Founder & Managing Partner

Jan 2003-Jan 2014

Pittsburgh, PA

  • Budgeting, Planning & Innovation: Founded and managed a DVD rental store with over 9,500 members and a staff of 2-6 employees, curated an eclectic inventory of more than 18,000 movies, and creatively maintained and operated a successful retail business within a 250-square-foot space inside a coffee shop.
  • Project Management: Managed small team of external software developers and a designer for development of Pittsburgh’s only interactive video rental store website.
    • Wrote HTML and most of CSS for website; and innovated basic web strategy using Agile software development methodology to implement custom, full-featured content management solution — which was coded in PHP, SQL, JavaScript and Perl — including real-time product availability status, member rental histories, ratings/reviews, automated new release RSS feed, user-generated wish lists, blog integration (WordPress), etc.
    • Regularly communicated with user community to understand how members used our site; translated customer requests into formalized technical requirements, communicating to development team via Base Camp; participated in gap analysis to find solutions to fill voids, included exciting new functionality, and evaluated potential workarounds; and performed feature acceptance testing prior to deployment.
  • Business Development & Marketing: Generated innovative local and national partnerships; grassroots marketing programs, video podcasts, and an amateur athletic club; and publicity campaigns, consistently earning us awards and media coverage.
    • Pittsburgh Magazine Best of the ‘Burgh 2010, Pittsburgh City Paper “Best place to rent movies that isn’t the Internet” (2008); and Pittsburgh City Paper Best DVD/Video Rental Store (2004)

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"This place is f*#kin' great." ~ Giovanni Ribisi (9/30/04), while taking a break from the 10th & Wolf shoot on Taylor Street.
Jennifer Love Hewitt visiting Dreaming Ant.