Chanimal Background

The original purpose of Chanimal was to develop and retain my industry network of marketing professionals. It started with a BBS system and grew into one of the first collaborative web sites. Later, it was formalized to become Chanimal.com (which has been live over 20 years since 1996).

The site contains over 1,000 pages of content from myself and others and serves as a permanent resource for high-tech marketing–and attempts to standardize channel management. It is the #1 resource for channel and high-tech marketing has been visited by as many as 50,000 sales and marketing professionals each month.

Chanimal Name

The name, “Chanimal” is short for “Channel Animal,” after Ted Finch and Jack Doxey (both worked together previously at Technology Advancement Corporation (now MarketStar)) helped increase sales over 290% within their first year at DCA. They were called “channel animals,” because of their success, which was soon shortened to, “Chanimal.” The name stuck. 

Both continued to succeed within the high-tech industry (Jack heads up all US channels as the Sr. VP Channels for multi-billion Autodesk). Ted picked up a few titles of his own, but also grabbed the name and started Chanimal.com.

Chanimal Background

 

 

 

 

Background for Ted Finch

During the last 28 years (since 1978), Ted Finch has held the following positions:

  • CEO. Chanimal, Inc.
  • CMO, SaaSMAX. The #1 SaaS distributor and SaaS market place.
  • Vice President of Marketing. $130 billion General Electric (GE). Security division – one of the fastest-growing of all GE divisions.
  • Sr. VP Marketing, Director. $38 billion Motorola (sat on marketing board and over strategy within the $9 billion semi-conductor sector)
  • Sr. VP Marketing. Metrowerks (over 92% market share with 58 different dev tools (CodeWarrior)). Successfully acquired by Motorola.
  • VP Marketing. Holt, Rhinehart & Winston – education division of $4 billion Harcourt (Neiman Marcus, Seaworld, General Cinemas, Education)
  • VP Marketing. Goldmine (doubled in size 10 consecutive years with over 1 million customers as the #1 most-award winning CRM). Successfully acquired.
  • VP Marketing & Channel Sales. Virtus (which co-founded Red Storm Entertainment with noted author, Tom Clancy)
  • Director of Marketing. Ventana (part of $7 billion International Thomson, and publishers of three #1 best-selling products in the world (including Netscape and AOL). The division grew from $5 million to $128 million in 9 months.
  • Channel Marketing Manager. DCA (the 5th largest software company in the world at the time). Sales grew 290%–earned name, “Chanimal.”
  • VP of Sales and Marketing and co-founder. Technology Advancement Group (now MarketStar)—a start-up that grew from 13 to more than 4,000 people in 4 years. Nation’s largest high-tech product launch company (Apple, Intel, Adobe, Lotus, IBM, Epson, Sony, etc.). Executed over 1 million channel promotions, could train and recruit 10’s of thousands of resellers a week.
  • Director of Sales and Marketing. Family Entertainment Network (winning almost every company award (Top Sales, Top Team, Top Region, Top Recruiter, Eye of the Tiger, Dare to Win, etc.) as the only Director to rise through all five levels of management reporting to the President while heading up a 300+ sales and marketing team in the entertainment industry competing with Hanna Barbara and Disney)
  • Missionary. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints – successfully completing a two-year volunteer proselyting mission in New Zealand.

Within his career he has helped launch hundreds of products and services for more than 400 vendors (including Microsoft, HP, Corel, IBM, WordPerfect, Adobe, Aldus, Intel, Disney, Sony, Canon, Digital Research, Creative Labs, Ingram Micro, WordPerfect, Epson, Apple, Novell, AOL, Franklin/Covey, Lotus, Peachtree, DCA, Ashton-Tate, Autodesk, and more), has executed more than 1 million promotions, gone through five successful acquisitions, helped raise more than $27 million in financing from VC’s, angels, and corporations, and lead the marketing team that published Netscape Navigator, the #1 best-selling software product that inaugurated the dot com era.

He has been quoted in over 100 books and publications, including Marketing Computers, Entrepreneur Magazine, CNN, Internet World, Computer Reseller News, VAR Business, ABC, CBS, Business Week, Software Success, Channel Advocate, Tom Siebel’s “CyberRules,” “In Search of Stupidity,” and wrote the forward and contributed content for, “The Product Marketing Manager’s Handbook for Software.” He was on the board of advisors for CompTIA’s SofwareCEO, and at several software companies. When not raising his five beautiful children, he writes marketing content, produces videos, trains and certifies the tech channel, and consults.

As the CEO of Chanimal, Ted has helped over 400 clients (as a virtual VP of Marketing, Channel Consultant, Trainer, along with Video Production, and MarCom).  Click here to see a partial client list or view testimonials.

Alliances

Although most of the consulting at Chanimal is lead by Ted Finch, other specialists are pulled into the project as required. Many times an intern is also hired to reduce costs and speed up execution (hired by the client, but Chanimal helps find them quickly).  Chanimal also has over 22 formal alliances. This includes channel experts (US and International), PR pros and agencies, graphic designers, logo companies, software pricing, software vendors with PRMs, etc.  See Alliances for more.

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