Biography
Prior to GoodRx Jody Mulkey (@jodymulkey) was the Chief Product Officer at Aspiration. An accomplished technologist and inspirational engineering leader, Jody is known for building high-performance systems and teams.
Prior to Aspiration, Jody spent 5 years as CTO of Ticketmaster leading the global product and technology transformation. Prior to Ticketmaster Jody spent over 14 years at Shopzilla, now Connexity, a leading source for connecting buyers and online sellers that reaches a global audience of over 40 million shoppers monthly. Jody was the CIO of Shopzilla and part of the inaugural team building the company’s data platform, analytics, and infrastructure.
Born in Texas, Jody attended military school and got his degree in shenanigans before moving to California. Jody studied Business Administration at USC with dual emphases in Entrepreneurship and Information Systems.
Outside of work, Jody is an active startup investor, Laker fan, Trojan fan, and tennis enthusiast. Jody lives in Westwood, CA with his saint of a wife, 2 amazing children, and 2 obstinate yet adorable pugs.
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Episode Summary
“With good leadership, good people on your team, clear expectations, and clear systems for accountability in a really beautiful, positive way that solves most of the management problem.”
—Jody Mulkey
In this episode we’ll cover:
- How Jody ran a consulting business from his fraternity house in college
- What it’s like working for Ticketmaster, Aspiration, and GoodRx
- Why Jody quit his job at Sony Pictures after just 23 days
Key Milestones
[1:55] – When Jody was 11 years old, his mom bought him an Apple IIe computer. When he was 13 years old, she called on him to computerize all the books for her restaurant and fast food businesses!
[3:40] – Jody went to USC to study Business and Entrepreneurship. While in school he started a consulting company serving small to medium businesses. The business became wildly successful. Jody had contractors with families working for him while he was living in a fraternity house!
[5:45] – Jody debated to keep the consulting business going after graduating from USC. Instead, he chose to work for William O’neal.
[8:11] – What was Jody’s secret to getting promoted early on in his career?
[10:48] – Jody spent 23 days working for Sony Pictures and he hated it.
[12:16] – He left Sony to work for Binary Compass, which published a website called Bizrate. The company grew from 5 to 285 people in 15 months.
[16:30] – Jody loved working at Binary Compass. The company evolved several times. It partnered with Scripts for 5-6 years and then later partnered with a private equity group to buy the company back from Scripts.
[22:32] – Joining Ticketmaster: Jody joined just as Ticketmaster was launching a new platform. 6 months later, Jody was asked to be CTO.
[27:32] – Jody thought about taking some time off and consulting after all the sprints with Ticketmaster. But quickly, Aspiration gave him an opportunity to become its Chief Product Officer. Jody is now the CTO at GoodRx.
[33:20] – Upward career movement can be attributed to building great relationships. Jody believes that with good leadership and talent, you can solve a lot of the management problems that typically come up.
[38:55] – The way Jody evaluates his job: 1) quality of people you work with? 2) how challenging is the work? 3) how big of an impact will it make?
[41:33] – Jody’s last 3 angel investments have been to purpose-driven companies.
[48:30] – You will get compound interest when you invest in relationships and people.
