Resume

Taylor Davidson helps entrepreneurs and investors create and use financial models for business decisions through his template financial models, professional development classes, and strategic advisory services at Foresight. He has worked with over 50k founders and investors worldwide since 1998 on financial projections, investment strategy, fundraising, and business strategy. Longer bio at Hello, press and headshot at Press, testimonials and more at LinkedIn.

Experience

Founder and Managing Director
Unstructured Ventures, LLC
Feb 2017 - Present (Full-time)
Nov 2008 - Jan 2017 (Part-time)
Pittsburgh, PA

Unstructured Ventures (dba Foresight) is a product and service company that helps entrepreneurs and investors create and use financial models for business decisions. Sole developer and creator of template financial models used by over 50k entrepreneurs and investors worldwide since 1998. Achieved $1 MM in lifetime financial model sales in 2023.
Financial Consultant: Consultant for hundreds of companies on financial projections, budgeting, annual planning, investment strategy, capital structure, fundraising, and business strategy for companies raising preseed through Series B investment rounds of equity and convertibles. Consultant for hundreds of emerging venture capital managers raising funds I-II, assisting with creating investment strategy, portfolio construction, portfolio returns forecasting, operational expense forecasting, and communicating investment strategies to potential limited partners. Consultant on numerous seed through Series B fundraising rounds and exit events, assisting lawyers, investors, and company executives with financial models and analyses.
Professional Development: Creator of professional development classes teaching capitalization tables and exit waterfalls taken by over 300 entrepreneurs, investors, advisors, heads of finance, and accountants. Creator of professional development class teaching general partners at emerging venture capital funds how to create forecasts for venture funds. Built all training materials, slides, spreadsheets, and content, and sole teacher and facilitator.
Education: Lecturer at Carnegie Mellon University, Columbia University, School of Visual Arts (SVA), General Assembly, Founder Institute, Entrepreneur First, GoingVC, and numerous startup and venture accelerators in the USA and abroad on the topics of financial modeling, revenue forecasting, unit economics, venture fund modeling, and capitalization tables.

Growth and Analytics
Moment
Nov 2014 - Jan 2017
Remote

Moment is a venture capital-backed hardware and software company focused on the photography industry.
Financial Forecasting: Led sales forecasting, building and managing sales forecasts for over 50 physical SKUs and variants. Managed reconciliation and variance analysis of actual sales to budgeted sales, building processes to decipher variances and update inventory purchasing based on manufacturing timelines, delivery timeframes, and inventory levels across three warehouses worldwide.
Growth and Analytics: Managed growth team, paid marketing, and website product teams.
Data Education: Built analytics education series to help growth and product teams learn how to use data to analyze performance and inform growth, marketing, and product efforts.
Marketing: Created and managed marketing and post-transaction email series to prospective and current customers.

Investor-in-Residence
Venture for America
Jan 2015 - Sep 2015
New York, NY

Venture for America (VFA) is a nonprofit organization that places recent college grads with startups in emerging cities, helping build businesses, create jobs, and make an impact.
Assisted in running VFA’s first accelerator for Fellow-founded startups and helped Fellows navigate the process of building an idea into a funded company. Assisted in creating an accelerator mentorship program and educational series bringing in venture capitalists and entrepreneurs to meet and teach accelerator participants.

Director, kbs+ Ventures
Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal + Partners
Apr 2011 - Jul 2014
New York, NY

Venture Capital: kbs+p Ventures was the thematic investment arm of kirshenbaum bond senecal and partners, an agency of a publicly traded marketing services organization.
Investment Sourcing, Due Diligence, and Deal Execution: Sourced potential early-stage investments and managed investment due diligence, portfolio support, and investing team.
Professional Education: Co-created and ran an internal educational program called kbs+ Ventures Fellows, which taught kbs+ employees about venture capital and entrepreneurship. He co-curated the book Creative Entrepreneurship to share this educational goal with anyone in the world.

Business Manager, Marketing Strategy (US Card)
Capital One Financial
Aug 2005 - Nov 2008
McLean, VA
Richmond, VA

Industry Experience: Diversified consumer financial services company. Primarily focused on marketing and product strategy in USA consumer credit card division.
Finance Management: Managed strategy, $15 million budget and team focused on suite of products and strategies aimed at building customer loyalty and engagement. Led a team analytically developing, testing, refining and implementing a mix of product and marketing strategies, running campaigns sending mail and email to 40 million and 25 million people every month, respectively. Managed complete product strategy and implementation, including customer needs evaluation, product strategy, product launch planning, marketing communications, channel strategy, cross-functional execution planning and post-campaign performance analysis.
Product Innovation: Developed innovative product, service and marketing solutions to solve customer needs. Launched and actively contributed to internal blog about innovation, focusing on trends and innovations from a wide range of industries and applying insights to financial services.

Senior Consultant, Business Strategy Group
inCode Telecom Group
Aug 2004 - Aug 2005
McLean, VA

Industry Experience: Technology and business strategy consulting services to the wireless telecommunications industry.
Project Experience: Prominent roles in delivering product strategies for multiple Fortune 100 clients. Focused on financial modeling, financial analysis, market research and business case development. Primary project topics included network infrastructure strategies, wireless-wireline convergence and MVNOs.

Summer Investment Associate
Illinois Ventures, LLC
Jun 2003 - Aug 2003
Champaign, IL

Industry Experience: Early stage venture capital firm focused on technology originating from the University of Illinois system. Evaluated software and basic engineering investments.
Investment Analysis: Conducted due diligence of 11 investment proposals, focusing on market, competitive, financial and business plan analysis. Wrote six Investment Memorandums for presentation to the Investment Committee. Funded four transactions.
Strategy Development: Created due diligence procedures and templates for market, competitive and customer analysis.

Manager, Finance
Associate, Business Development
C-SAM, Inc.
Apr 2000 - Jan 2002
Oak Brook, IL

Industry Experience: Wireless application start-up concentrated on developing digital wallet and payment platform for mobile devices. Primary clients included major wireless carriers and financial institutions
Leadership: Managed financial analysis team, overseeing financial plans for all projects globally.
Business Development: Aided senior management in raising investment capital by presenting to potential investors. Designed approximately 15 business proposals and projects in a small team environment, focusing on European business development. Attended industry conferences in Europe and US to present the company and build business relationships.
Strategy Development: Developed and wrote company business plans and financial projections. Constructed corporate strategy, business cases and revenue models, collaborating with senior executives in finance, business development and product development.
Financial Analysis: Designed financial models for over 15 business plans and projects, creating template models for all analysts in firm.
Industry Analysis: Led continual monitoring of industry trends, competitive landscape and intellectual property position of company.

Investment Associate
Cherokee Equity Holdings, LLC
Jun 1998 - Mar 2000
Raleigh, NC

Industry Experience: Private equity investment firm (sister firm of Cherokee Investment Partners, a $255 million fund) concentrated on performing leveraged build-ups executed through purchasing ownership stakes in privately held companies.
Investment Analysis: Analyzed 30 potential acquisitions and closed $6 million asset purchase. Conducted financial modeling analysis and accounting examination of financials.
Valuations: Evaluated business plans and prepared valuations using discounted cash flow and earnings multiples methods. Designed deal structures and purchase proposals for acquisition targets.
Strategy Development: Wrote sections of business plan and built consolidated financial model for purposes of raising investment capital.

Education

Carnegie Mellon University - Tepper School of Business
MBA, Finance, Accounting
2002 - 2004
Pittsburgh, PA

Activities and societies: Beta Gamma Sigma Honor Society
GPA 4.0/4.0, University Honors (Top 10% of Class)

University of Virginia
BA, Economics
1995 - 1998
Charlottesville, VA

GPA 3.6/4.0, Dean’s List. Graduated in three years.

American Community School (ACS) Cobham
High School
1992 - 1995
London, England

Certifications

FAST Level 1 Certification
The FAST Standard Organisation
Issued Mar 2017
Certificate

Passed assessment for financial modeling in Excel using the Fast Standard

Skills, Hobbies

Photographer
Mar 2010 - Dec 2017
New Orleans, LA & New York, NY & Pittsburgh, PA

Professional business conference and event photographer. Clients included the Clinton Global Initiative, The Economist, CNN, Rockefeller Foundation, and more.