Background

Mr. Robert Norton, President and CEO of C-Level Enterprises has over 18 years as full-time President and CEO of numerous successful companies. Two companies grew to over $100 million in annual sales while Mr. Norton was there and one grew from $0 to over $1 billion in revenue today. He has helped launch eight startup companies and over 60 different products.  His experience spans all key disciplines needed to start, grow and exit businesses in several industries. He can provide a breath of experience and perspective across all disciplines that only experienced CEOs can.

With 27 total years experience, including former positions as Senior Software Architect, VP Engineering and CTO, Mr. Norton can understand both deep technical issues and strategic management issues. So often operations, product development, sales and marketing issues are deeply interwoven, requiring multidisciplinary experience to effectively solve problems. Mr. Norton’s breath of experience allows for complete validation and/or improvement of entire business models for maximum growth and profit. He is also a specialist at designing long-term competitive advantage into businesses so profit margins can be maintained and so stockholders build sustainable revenue and profits that can justify high multiples on exit.

Detailed Biography

Mr. Norton, President and CEO of C-Level Enterprises, brings a diverse set of experiences and skills to client companies. He has over 27 years of success at building technology products and services, and profitable companies in both the high and low tech sectors.

With 17 years as a Chief Executive Officer at three different start-up companies, Mr. Norton is seasoned at taking companies from their early development stage through their high growth phase. Companies and products he has been responsible for generate well over $1 billion in annual revenues today.

After working with a venture backed firm on a restart/turn-around attempt where he recommended the sale of the company's technology and put together an agreement to sell the company, Mr. Norton founded C-Level Enterprises to begin helping many companies with his experience in high-tech rapid growth situations. His goal was to leverage his expertise across multiple ventures and help companies launch new products and services and grow at accelerated rates, while also helping more established companies break through invisible growth barriers that are holding them back.

At A+America (then Technlogy4Kids.com and sold to Schoolpop.com), a new media, e-commerce and offline media (brick & clicks) K-12 fundraising company, he functioned as President and CEO for 5 years. There he turned the company around from no recurring revenue and substantial debt to sales exceeding $1MM per month just from its e-commerce site on very little capital.

This business was sold after revenues declined and costs increased significantly shortly after Mr. Norton left.

In 1989 Mr. Norton founded and served as President and CEO of HomeView, a multimedia information service company which quickly grew to $156 million in sales and over 125 employees. This business allowed home buyers to do virtual tours of homes at central offices and achieved 72% market penetration of brokers contributing their listing in under 18 months. Sales people using this system had six times the industry average sales at that time and closed one in 7 physical visits after eliminating homes with virtual tours, versus an industry average of 34 visits per sale. The company was sold to a group of investors who wanted to franchise the concept nationally in 1994 shortly after IBM decided to exit the VC investment business and backed out of the funding deal under its new CEO with little notice.

Earlier in his career Mr. Norton held several significant technical and technical management positions including serving from 1984 to 1989 as Senior Architect, CTO/Vice President of Engineering and R & D for Thompson Financial Services and FIRST CALL Corporation. During that period he built several specialized global information systems for Wall Street that collect, aggregate and distribute data in real-time to thousands of customers. As head of product development he developed FIRST CALL, Bond Buyer's VideoMunifacts, Portia, InvesTEXT, Real-time earning estimates and other products. This company was sold in 1986, after which he stayed with the $4 billion International Thomson Organization for three years to run product development and engineering for multiple Thomson owned sister companies and help with acquisitions.

He has also been instrumental in building other enterprise software, MIS systems, information networks and complex software systems for the insurance industry. Mr. Norton also developed several horizontal applications such as sales force automation, billing and security products that spanned multiple industries.

Mr. Norton speaks and has been a panel member at various Boston area universities including MIT, Boston University, Babson and Northeastern and others. Topics include business model development and optimization, entrepreneurship, financing, and startup company management. He is or has been a member of The CEO Group, IdeaSphere, WPI Enterprise Forum, The Association for Corporate Growth, The MIT Enterprise Forum, The National Association of Corporate Directors, The Seaplane Pilots Association and former member and group leader of the SBANE CEO Dialog program.

Mr. Norton enjoys sailing, flying, racquetball/squash, reading and investing.

Mr. Norton participates on non-profit boards and donates both time and money to various local and national causes regularly.