Michael Akkerman

Driving Growth through Strategic Product Vision, Partnerships, and Commercial Go-To-Market Expertise | CBO @ DT | GM @ Uber | CPO @ Cardlytics (CDLX) | Partnerships @ Pinterest

Digital Turbineex-Uberex-Beach Road Consulting

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Michael Akkerman is an accomplished C-level executive with a proven track record of building and operating both privately-held and public companies across digital advertising, scaled marketplaces, loyalty, consumer products, and financial services.

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He was most recently Chief Product & Strategy Officer at Cardlytics (CDLX), a digital advertising walled garden that allows advertiser-funded offers to reach 180M MAUs via their bank’s native environments (Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, ). Cardlytics grew from $350M to $4B in market cap during his tenure, where he directly oversaw $1B worth of M&A activity in 2021 alone. He also led the build of their new self-service advertising platform, new ad server, bank governance and auditing applications, and redeveloped the banks' user interfaces. Prior to CDLX, Michael was with Pinterest (PINS) as the Global Head of Pinterest Partners. At Pinterest, he was responsible for driving $500M in global total revenue, with 50%+ YOY growth and during the pinnacle time of their IPO. During 2017 and 2018, 50% of Pinterest revenue flowed through Michael’s channel. He oversaw growing and managing the ecosystem of 120+ strategic technology partners across commerce, data, and ads, working with some of the largest brands and advertisers around the world. Before joining Pinterest, Michael was a Global Vice President at Kenshoo, an enterprise SaaS digital marketing software company. At Kenshoo he helped secure a $20M Growth Round from Bain Capital in 2014. He also spearheaded the evolution of the company-wide sales approach towards enterprise solution suite selling, a major shift for the company. Michael is experienced in defining a strategic operational vision across product, sales, corporate development, and partnerships as well as optimizing major marketplaces at scale. He has a proven ability at fostering high-growth teams that execute and deliver business value. Most recently, he built and led a 50-person product organization with a key focus on diversity and inclusion. At the same time he additionally oversaw a 220-person Engineering and Technology organization. Based in NYC and originally from Sydney, Michael is a mentor for the startup incubator Techstars, and also involved with the Australian Trade Commission to help Australian companies find success and new opportunities in the US. He is an avid seed-investor and both consults for, and acts as an advisor to numerous companies looking to scale.