WTIA Founder Speaker Series: Leafly Chief Product Officer, Dave Cotter

WTIA’s new speaker series hosted by founder, investor, and author, Dave Parker, will feature well known, local founders. At these events, we’ll discuss the topics usually overlooked like founder mental health, managing interpersonal relationships, bouncing back from failure and much more.Dave’s first guest will be Dave Cotter; they will discuss struggles and victories of the founder journey and what they’ve learned along the way.

About the Speaker

Dave Cotter is a veteran technology leader and entrepreneur. He is currently serving as the Chief Product & Technology Officer at Leafly, a global leader in cannabis education and the largest online platform for vetted retailers. At Leafly, Dave oversees all engineering, product management, UX, data, and IT.

Prior to Leafly, Dave was the VP of Digital Products at Nordstrom, where he oversaw Nordstrom.com, their award-winning mobile application, in-store digital experiences, salesperson tools, digital styling services, retail point-of-sale systems, digital payments, and the supply chain platform for Nordstrom.

Dave arrived at Nordstrom through the acquisition of his start-up company MessageYes, where was founder and CEO. MessageYes was a leading mobile commerce platform that allowed consumers to discover and buy their favorite products via text and app messaging. The technology was acquired and integrated into the Nordstrom application set.

As his recent professional accomplishments and roles imply, Dave is a seasoned technology leader. His prior experience includes senior product and technology roles at the following companies, where he has managed small, scrappy teams innovating product development and large organizations including hundreds of engineers, product managers, and marketing managers.

Dave is also a seasoned entrepreneur. In addition to successfully launching MessageYes, he co-founded CS Adxpose, co-founded SquareHub, and served as entrepreneur-in-residence at Ignition Partners. He has firsthand experience in the challenges of raising capital, attracting talent, and building a company from concept to first product launch.

He has a firm grasp of the many stages of a technology company. His combined large enterprise and startup experiences provide Dave a deep understanding of the talent acquisition and retention challenges facing our industry. He is also a student of public policy and actively engaged in Seattle city council elections, with a strong belief in the need for productive collaboration between government and industry at the city, state, and federal levels.

Dave has also emerged as an active voice in the discussion of social equity and diversity in the Seattle technology community, providing a point of view into how business leaders can take active steps towards dismantling racism. Example articles include:

• Listen, learn and launch: A resource guide to end racism in tech through lasting systemic change
• ‘Racism is a pandemic,’ and this is how the tech industry can be part of the ‘vaccine’
• ‘It’s on us to dismantle racism.’ 10 steps tech and business leaders can take toward equity
• ‘I am hopeful’ on Medium.com

Dave lives in Seattle with his three daughters, a dog, and a cat.

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