Douglas Merrill

Founder & CEO, ZestFinance

Douglas Merrill is the CEO and founder of ZestFinance, a financial services technology company that provides credit alternatives for the underbanked. ZestFinance announced a $19 million round of Series A funding in July 2011 and was one of Forbes’ Names You Need to Know in 2011. Merrill is the former CIO and Vice President of Engineering at Google, where he helped bring the company to its IPO and with related regulatory activities. Google’s current CIO, Ben Fried, took over in April 2008 upon Merrill’s departure. After Google, Merrill served as president of EMI Music’s digital unit. In March 2010, Merrill published the book, “Getting Organized in the Google Era: How to Get Stuff Out of Your Head, Find It When You Need It, and Get It Done Right”. Merrill is also a former researcher with the RAND Corporation and is listed among the organization’s most notable participants. He is a graduate of the University of Tulsa with a major in social and political organization. Merrill attended Princeton where he received Masters and Doctoral degrees in psychology. His academic publications include articles in The Journal of the Learning Sciences, Cognition and Instruction, Reliable Distributed Systems, and a paper in the book series Lecture Notes in Computer Science (1992; 608:103-110). He currently sits on the board of The Filter

Articles by Douglas Merrill

Finance 101 for Early Stage Startup Founders with Debbie Rosler

In this Mucker Growth Session, Debbie Rosler from Burkland dives into the fundamental financial best practices and infrastructure early -stage startups need to put in place. Finance 101: Why Should...

Engineering Customer & Product Feedback Loops with Holden Munson & Sofia Maravich

In this Mucker Growth session, Holden Munson and Sofia Maravich from Rethink Labs, explore how to develop a useful system of collecting customer data and integrating it into your team....

How Startups Can Win More Enterprise Deals Through Value Selling with Mike Genstil

In this Mucker Growth session, Mike Genstil with ValueCore delves into the concept of value selling and its application in enterprise sales. Delivering value at every touchpoint of...

How to Keep Your Emails Landing in the Inbox with Google’s Updated Spam Policies with Daniel-wise Ojaide

In this Mucker Growth session, Daniel-wise Ojaide from Warmbox.ai delves into the changes to Google and Yahoo’s updated spam policies and how to ensure your emails and outbound campaigns are...

Best Customers, Best Results: Unlocking Retention-Driven B2C Growth with Julius Lai

In this Mucker Growth session, Julius Lai from ArtShare discusses customer retention, which is often overlooked but essential for startups facing growth challenges. The following content will provide practical recaps...

Leveraging a Financial Model for Fundraising Success with Steven Plappert

In this Mucker Growth Session, Steven Plappert, CEO and co-founder of Forecastr, tackles how to use your financial model to the best capacity when fundraising. Your financial model can be...