Alex has 10+ years of experience in business strategy, marketing, and product development at companies like Amazon and Meetup. He has a graduate degree in Applied Positive Psychology and for the last 5+ years has dedicated his life to bridging academia with technology to drive social connection, mattering, and meaning at scale.
Adam is the founder of Drumbeat Ventures, an innovative new investment firm with the thesis of being as intentional about organizational culture as we are about business models and strategies. Adam has 20+ years of experience investing as a part of KarpReilly Growth Partners, and its predecessor firm, Apax Partners.
Internal: We support and take care of one another
External: We obsess over creating a positive experience for our customers
Sounds like: How can I help?
Looks like: Checking in with each other at the top of calls
Internal: We consistently seek to learn and grow
External: We focus on creating conditions that result in lasting professional and personal growth
Sounds like: What did we learn?
Looks like: Taking the time to reflect on what went well and what can be improved
Internal: We appreciate the complexity of our work, always finding ways to make progress
External: We synthesize and simplify complex research to bring our customers effective and engaging solutions
Sounds like: What's the next action we can take?
Looks like: Whiteboarding how a leading academic theory translates into real world workplace dynamics
We design and create scalable environments that bring out the best of humankind. Alex is obsessed with social connection and believes that human beings are meant to work together and cooperate in the spirit of altruism. His obsession aligned perfectly with Adam’s vision of creating better cultures at work and better work lives for individuals. And together, they’ve been leveraging the power of fast growing, dynamic companies and technology-enabled tools to bring to life their vision of a world where people are working at their best together on shared visions that create genuine sense of purpose and meaning.
In 2020, we created a venture fund that invested in 10 startups committed to creating better cultures and spent three years developing a program that empowers organizations to be as intentional about their culture and their people as they are about their business model and strategy. Entering 2023, it is clear that the workplace has transformed and successful leaders of the future will need to deal directly with topics like remote work and the underlying causes of “the great resignation”.
We are at the beginning stages of a paradigm shift. The vast majority of adults now consider a company’s culture before applying for a job. Across every industry, organizations need to adopt new mindsets, tools, and processes - Drumbeat has been and will continue to be at the forefront of that change.
20+ Years as an investor: VC, PC, Angel.
Prior to Drumbeat Adam was a partner at KarpReilly and principal at Apax Partners.
10+ Years in strategy and product at tech companies: Amazon and Meetup.
Adam and Alex began collaborating at University of Pennsylvania's Applied Positive Psychology Masters Program where they both were pursuing how to increase human well-being at scale using research-based interventions.
From 2020 to 2023, worked with over 10 companies and 100 people to refine a culture system and a set of tech-enabled tools that are easy to implement and extremely powerful in optimizing the organizational culture of a company, the working climate of its teams, and the lived work experience of its employees.
In 2023, we are launching Drumbeat externally as an easy-to-use, scalable platform for high potential companies that understand the value of culture, team working climate, and employee experience and engagement, but need a clear formula for achieving tangible outcomes on those seemingly intangible priorities.
