XBIZ World’s “Execs of the Year” special issue highlights the contributions of senior-level executives in managing and motivating their team and colleagues.
Managing a pool of talent requires a sharp mind. The XBIZ Exec Senior Leadership Award recognizes those individuals with the outstanding ability to motivate, inspire and build solidarity among all levels of personnel.
One milestone was hitting more than 35 sites in our network along with launching new looks for both PornDoe and PornDoe Premium to really be at the forefront of industry standards. -Yannick Ferreri, BitterStrawberry
Each of the executives we spoke to below is among the finalist nominees for the Senior Leadership Award in the digital edition of the 2018 XBIZ Exec Awards.
What leadership achievements are you most proud of this year?
Axel Vezina
CrakMedia
“Having relevant, real-time insight of our business continues to be as paramount as ever when you consider how fast things in this industry evolve. That’s why the numbers are so important: they represent the core of our work as well as the proof of our success. This year, we’ve seen our business intelligence project result in pertinent and usable data that benefits our entire team of 100-plus employees. This is the result of two years hard work and I’m extremely proud of it.”
Gary Jackson
CCBill
“Most people may know who CCBill used to be — but they really don’t know who we are now. In 2017, those ideas we dreamed and developed over the past several years at CCBill became a reality. The launch of CCBill Pay shook up the traditional checkout, the behind-the-scenes tech for conversions brought in added sales and dropped chargebacks for merchants, not to mention our customers started seeing the power in the latest software of FlexForms. In 2017, we followed-the-sun with a full revamp of payout options to get money out faster and in the right currency. On the partner side, my team turned up the volume on our Integration Partners program, growing to 80+ new software and business partners. We launched full integrations with Magento, Prestashop and Weebly, which opens doors for our industry for new products and sales channels. I am proud of the result that our platform vision is having for our customers as well as our staff. We are building this dream together, and frankly, I have never seen more passion from my team for the future of CCBill and our customers. With vision and insight, they handle thousands of merchants and prospects with care, commitment and imagination. These are people of which to be proud.”
Harmik Charapetian
Epoch
“It is a great honor to be nominated by XBIZ for its Senior Leadership award. First of all, I would like to thank, Alec, Moe, Leah and the entire team at XBIZ for the nomination. I am really proud of our entire team at Epoch for paving the way for our continuous success, and also my sales team which is in the trenches at every show, making sure our clients are taken care of. I am extremely proud to have loyal and great clients, which we treat like family. Without them, we wouldn’t exist.”
Joel Drapeau
Gamma Entertainment
“My biggest achievement this year is setting up all the key parts to launch the new broadcasting division at Gamma. Even if that meant welcoming Michael Klein onboard.”
Sam Rakowski
Mr. Skin
“As 2017 comes to an end, I’m most proud of how we’ve handled some big challenges. Early in the year, we made the difficult decision to take care of some major technical debt that was hurting our velocity and limiting our growth. It’s always hard to push the pause button on sexier projects that you know will pay immediate dividends in order to rebuild old systems, but ultimately these tough decisions will pay off in 2018 and beyond.”
Doug Wicks
Payze
“We are quite proud of the fact that we have consistently grown our banking and partnership network over the year.”
Shay Efron
IMLive
“In a year when every two minutes new webcam brands emerge, I am proud, along with many others who are leading our ship, that we’ve been able to grow; to provide our affiliates lucrative webcam brands to promote on all platforms, niches and geo’s, while launching a few new ventures for affiliates, end-users and studio owners. Our current campaign gives our affiliates $10 million as an appreciation prize, demonstrating our approach towards our affiliate programs, Pussycash, affiliate.imlive and WebcamWiz, and our constant belief in focusing on growing our own affiliate programs, which isn’t that common in the webcam industry today. We’re working hard these days in order to make sure that our plans for 2018 will continue 2017’s growth tendency.”
Yannick Ferreri
BitterStrawberry
“Every year comes with its challenges and every year we manage to overcome them all along with some curveballs. One milestone was hitting more than 35 sites in our network along with launching new looks for both PornDoe and PornDoe Premium to really be at the forefront of industry standards.”
