Zane's Story

In 2016 I graduated with a BS in entrepreneurship from Oklahoma State University with a paid scholarship on the School of Entrepreneurship's Student Advisory Board. I am proud to have been i2E Fellow, serve as the president of the entrepreneurship club, spend a semester on exchange at Portland State University, enjoy three uniquely valuable internships, and start two small businesses.
In 2017 I joined the Specdrums team where I was able to leverage my freelance marketing experience and degree in entrepreneurial studies. We raised $180,000 on Kickstarter in and were acquired by Sphero in 2018. Beyond my responsibilities as a Digital Marketing Specialist at Sphero I wound up working with Sphero’s design and product teams through the redevelopment of Specdrums product offering. The launch of ‘Sphero Specdrums’ won best of show at CES by Wired Magazine and can be found in Apple stores across the country.
At Sphero I thrived at the intersection of product, marketing, design, and sales. Fortunately, there is a discipline called product marketing and I took it upon myself to ensure that I didn’t have any missing competencies required to meet the challenges of an important role. In 2020 I joined a software company as a product marketing specialist. To view samples of my work please visit my portfolio.

Full length recommendations

Aislinn Willander

VP Marketing | Bob Moore Auto Group

"Zane was supremely professional, innovative, and exceptional with his presentation and communication of proposals. Automotive managers are some of the most difficult people to work with and Zane handled them flawlessly. Not only was the product he delivered above expectations, but he seamlessly pulled off the technical aspects of implementation.
All in all, Zane has an entrepreneurial spirit that will make him an asset for any organization who is lucky enough to work with him."

Angie Ford

Marketing Director | Monscierge

"I highly recommend Zane for any position in sales, marketing, or similar. His wide range of abilities makes him an asset to any team. During his summer internship with marketing at Monscierge, he has proven himself to be a self-starter, taking initiative any time he can. I respect his opinion and often seek it out as he is exceedingly bright and thinks outside the box. He has suggested ideas for our products that I hope to have implemented.

Zane works hard, communicates well, and is a team player. It would be an honor to keep him on our team long-term"

Jim Troxel

Managing Director | WBT Angels

" I recognize Zane as a strategist who is enthusiastic about building businesses through intrapreneurship. In Gifford Pinochot III's 1985 book, Intrapreneuring, he describes some of the characteristics of an effective intrapreneur as: dedication, putting internal priorities first, setting self-determined goals, setting high internal standards, overcoming mistakes, and managing risk. These characteristic I have seen Zane embody in my encounters with him over the years. I highly recommend him as someone who would bring skills, initiative and a strong work ethic to any business."

“Cool! But who are you?”

A friend reviewed my site and prodded me to add something personal about who I actually am.
For starters, here are some of the photos on my camera roll that have been marked as a favorite.

The story of me isn't complete without a bike in it.

I’d like to believe those training wheels were removed right after this photo.

Visiting Cuba the week before Obama visited was the richest cultural experience I ever had.

(I do own climbing shoes. But they're optional.)

A hot meal with a view after a long day of traveling is everything.

Why hike to a glacier if you aren't going to make something of it?

Becoming an uncle!

Great shot of my sister and Hudson while visiting my grandma.

Super fun company wide ski trip.

Being goofy with my sister after a hike in Glacier NP.

In 2017 I found the smoke at Glacier fascinating. After 2020, I've seen enough.

Behind the scenes of a typical backyard grill out.

Boulder Startup Week 2019 - Visiting Fletcher Richman's insane new office space before Halp's acquisition.

Losing to Grandma is nothing to be ashamed of.

Another pic from driving the white rim trail in Canyonlands.

Crested Butte will always have a special place in my heart.

Three of my favorite things in one shot. My bike, aspen trees, and Crested Butte trails.

My good friend Jacob Helleckson and I, late season at A-Basin..

If you aren't backpacking, why not be comfortable?

Mad props to whomever knows my favorite hide out within 2 hours of Denver.

Attending Tech Crunch Disrupt with the Specdrums team just weeks after a successful Kickstarter campaign.

Life's too short to be serious with friends.

Saved up for two years to buy my own dog in 7th grade. She was and now is an angel to me.

Getting to hang out with influencers in person after months of calls and emails.

Promise I'm smiling and not faking it.

Portrait mode outtake over Christmas.

Put a bird on it and call it a day. Fred Armisen was the most "present" person I've ever encountered.

Team shot (Minus Jack) after meeting Fred Armisen in Anaheim.

I'll purchase a fuel efficient or electric vehicle someday, I promise you that. But this was not that day.

The day after I returned from a summer short course in Chicago... A historic tornado ripped through Moore, Oklahoma.

Realizing the devastation, I loaded my car with steel toe boots and supplies to find people.

The radio networks begged people not to do what I was about to. And said if you want to help, visit channel nine to donate essential items to those effected.

I made it there in 10 minutes. Not much was happening yet. But I helped to unload supplies as cars began trickling in.

Within an hour, the pace picked up. It was clear we had an operation on our hands. And there was no plan, process, or leader. Everything was moving fast.

Someone had to take initiative, lead strategically, break bottlenecks, assign roles, and create efficiency amongst the dozen people helping. Once I admitted that the adult volunteers weren’t going to, the newsroom staff members weren’t going to. and anchors that I watched my entire life wouldn't either, I started leading. It was surreal yet automatic.

Drivers stated the line took 45 minutes.

If we hadn’t done everything in our power to be efficient, cars would have turned around at a certain point. But I also knew that most cars couldn’t turn around on those roads and in that much mud. So I was operating at level 12/10 out of respect and entered a wicked flow state, solving problems, creating processes and leading volunteers (and anchors) into useful roles, and physically moving mountains / leading by example.

Now it is like a lucid dream I can't forget, because there was no real time for deliberation, only action.

The piles were ultimately collected after midnight by semi trucks.

By the end of the night, I had a classmate by my side who answered my quick tweet for help.

That night, we hustled like never before. When someone would become stuck in 6 inches of mud trying to cut into the grass, I handed things off to andrew as I grabbed my 4Runner to pull them out. We became a team, and by the looks of his shirt, the mounds of donations, and the emptiness of the line, we crushed it.

The only other flow state comparable to unloading donations was hand packaging about 1,000 unique orders in a day off of excel.

To fulfil our Kickstarter orders, we borrowed some warehouse space from a local startup named BeerJacket, now known as Beermkr. It was a tedius and manual process. We even tested that every unit would connect to our phone and work with the application. I went off on operational efficiencies then too.

Zane Winfield Taylor