Kate Yoak

Founder and Chief Executive
Officer of Lean Street Company

Kate has over 20 years of experience building products and teams for innovative startups like Idealab!, Oversee.net, Rent.com and Surf Air. As a technology expert, Kate specializes in high performance ad serving, data modeling and analytics. She has hands-on knowledge of diverse open source technology stacks (including older technologies like C++ and Perl, and newer frameworks like NodeJS and Python). She is an advocate for agile methodologies and focuses on product development, QA automation, and Devops systems with emphasis on continuous integration and root cause analysis methodologies.

Previously, Kate was a technical leader for Idealab’s eMachines, helping enable their acquisition of Free PC and the resulting $180 million IPO. She later applied this experience at Oversee.net, building its ad serving product and subsequently moving on to lead technology for their Domain Sponsor division, which defined the modern domain industry. Her technical leadership has helped grow the company to its $400 million valuation in 2008. As a technology consultant, startup enthusiast and organizational coach, Kate has dedicated her career to helping startup founders build winning products and bring them to market effectively – ultimately leading to her founding the consulting practice – Lean Street Company.

Day-to-day, Kate manages company strategy while continuing her hands-on client engagement to ensure rapid innovation and efficient project execution. As an executive, Kate believes in building diverse teams of highly skilled and passionate individuals who share and advocate Lean Street’s vision through their exceptional performance and commitment.