About
Skills & KnowledgeDJ is a highly successful full-stack developer and entrepreneur who has seamlessly blended his technical prowess with a keen business acumen. With a knack for solving complex problems and an innovative spirit, he has not only built cutting-edge software applications but also founded and successfully exited his previous tech startup (mid-seven figures), lead teams of 30+ individuals across various departments, served as Senior Vice President of a publicly traded company ($500M Market Cap) and more.
- AWS - MSK
- AWS - Kinesis Firehose (Streams / Firehose)
- AWS - DynamoDB
- AWS - ElasticSearch (Redis)
- AWS - Redshift
- AWS - RDS (MySQL, Postgres)
- AWS - DMS (Data Migration Services)
- AWS - Athena
- AWS - Route53
- AWS - EC2, ELB, WAF
- AWS - SES
- AWS - API Gateway
- AWS - Lambda / Lambda @ Edge
- AWS - SQS
- GCP - BigQuery
- GCP - Cloud Compute
- GCP - Cloud Functions
- Elastic (Kibana, Elasticsearch)
- Sumologic
- DataDog
- Sentry
- Docker
- Cloudflare (workers, wragnler, cdn )
- Github / Bitbucket
- Clickhouse
- Charles Proxy
- PHP
- Javascript
- React
- Node.js
- NextJS
- SQL
- Tailwind
- HTML/CSS/jQuery
- Slim Framework
- Handlebars
About
Awards & Achievements
Successful Exit (7 Figure)
In 2021, Digital Media Solutions acquired Aimtell for a mid 7 figure exit. Aimtell is a digital outbound marketing platform that provides push notification marketing to business and organizations.
I was the sole founder in 2015, raised a small seed round ($300k), and developed the entire platform - powering billions of notifications daily - while simultaneously leading the marketing, support and sales efforts.
Senior Leadership - Division Growth
While working at Digital Media Solutions, I was responsible for the Push Notification Division. The role was extremely hands on, where I continued to lead the development team while also managing business components.
Under my leadership we grew to serve over 1,000,000,000 (billion) daily impressions from push notifications, nearly $1M in monthly revenue and cut hundreds of thousands of dollars in expenses.
Conference Speaker (200+ People)
In 2014 DJ Swanepoel was invited to speak at the T3 Summit, an annual real estate convention for the leaders of the industry. The presentation covered the "Next Stage Of Mobile Applications" and was presented to over 200 industry leaders including CEO of Keller Williams, CEO of Coldwell Banker, CEO of Prudential and many, many more.
Full presentation: DJ Swanepoel Presentation
Hang w/ Launch (1,000,000 Downloads)
While working as Marketing Director of MEDL Mobile, the company raised $2M for a live streaming app. Leading the Advertising + Marketing Campaigns, I helped generate over 1,000,000 downloads in less than 9 months.
Growth was largely attributed to the adoption of an embeddable website widget which would showcase the latest videos that were streamed from the iOS / Android app as well as pull in live streams.
Marketing Launch - NYTimes Bestseller
Launched several marketing campaigns including a website ("What Animal Am I?") which generated hundreds of thousands of email leads, assisting in driving "Surving Your Serengeti", to a NYTimes, WallStreet and USA Today bestseller.
The website was a personality quiz that would ask a series of questions and then provide the user with their "animal" personality. The quiz was built to promote the book "Surviving Your Serengeti" and was a huge success.
Professor For A Day (Cal State Fullerton)
In 2013 DJ was invited by the Associate Professor of Marketing at California State University Fullrton to serve as a Professor for a day. This provided the opportinity to present the topic "the future of mobile applications and marketing" to 40+ students.
The presentation covered the current state of mobile applications, the future of mobile applications and the future of mobile marketing.
Project & Client
ExperienceDigital Media Solutions
SVP, Messaging Development
Digital Media Solutions, Inc. (NYSE: DMS) is a leading provider of technology-enabled digital performance advertising solutions connecting consumers and advertisers within auto, home, health and life insurance plus a long list of top consumer verticals. The DMS first-party data asset, proprietary advertising technology, significant proprietary media distribution and data-driven processes help digital advertising clients de-risk their advertising spend while scaling their customer bases.
I joined DMS after they acquired my SaaS (Aimtell.com) in 2021 for a mid 7 figure exit. As SVP of Messaging Development, I lead the Push Notification Division while simultaneously working on initiatives to amplify the DMS data asset. Under my leadership we grew to serve over 1,000,000,000 (billion) daily impressions from push notifications and nearly $1M in monthly revenue. My responsibilities included product development and overall strategy. Additionally, I managed and supported the marketing, sales and customer support divisions.
Notable Achievements
- Led team of 30 individuals with a 7-figure monthly run rate
- Led major cost savings initiatives (2022) which resulted in $583,000 in annualized savings Resulted from a rework of our queueing system and impression tracking solutions (Redis, Kafka, MySQL, Cloudflare, BigQuery, GCP Cloud Functions)
- Led another major cost savings initiative (2023) which resulted in $230,000 annualized savings. Resulted from re-architecture and optimization across AWS Kinesis, GCP Storage, GCP Compute Engine, BigQuery and Cloudflare worker
aimtell
Technical Founder & CEO
Aimtell is a digital outbound marketing platform that provides push notification marketing to business and organizations. The company's unique proprietary technology enables businesses to leverage "big data" to send highly targeted notifications to thousands of users instantly. Aimtell has helped power over 1,000,000,000,000 (trillion) website push notifications for tens of thousands of sites including: eBay, Home Depot, Lowes, Groupon and CNN.
I founded Aimtell in 2015 after seeing the opportunity of Website Push Notifications at a previous company. I raised a small seed round ($300k), developed the entire platform and lead the marketing, support and sales efforts. In 2021, Digital Media Solutions acquired Aimtell for a mid 7 figure exit.
Notable Achievements
- Built backend that powered 3 billion push notifications daily (PHP, MySQL, Postgres, Redshift, Redis, Kafka, S3, Kinesis, NodeJS)
- Developed backend that collected over 1 billion data points daily (impressions, pageviews, website events, custom attributes) and made them accessible within segmentation functionality (AWS API Gateway, Lambda, NodeJS, AWS SQS, MySQL, AWS DMS, Redshift, S3)
- Developed third party plugins/integrations with Wordpress, Shopify, Active Campaign and Zapier
- Programmed client-side javascript tag used on over 30,000 websites (Javascript, Service worker, Push API)
- Developed the front-end UI/UX for the corporate site and dashboard(HTML, CSS, Javascript, jQuery, PHP, Handlebars framework, Slim Framework, Bootstrap)
MEDL Mobile, Inc
Hang w/, Inc.
Digital Marketing Director
MEDL Mobile is a mobile application development agency and pioneer in mobile strategy with prestigious clients including About.com, Experian, Hyundai, Kaiser Permanente, Monster.com, The New York Times Company and Taco Bell. As of 2015, MEDL's library consisted of nearly 150 mobile applications which have been downloaded more than 15,000,000 times.
In early 2013 MEDL Mobile released Hang w/, a real-time social video platform for Android and iPhone that connects users around the world via live-streaming mobile video and simultaneous chat. After the breakaway success of the application, Hang With, Inc was formed.
Achievements
- Lead the User Acquisition & Marketing Campaigns that drove Hang w/ to 1,000,000 downloads in less than 9 months (faster than Facebook or Twitter)
- Lead ad monetization efforts for the application - spanning iOS, Android & Web
- Increased existing email marketing database by over 400%
- Drove numerous apps to the top of iTunes including one applications that peaked at #2 overall free (hit over 200,000 daily downloads)
- Developed a website widget allows users to stream live from a mobile app to their website (used by 50Cent, Timeout Magazine and hundreds of others) (Javascript, Cloudfront, S3)
- Created custom API integration with indiegogo for ConMan Campaign (Alan Tudyk, Nathan Fillion) campaign (PHP, MySQL)
- Developed website profiles allowing users to engage in live chat and watch live broadcasts from desktop. Resulted in spike in google indexed pages from 12 to 40,000 in 1 month (PHP, HTML, CSS, Javascript, jQuery, Redis)
- Programmed internal tools including watermark video exporter, push notification sender and admin panel (FFmpeg, PHP, MySQL, AWS SES)
Serengeti Institute
Marketing Manager
Spearheaded all marketing initiatives. Marketing campaigns included physical distribution; flyers, brochures, bookmarks, banners as well as electronic; email, seo, lead generation & advertising. Also created, developed & optimized all current websites.
Achievements
- Launched several marketing campaigns to drive the latest book release, "Surving Your Serengeti", to a NYTimes, Wallstreet and USA Today bestseller
- Personally developed and promoted a web application "What Animal Am I?" to market "Surviving Your Serengeti". The quiz reached over 200,000 quiz takers in less 2 years - the majority of which provided emails for future marketing campaigns.
RealSure, Inc
Marketing Manager
As marketing manager my responsibilities included email, social media and general digital marketing. I was personally responsible for architecture, design and development for all email campaigns which grew to become the companies largest and most reliable source of income.
Achievements
- Increased email marketing database by 833%
- Increased sales of annual trends report for 3 consequtive years, breaking all-time high record in 2012.
- Integrated automated Fufillment by Amazon (hand-coded) to reduce s&h costs by 50% and automate all fufillment shipping.
RealtyU Group, Inc
Marketing Assistant
Provided communication between a network of 50 schools and RealtyU. Responsibilities included client relationship, billing and financial management.
Achievements
- Aided in programming and marketing of "RealEstateWiki.com"- the largest Real Estate Wikipedia. Real Estate Wiki was ultimately sold to the National Association of Realtors
& Testimonials
References
Greg Blackman
Director Business Development, Openx
DJ is the perfect example of a mobile growth hacker and a must have for any team focused on a mobile app. He has a myriad of ways to acquire new users to an application for a very low cost. He doesn't just look at a Lumascape and shoot with a budget, he comes up with outside the box ways to drive traffic. Everyone can learn a thing or two about user acquisition from DJ.
Andrew Maltin
Chief Executive Officer, Hang w/
DJ is a performance-driven machine and has the drive to get things done. With an exceptional understanding of mobile & digital marketing, DJ has helped spearhead everything from large-scale user acquisition campaigns to automated email marketing campaigns. What makes DJ exceptionally unique is his ability not only to firmly grasp the challenges at hand but also to help personally execute them. His ability to join our developers and write code himself makes for an extremely powerful combination or skills.
Catherine Atwong
Associate Professor Of Marketing, CSUF
DJ has demonstrated excellent analytical, oral and written communication skills. As a marketing professional in the mobile app industry, he generously gave his time to speak at the university and mentored college students. If you are looking for someone who is passionate, skilled, motivated, and has potential for advancement, you should consider Mr. DJ Swanepoel. He will make valuable contributions to your company.
Michael McClure
Chief Operating Officer, T3 Experts
His knowledge of digital marketing is significant, and he was one of the most commanding and polished speakers at the most recent of these events, in which literally almost every CEO of every major real estate brand in America was also a featured speaker. He fit in perfectly in the midst of such rarified company, and many in attendance noted that they thought he was one of the best speakers and one of the highlights of the multi-day event.
Peter Elkin
Chief Financial Officer, Blue California
DJ, in one word, is amazing. Hard working, smart and he knows his stuff. If I ever need anything from a technical/marketing perspective, is my go-to guy. One of the best. Highly recommend.
Jeremy Conaway
President, Reconis
I can say without reservation that when one is involved in a “must perform,” exact standards environment and/or situation there is no one better at providing critical support than DJ. His subjective matter excellence over a broad range of subjects and the quality of his technical and communications expertise has made the difference in a number of national industry related “make or break” situations