Tommy Wu

Experience

Elevation Partners

Private Equity Associate 2006 - 2008 (almost 3 years)

Largest 1st-time fund with $2Bn in committed capital focused on investments within media, entertainment, and consumer businesses. Targeted investments requiring $100MM-$400MM... more

Morgan Stanley

Investment Banking Analyst 2003 - 2006 (over 3 years)

Developed robust financial models including M&A, Leveraged Buyout, Dividend/Recap, Net Asset Value, PIPE investment, and OpCo/PropCo for large West Coast clients including... more

Echo AI

CFO 2024 - Present (over 2 years)

Echo AI turns customer conversations into critical insights using generative AI.

Our insights are used to automatically segment customers by behavior — triggering... more

Tales

Founder & CEO 2019 - 2023 (about 4 years)

Tales lets storytellers make books, comics, and games using generative AI and turn fans into co-publishers through shared royalties. Cast your family likenesses and voices... more

Employee

Morgan Stanley, Elevation Partners, Tribal Crossing, FableLabs, Surreal, Tales, Echo AI

Advisor

Epic Playground, Techstars

Education

About

Achievements

Fractional CFO & Chief Automation Officer. I help founders of early-stage startups (Seed to Series B) leverage finance and automation to scale systems.

- Finance: Executed PE investments for the largest 1st-time fund ($2Bn), raised tens of millions in seed capital across 4 startups, ran successful M&A processes as a CFO, led pricing & packaging for seat/usage/success-based products, and turned negative gross margins into 90% profit centers.

- Product: Designed, prototyped, and built AI agents and AI tools across all modalities, from auto-moderation platforms that worked at social scale, conversation intelligence for millions of contact center agents, and even personalized stories for kids.

- Growth: Created marketplaces with over 50,000 creators, viral products that have reached millions without marketing, and PLG products with profitable unit economics and 1-month CAC payback.

- Operations: Obsessed with leveraging workflow automation and business intelligence to build the leanes

Describe the most impressive thing you've done.

Skills

Financial Modeling Viral Marketing Game Design Private Equity Storytelling User Experience Design Product Development Monetization Workflow Management Spreadsheet Growth Hacking Operations Management Financial Analysis Demand Generation Artificial Intelligence Data Analysis Airtable Notion Figma Wordpress Amplitude Marketing Automation Automation

Locations

Los Angeles Oakland San Francisco Bay Area

Tommy Wu

Early stage finance and product for AI-native startups | CFO & Chief Automation Officer | 3x founder backed by Open AI, Quiet Capital, Founder Collective