Nation and Sony Music, and led fundraising to a successful exit.
- 2010 – 2012London, UK
OpenText & weComm
VP, Media & Mobility Solutions
- Drove mobile app business development for weComm and, after its acquisition, for $1B NASDAQ-listed OpenText.
- Partnered with Saatchi & Saatchi, Ogilvy, Sony Ericsson, HP, Sky, CNN, Reuters and others.
- 2004 – 2008London, UK
Sony Europe
Board Member & Divisional Director
- Sony UK board member for Semiconductor Electronic Solutions, helping grow revenue from €700M to €1.5B.
- Built a new EMEA division from zero to €16.5M in sales and €1.2M profit, leading 30+ staff across Budapest, Stuttgart, Paris and the UK.
- Supplied Sony technology to Siemens, Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung, Magneti Marelli and more.
- 2000 – 2004London, UK
Unit UK Ltd.
Managing Director
- Launched a B2B electronics manufacturing distribution firm and won partnerships with Sony and Fujifilm.
- Gained EU EUREKA status as a technical development partner.
- 1994 – 2000California, USA & London, UK
Gerber Systems & Barco Gerber
Sales Engineer to Northern European Sales Manager
- Sold to Hewlett Packard, Boeing, Ericsson, Nokia, Cisco and Siemens; relocated to the UK and grew sales from zero to multimillion-dollar levels.
- 1990 – 1991Paris, France
ABC News & WTN
Producer & Freelance Journalist
- Produced news packages and conducted live-feed interviews with diplomats during the Gulf War.
Expertise
- Board leadership & investor relations
- Product ownership & Scrum
- UX & user journeys
- Operations & P&L up to €1.5B
- Global business development
- Fundraising & startup mentoring
- Sports technology
- Fintech & digital wallets
Education
- Colorado State UniversityBA, Speech & Broadcast Communications; minor in Music
- American University of ParisBusiness and Intermediate French
Boards & volunteering
- Board Member, Hoop Dreams Africa: Zambian youth basketball development for social empowerment
- Board Member, Hilltown Youth: supporting families affected by addiction through performance art
- Judge and panellist, Sport England Sports Technology Hackathon
- Ongoing mentor to university and early-stage founders
Outside work
Long-distance running, equitation, skiing, golf, martial arts and competitive basketball.