Seattle
Mitch Ratcliffe is a business, product and marketing leader with 35 years of experience in local media, technology marketing, online and broadcast publishing, digital media, and the on-demand economy. He solves hard problems, coaches teams through product ideation, and creates successful product management and go-to-market programs. He has deep domain expertise in all forms of digital media and marketing, online services, digital products and content strategy.
Mitch has launched numerous digital businesses including the early online news and conferencing company ON24, influence analytics pioneer BuzzLogic (acquired by Twelve-Fold Media), and most recently, The Gig Economy Group. As an advisor and consultant, Mitch has served on the founding board of directors of match.com, supported the business planning and launch of Audible.com and its early podcasting offerings, social media initiatives at Lenovo, and publication turnarounds and launches at Ziff-Davis, SoftBank Conference & Exposition Co., ZDNet, and CNET.
Mitch has crossed boundaries throughout his career, working as a journalist and marketing writer in the San Francisco Bay Area during the PC and early Web era, when he led Seybold’s Digital Media newsletter and Digital World Conference. In recent years, he has collaborated with engineering teams, including at Microsoft. His team was responsible for 50 percent growth in 18 months at Microsoft’s TechNet IT Pro site, where he led editorial and publishing processes. As a member of the Bing Application Experience team that launched the company’s Windows 8 desktop news, finance, and sports apps, he was both editor of the site overnight and senior program manager for the publishing process by day. He is co-inventor of an early social influence analytics system and, at The Gig Economy Group, designed the company’s machine learning-enabled sales coaching platform and marketplace technologies.
Mitch took the first web-only news camera on a U.S. Presidential trip, designed an app store for SoftBank in 1996, and cofounded the San Francisco chapter of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Mitch and his family live in the Pacific Northwest. He has a bionic neck.