Arte Merritt

Relevant Experience

2026-present

Structure and negotiate bespoke strategic partnerships and joint go-to-market initiatives with AI-native startups, spanning technical integrations, co-sell motions, and commercial spend commitments.
Source, evaluate, and advance AI startups for organic and inorganic growth opportunities
Launched monthly event series to drive adoption and consumption of Azure AI services, build startup community relationships, and create joint GTM opportunites for startups.

2024-2026

Won AWS All Star Award for impact and execution.
Exceeded startup GTM goals by over 900%, driving adoption and consumption of Amazon Bedrock and AgentCore among leading, top-tier startups.
Conceived and secured executive buy-in for a $2.5M strategic AgentCore credits incentive program for Y Combinator startups, accelerating early-stage adoption at scale.
Created "Built on Bedrock," a monthly event series to drive startup adoption of AWS GenAI services and provide joint GTM opportunities; scaled series across San Francisco, New York, and London — generating $50M+ in wins.
Designed and implemented global allocation mechanisms for startup inference requests, unblocking ~$600M in pipeline while establishing an equitable and transparent allocation process.
Organized and led the Bedrock Startup Summit, uniting ~50 global cross-functional leaders to align GTM and collaboration strategy.

2023-2024

Founded SaaS platform for Generative AI analytics and large language model (LLM) optimization
Drove growth through strategic partnerships, business development, community building, and GTM inititiaves
Launched Reconifyy in AWS Marketplace, expanding distribution and enterprise credibility.
Hosted TalkGenAI, a generative AI conference, and monthly GenAI meetups to build category awareness and industry relationships.

2021-2022

Won Amazon Leadership Principle Award for “Invent and Simplify.”
Created and led AWS's Global Conversational AI Partnership Program and Competency from the ground up, securing executive leadership sponsorship and funding.
Achieved 400%+ launched-wins goal with a 4.88/5.00 Partner Satisfaction score.
Defined GTM strategy, co-sell motions, field sales enablement, and business plan; recruited and evaluated global SI and ISV partners.
Evangelized AWS and Conversational AI through thought-leadership content, partner alignment, and speaking at global conferences

2016-2020

Co-founded and established product vision for the leading SaaS analytics platform for conversational AI interfaces, chatbots, and voice assistants.
Grew the company to 20,000 customers, processing 90 billion messages and ~$1M ARR, with nearly 100% YoY growth.
Raised $6.2M in venture funding to fuel product and GTM expansion
Led an M&A process that resulted in six acquisition offers, including from Fortune 500 companies
Built strategic partnerships with global SIs, ISVs, digital agencies, and cloud service providers
Negotiated commercial agreements, licensing, and contracts with Fortune 500 enterprises
Built a global conversational AI community through monthly meetups and an annual conference.
Authored 50 articles on conversational AI and spoke at major industry events including MWC, SXSW, Cannes Liones, and VentureBeat.

2011-2013

Led corporate development initiatives involving emerging mobile and media technologies.
Sourced and evaluated startups for strategic partnerships, investments, and acquisition opportunities
Co-launched Turner's "Media Camp" accelerator program for media startups; two portfolio startups were subsequently acquired and another raised $14M.
Organized Turner's Mobile Summit, convening 90+ representatives across Turner brands to establish mobile best practices.

2008-2010

Founded SaaS mobile analytics platform and led company solo through inception and fundraising, then built out a team across engineering, product, marketing, and business development.
Ran an M&A process that generated five acquisition offers, culminating in a successful sale to Nokia.
Raised $2M Series A, including from Ron Conway / SV Angel.
Led marketing, business development, and and strategic partnerships
Grew Motally into a leading mobile analytics company, earning recognition from the Telecom Council, MEF, and Amazon AWS Startup Challenge.