Employee Spotlight: Zach Herz-Roiphe, VP of Business Operations
Zach Herz-Roiphe is Applecart’s VP of Business Operations. At Applecart, Zach leads a team that manages operations across the business - from supporting our go-to-market team with the tools, processes and reporting/analytics needed to bring in and retain business, to building automations to support our day-to-day processes, to helping ideate and design our pricing structure and go-to-market strategy.
Tell us about what you did prior to joining Applecart:
I started my career in management consulting at Bain & Company, where I worked on everything from private equity due diligence to implementing an NPS program at a large cable and media company. Following that, I worked as an investor at a mid-market private equity firm called New Mountain Capital, focusing on investments in the software, insurance and business services sectors. After that I took a bit of a left turn, and was the CFO of a national non-profit organization, The Bail Project (where I still sit on the Board), before joining Applecart.
Why did you decide to join Applecart?
The Bail Project was also a startup - I was the ~15th employee. A key takeaway from my experience there was that I love working in environments where there is no roadmap, but rather where you have to independently develop a hypothesis about how to solve a problem, implement it, and rinse and repeat. So when I was returning to the for-profit sector, I was focused on operating roles at early-stage companies where I would have a chance to participate in strategic decision-making and build things from the ground up. That’s what I saw when I was interviewing at Applecart - and combined with Applecart’s unique product / value prop, and the incredibly impressive team here, it was a no-brainer for me to join.
What is your favorite Applecart use-case?
One of the most exciting things about our product is that the use cases are almost unlimited - it’s valuable in any scenario where you need to influence the decision-making of stakeholders who matter to your business. That said, I’ve always been interested in our bread-and-butter corporate reputation use case. Companies spend so much time generating good content (whether earned or paid media), but don’t have effective tools for getting it in front of the specific people who actually matter. Applecart fills that gap - I like to say it’s as if you could force all of your business’ most important stakeholders to read the newsroom or blog section of your website every month.
What should people outside of Applecart know about Applecart?
Your peers are already using us! Applecart has worked with almost 100 companies in the Fortune 500, not to mention leading trade associations, advocacy organizations, and so on. Communications and corporate affairs professionals across industries are recognizing that Applecart is an indispensable part of the toolkit for reaching the decision makers who matter.
Give us your best fun fact:
I am an aspiring amateur pizzaiolo. We have weekly pizza night at home where I fire up my Ooni pizza oven, complete with a neon sign that my wife bought me for my birthday bearing the name of our future pizza restaurant. I realize that as retirement plans go, the restaurant business might not be the soundest…
