{"id":13498,"date":"2018-07-19T14:33:22","date_gmt":"2018-07-19T14:33:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.uwb.edu\/?p=13498"},"modified":"2023-07-14T15:51:55","modified_gmt":"2023-07-14T22:51:55","slug":"alumni-profile-peterson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uwb.edu\/news\/2018\/07\/19\/alumni-profile-peterson","title":{"rendered":"Startup expert started with UW Bothell plan"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Nathan Peterson \/ Marc Studer photo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

By Douglas Esser
\nNathan Peterson graduated from the University of Washington Bothell with a Marketing degree in 2008 during the depths of the Great Recession. He didn\u2019t have a job. But he did have a business plan \u2014 \u201cHow to monetize social media\u201d \u2014 that he had developed as a student exercise. With the idea, his degree and some hard work, Peterson built a career as a social media manager for corporations and an adviser for tech startups. His current position is chief revenue officer at Tagboard<\/a>, an online platform for sharing social media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the UW Bothell 2018 commencement ceremony at Safeco Field, students, family and friends shared pictures of decorated mortarboards, grads in gowns and enthusiastic messages. \u201cYou made it!\u201d and \u201cWe\u2019re proud of you!\u201d flashed on the Mariners Vision Board and on TV screens around the stadium. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat posts were all tagged with #uwbgrad2018. The Tagboard platform pulled them together and displayed them for all to see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peterson said that all the social media content Tagboard collects through hashtags, geotags or keywords reaches more than 1 billion a people a month, via the web, mobile, broadcast and sports venue screens. The 6-year-old subscription service, headquartered in Redmond, works with more than 200 media organizations and more than 175 sports organizations across the globe. Media clients in the Puget Sound region include KING 5 and KOMO 4. National clients include the NFL Network, Fox Sports and Turner Sports. As a lifelong sports fan, Peterson is most proud of partnerships with the Mariners, Seahawks, Sounders and, especially, UW basketball and football.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Tagboard
Husky Stadium photo courtesy of Nathan Peterson<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Peterson was raised in Kirkland and Issaquah by a hard-working single mother and started work as a 15-year-old at a Blockbuster video store. During college, he worked in community relations for the Sonics until the NBA team moved to Oklahoma. At their current home in Issaquah, he and his wife, Rachel Peterson, are raising a son, now 2, and have a second child due in August. Also an entrepreneur, she is a designer and owner of Rachel Brooks Fine Jewelry. \u201cWorking hard runs in the family,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peterson knew he wanted a career in marketing and said he got the best education for his entrepreneurial spirit at UW Bothell. A transfer student from Bellevue College, he first attended the UW campus in Seattle. An adviser, Connie Pace, made him feel the UW Bothell campus might be a better fit. He also liked what he saw in the School of Business<\/a>, especially adjunct faculty from the working world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI knew I wanted to learn from sharp professionals who had been in the space,\u201d he said. \u201cMy professors were industry experts, and my class sizes were smaller,\u201d Peterson said. \u201cFor me to be able to learn in a more \u2018private-school\u2019 environment for the price of a public school was great.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A decade after graduating (\u201cseems like just yesterday\u201d), Peterson fondly recalls some the business faculty who had the greatest impact on him: James Reinnoldt (\u201ca well-rounded world view that I always appreciated\u201d), Alan Leong (\u201ca huge influence on who I was as a young entrepreneur), John Rodsett (\u201cquirky, funny, larger than life) and Pete Nye (\u201cthe finance guy, one of the best people out there, just a great guy\u201d).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nye taught one of Peterson\u2019s favorite courses, business negotiations. \u201cI use that knowledge all the time,\u201d he said. Nye also was the adviser for the UW Bothell chapter of the DECA business club. Peterson was president his senior year and competed at competitions in the entrepreneurship category, writing business plans. \u201cHow to monetize social media\u201d was an idea for a professional network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Searching for a job during the recession, Peterson met someone developing a website for the commercial diving industry. The industry needed a way to communicate about jobs, such as the spike in demand for divers on the Gulf Coast after a hurricane. Peterson contributed a social network to the website that divers could use to find work. It also became a platform for advertising. In four months, they had monetized a network for commercial divers around the world, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peterson then went to Microsoft to build social media plans. \u201cOne of the themes of my career: I\u2019ve always been a builder, and I was very lucky social media was just on the rise,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After a couple of years, he next became the first hire at T-Mobile with a social media title. \u201cMuch like a startup, I had to go in, build a plan and pitch it to different divisions \u2014 not just my bosses. I got to stand up a division of a company and help it grow,\u201d said Peterson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In what he said was \u201carguably the riskiest and craziest move I could have made,\u201d Peterson then left T-Mobile for the challenge of Privateer Holdings, a private equity firm in Seattle that invests in the legal cannabis industry. \u201cI got to experience the ground floor of what it was like to stand up not just brands but an industry in itself,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For nearly the past two years, Peterson has worked at Tagboard. As chief revenue officer, he leads a team of 13 people responsible for sales, marketing and business development. He also is an adviser to a couple of startups. Eventually he hopes to stand up his own business, possibly involving augmented reality, a \u201cgame-changer.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peterson has returned to UW Bothell to speak to Reinnoldt\u2019s students. He also is member of the advisory board for the Digital Future Lab (DFL), a commercial game studio on campus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m so proud to see a program that centers on teaching real-world concepts and that pushes the envelope for diversity and inclusion coming out of the school I attended,\u201d Peterson said. \u201cThe DFL is something I\u2019m really excited to contribute to.\u201d In particular, he hopes to boost marketing and sales so the students who go through the DFL program can understand what it\u2019s like to work in a small tech environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peterson is a proud UW alum \u2014 \u201cbut even more specifically a proud UW Bothell alum,\u201d he said. \u201cI think that I truly wouldn\u2019t be who I am today if I didn\u2019t go to UW Bothell.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“How to monetize social media,” a business plan that Nathan Peterson developed as a UW Bothell student (Marketing ’08), has figured in his career as a corporate social media manager, startup adviser and chief revenue officer for the Tagboard online platform.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_is_archived":false,"_archived_contact_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[209,202,200],"tags":[271],"school":[417],"class_list":["post-13498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alumni","category-campus-news","category-profiles","tag-marketing","school-school-of-business"],"acf":{"related_links":{"toggle_visibility":false,"link_1":null,"link_2":null,"link_3":null,"link_4":null,"link_5":null},"highlight_box":{"toggle_visibility":false,"title":"","content":"","button":null,"button_style":"angled-purple-button","button_screen_reader_text":""},"contact_type_1":{"toggle_visibility":true,"contact_title":"","email":"","phone":"","box":"","address_line_1":"","address_line_2":"","location":""},"contact_type_2":{"toggle_visibility":false,"contact_title":"","email":"","phone":"","box":"","address_line_1":"","address_line_2":"","location":""},"social_media":{"toggle_visibility":false,"facebook_url":"","instagram_url":"","linkedin_url":"","twitter_url":"","youtube_url":""},"blog_archive_sidebar_visibility":false},"yoast_head":"\nStartup expert started with UW Bothell plan - 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