When Kane McCord made the leap to join then-budding Denver startup Ibotta nearly eight years ago, he considered it a risky move.
He was nearing a partner position at global management consulting firm McKinsey and Company in Dallas and weighing a move to the Mile High City to plant roots for his family.
“I made, what at the time was a pretty crazy leap, from junior partner at McKinsey to a pre-revenue, ten-person startup that had raised a $3 million seed round of financing,” he said in a recent interview.
The rest was history for McCord and Ibotta.
The mobile rewards platform has grown to more than 700 employees, raised outside capital that values it at north of $1 billion and partnered with brands like Amazon, Target, Walmart and more.
After almost a decade wearing many hats as the company’s chief operating officer, McCord is moving on to a new opportunity that puts him back in an executive role at a rapidly growing startup.
McCord was recently named the president and chief revenue officer at Seattle-based Shelf Engine, a startup that automates ordering for grocers.
Despite his immense pride for what he helped build at Ibotta, McCord said this move brings him back to his favorite startup lifecycle.
“My biggest passion is hiring, growing and scaling large commercial organizations,” he said.
While he said Ibotta still has much room to grow, including a potential publicly traded future, he was craving a return to an earlier stage company and Shelf Engine fit the bill.
But the connection between McCord and the Seattle-based company wasn’t by happenstance.
Ibotta and Shelf Engine share an investor, GGV, and McCord was introduced to the company’s co-founder and CEO Stefan Kalb in what he called a “mentorship” role in the past. The two had kept in touch, but McCord never envisioned an opportunity with Shelf Engine.
That was until Kalb reached out a few months ago for advice on hiring a sales leader to join his startup. While McCord wasn’t a fit for that role, the duo kept in touch and eventually landed on a position that was just right to pry the early Ibotta employee from the Denver unicorn.
"Kane is joining Shelf Engine during a period of exponential growth," Kalb said in a statement. "Kane has a deep understanding of the retailer pain points our technology solves, and his unique background of working with Fortune 500 brands and retailers and scaling a company from pre-revenue to unicorn status makes him a perfect fit for our leadership team."
Shelf Engine, which launched in 2015, uses in-store data from grocers, like products sold and received, as well as out-of-store data, like weather and foot traffic, to automate ordering with the goal of reducing food waste from excess inventory.
Shelf Engine, which buys back any unsold items, has more than 200 employees and lists clients like Walmart, Target and Kroger.
In joining the company, McCord made clear his desire to remain in Denver with his wife and three daughters. Prior to this announcement, Shelf Engine had recently hired an operations executive in the city and will now look to build a formal Denver presence.
“As we hire, we will prioritize the Seattle and Denver marketplaces,” McCord said. “And as we build a core of individuals, I think you’ll see us have a physical presence in Denver.”
In reflecting on his time with Ibotta, McCord was most proud of the impact the company made on the local tech ecosystem. He said the company achieved more than he could have ever imagined and still has more to do.
“It has 700 employees now but that means over the years, we created thousands of jobs,” he said. “The job creation and people growth that happened there was amazing to see.”
Denver is often lauded for its collaborative startup culture and availability of talent, but the city certainly wasn’t always like that. McCord listed the city’s greatest success stories, from Datalogix to Sendgrid, and even Palantir, as proof of how far Denver has come in his time with Ibotta.
As he shifts to a new company, he doesn’t expect the Mile High City’s momentum to slow.
“I think Denver is in the sweet spot. I wouldn’t call it a highly affordable market, but relative to other massive tech hubs, it scores incredibly well on affordability, business friendliness and more,” he said. “I think the evolution has been emerging and the city is really starting to establish itself as that next-level market.”
