Product and startup rockstar Dug Nichols, has been added to the OneScreen.ai team as the company’s Chief Product Officer (CPO). OneScreen.ai is a SaaS-enabled B2B market network provider for out-of-home (OOH) advertising. In his 25-year career, Nichols has built various tech startups that have driven big growth. Most recently, he was Head of Product for Minneapolis-based residential real estate startup, HomeSpotter, acquired by Lone Wolf Technologies earlier this year.
“We couldn’t be happier to bring Dug Nichols to OneScreen.ai with his product experience and growth track record that runs deep for his many tech startups,” said Sam Mallikarjunan, co-founder and CEO of OneScreen.ai. “Dug is the perfect CPO to unleash OneScreen.ai’s full potential of modernizing the OOH industry with the first true market network that will not only help marketers win local customers but build local economies with thriving local businesses.”
An avid music lover, Nichols’ career began in the music industry as a performer and recording artist, evolving into positions as a recording producer and engineer in San Francisco. With Silicon Valley just down the road and technology advancing in audio interfaces on the internet, he transitioned from the rock world to the tech world, first joining Thomas Dolby’s Beatnik. He was then recruited to speech-recognition startup Tellme Networks, acquired by Microsoft, now known as Cortana. He worked in branding and marketing at Microsoft for three years following that acquisition.
Nichols returned to his native Minnesota more than a decade ago, first joining local marketing agency, Periscope. He then co-founded and was CEO of kids clothing resale app Kidizen for nearly six years, building it into the largest social marketplace for second hand children’s apparel.
OneScreen.ai was recently selected as one of 10 startups by the Minnesota Twins Accelerator by Techstars. A mentor for the program, Nichols met the OneScreen.ai team through Mentor Madness, a core component of the program, where participating companies meet with mentors in rapid succession for 20-minute pitching and workshop sessions. During this short meeting with two of the OneScreen.ai co-founders, Nichols knew he wanted to be part of OneScreen.ai.
“My sweet spot is helping CEOs and founders figure out how to operationalize and scale their product organizations and business, so this is a match made in heaven,” said Nichols. “OneScreen.ai checks all the startup company boxes for me in terms of people, culture, transparency, and opportunity to disrupt a segment of the world. I am super stoked to join the company and help put all the pieces into place to grow the largest go-to market network platform for OOH.”
OneScreen.ai has announced raising $4.5 million to date.