Meet Our Mentors: Mike Byrnes

Mike Byrnes
Head of Service Partnerships, Amazon

I am a technology executive with 20 years of experience helping organizations stand up high-value, long-term revenue functions to accelerate growth and unlock scale. I’m a GM/P&L owner, complex dealmaker, and team builder who has the experience (and scars) that come with going from zero to one with first-of-their kind products and business models.

“We all need shoulders to stand on, and if I can help MBA students learn and succeed even an incremental amount faster than they would have otherwise, the investment is well worth it. The caliber of Foster mentees is very high, and I walk away every time learning as much from them as they do from me.”

As a mentor, I excel at…

• Leadership development — I’ve led and built great teams inside big tech, large venture, and boot-strapped startups.
• Complex deal-making and negotiations — From business and corporate development, to strategic partnerships and alliances to direct enterprise sales.
• Earning trust through candor — The two are not opposed, and when done properly, no single attribute has been more important to my success.

When I have free time, I…

spend as much time with my wife and two young boys as possible. Coaching sports, exercising, and appreciating all the PNW (food, outdoors, music) has to offer. I always said I’d move if I came across a better place to live, but 24 years later, I’ve still not found it.

The best career decision I’ve made was…

leaving a successful start-up run to ‘try-out’ Amazon for six months. Spending nearly five years there was like a second MBA. I built mental models and capabilities I’ll always carry with me.

I describe myself as…

a pragmatic optimist.

My motto/tagline is…

Under promise and over deliver. If you know, you know (IYKYK) for those in GTM/revenue functions.

The one piece of technology I couldn’t live without is…

Spotify — Music is essential to me, yet I’ve eliminated all my offline music. They own me.

Originally published at https://blog.foster.uw.edu on February 13, 2022.