I'm David Newell. I work on subscription pricing, billing, payments, and retention in consumer SaaS, plus I travel widely and advocate for education.
The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.
If there is one thing that best describes me, it is creative problem solver. Whether I am solving a challenging business problem or identifying how to reach a destination with as few flights as possible within strict time constraints, I am most engaged when solving problems.
Professionally, I work where product, revenue, and finance meet. I am Director of Payments & Data Strategy for Retention at McAfee, where I focus on subscription pricing, billing, and payment performance for consumer SaaS. Those are also, judging by my blog, what I do for fun: billing success rate, mix-versus-performance KPI analysis, and product-led growth.
I have been blessed to have the great fortune to experience many things in my life, ranging from world-class academic experiences to travels spanning the globe and from the insides of many medical centers to the frontiers of environmental research. I am an Eagle Scout and a Published Author in the Journal of Construction Innovation and Terra et Aqua.
I consider myself a Global Citizen. I am bilingual in English and German, and I enjoy collecting phrases in every language I encounter. I can say "thank you" in over three dozen languages.
I enjoy wine and travel, especially when the two intersect. I collect visits to UNESCO World Heritage Sites: check out my progress! I am also fascinated by aviation, geography, geopolitics, and technology.
I write about SaaS metrics, payments, billing, pricing, and putting AI to work; the full archive lives at newell.blog.
Claude Code is Claude in your terminal, working with your local files. A practical guide for marketers who want fast wins without “learning to code.”
Every global SaaS KPI is a weighted average across sub-segments; separate mix from performance, or you will celebrate phantom wins and miss real declines.
Billing success rate is a top-five driver of SaaS revenue and the one most leadership teams never watch; a 90% auth rate forfeits a tenth of renewals.
Could seaports defend against 2 meters of sea level rise? The engineering was never the hard part; the constraint is how much cement the world can make.
MBA, Management
Benjamin Franklin Award
BS, Management Science & Engineering
Director, Payments & Data Strategy, Retention
Sr. Manager, Data Strategy, Retention
Manager, Product Management & Analytics
Product Manager
2015 – 2016 • Dallas, Texas
Product Manager
2011 – 2015 • Houston, Texas
Consultant
Glendale, CaliforniaCould we adapt?
I walked into the wrong room freshman year at Stanford and got involved with SUPERSLR. The question: could seaports around the world protect themselves against 2 meters of sea level rise, and does enough construction capacity exist to meet the additional demand from such a massive project?
Why are editors leaving?
My senior project at Stanford was part of the Wikimedia Editor Trends Study. My project team discovered that the typical 80/20 rule doesn't apply to edits on Wikipedia. Instead, it's closer to 97/3: about 97% of the edits on Wikipedia are made by just 3% of the editors.
For this project, I secured a grant from Amazon Web Services so that we could access sufficient processing power to analyze every edit ever made on the English Wikipedia.
Visualizing Flight Routes
I have had a lifelong passion for commercial aviation. I collected model airplanes starting at an early age. Additionally, I have always been fascinated with maps.
Combining my passions, I created a map of every airline route in the world. You can purchase it as a poster at Zazzle.
All types of maps interest me, and I have always wanted to create a subway map. For my 2012 digital holiday card, I extended a jQuery plugin for drawing subway maps, then created a subway map of my 2012 travel.
Inspiring Young Minds
The Emerge Fellowship is a nonprofit organization committed to educating top-performing students in the lowest quartile of household income about their opportunities in higher education and beyond.
While serving on the non-profit's board, I worked with the Emerge education team to define and analyze the data that needs to be captured in order to determine the program's efficiency and efficacy across student cohorts.
Inertia: Keeping you moving...
Inertia brings you a new photo and quote to your Google Chrome new tab page every day, powered by Bing and BrainyQuote.
Go to Chrome WebstorePlot your family tree
Just upload any GEDCOM file exported from Genealogy websites or software tools, and in minutes, you will have a highly detailed version of your family tree ready to explore!
Go to GenoPlot