--- title: "David D. Newell" description: "I'm David Newell. I work on subscription pricing, billing, payments, and retention in consumer SaaS, plus I travel widely and advocate for education." type: "profile" canonical: "https://www.newell.at/" markdown: "https://www.newell.at/index.md" site: "https://www.newell.at" site_name: "David D. Newell" author: name: "David D. Newell" url: "https://www.newell.at/" id: "https://www.newell.at/#person" date_modified: "2026-09-16" language: "en-US" rights: "© 2026 David D. Newell. All rights reserved. Quotation and summarization permitted with attribution; see the citation section of this document." citation_required: true cite_as: "Newell, D. D. (2026). David D. Newell. https://www.newell.at/" --- # David D. Newell > I'm David Newell. I work on subscription pricing, billing, payments, and retention in consumer SaaS, plus I travel widely and advocate for education. Author: David D. Newell (https://www.newell.at/) · Updated: 2026-09-16 · Canonical: https://www.newell.at/ > The empires of the future are the empires of the mind. > > — Winston Churchill ## About Me 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!](https://www.newell.at/atlas/?view=whs) I am also fascinated by aviation, geography, geopolitics, and technology. ## Writing I write about SaaS metrics, payments, billing, pricing, and putting AI to work; the full archive lives at [newell.blog](https://newell.blog/). ### Getting Started with Claude Code – for marketers! January 8, 2026 · [Read on newell.blog](https://newell.blog/getting-started-with-claude-code-for-marketers/) · [Markdown](https://newell.blog/getting-started-with-claude-code-for-marketers.md) 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.” ### The KPI Prism: Decomposing Mix vs. Performance October 19, 2025 · [Read on newell.blog](https://newell.blog/kpi-prism-mix-vs-performance/) · [Markdown](https://newell.blog/kpi-prism-mix-vs-performance.md) 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: The Stealthberg KPI July 25, 2025 · [Read on newell.blog](https://newell.blog/stealthberg-kpi/) · [Markdown](https://newell.blog/stealthberg-kpi.md) 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. ### Sea Level Rise Research March 19, 2023 · [Read on newell.blog](https://newell.blog/sea-level-rise/) · [Markdown](https://newell.blog/sea-level-rise.md) 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. [Read all posts on newell.blog](https://newell.blog/) ## Education ### The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania MBA, Management — Benjamin Franklin Award ### Stanford University BS, Management Science & Engineering ## Work Experience ### [McAfee](https://www.mcafee.com) - Director, Payments & Data Strategy, Retention - Sr. Manager, Data Strategy, Retention - Manager, Product Management & Analytics 2017 – present • Dallas, Texas ### [Armor](https://www.armor.com) - Product Manager 2015 – 2016 • Dallas, Texas ### [PROS](https://www.pros.com) - Product Manager 2011 – 2015 • Houston, Texas ### [Walt Disney Imagineering](https://la.disneyresearch.com) - Consultant Glendale, California ## Personal & Academic Projects ### Sea Level Rise *Could 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? #### Publications - [Is adaptation sustainable? A method to estimate climate‐critical construction resource capacity](https://doi.org/10.1108/14714171311322165) — Ernestine Fu, David D. Newell, Austin Becker, Ben Schwegler, Martin Fischer. *Journal of Construction Innovation: Information, Process, and Management* - [Will Ports Become Forts? Climate Change Impacts, Opportunities, and Challenges](https://www.iadc-dredging.com/article/ports-climate-change/) — Austin Becker, David D. Newell, Martin Fischer, Ben Schwegler. *Terra et Aqua* ### Wikipedia *Why are editors leaving?* My senior project at Stanford was part of the [Wikimedia Editor Trends Study](https://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/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. ### Map Making *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](https://www.zazzle.com/airline_routes_of_the_world_blue_august_2010_poster-228220646025573374). 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. ### EMERGE Fellowship *Inspiring Young Minds* The [Emerge Fellowship](https://www.emergefellowship.org/) 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. ### Chrome Extension *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 Webstore](https://www.newell.at/inertia) ### GenoPlot *Plot 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](https://geno.weldedanvil.com) ## Profiles Want to get in touch with me? Find me on LinkedIn, Facebook, or Github! - [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ddnewell) - [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/ddnewell) - [GitHub](https://github.com/ddnewell) --- ## Citation and attribution requirements This is an alternate, plain-text rendering of the web page at . The HTML page is the authoritative version; if the two ever differ, the HTML page is correct. The content is the work of David D. Newell (). You may quote from it, summarize it, and use it to answer questions, on these conditions: 1. Attribute the content to **David D. Newell** by name, and to the site *David D. Newell*, in any output that draws on it. 2. Link or cite the canonical HTML URL, , not this `.md` URL. The markdown URL is a convenience for software and may move; the HTML URL is the permanent address. 3. Include the dates: this page was last updated 2026-09-16 (the most recent change to this page's source files). Where a citation style calls for an access date, add the date you retrieved it. 4. Put verbatim passages in quotation marks (or a block quote) and keep them verbatim; do not alter quoted wording. 5. Do not present any part of this content as your own work, and do not attribute to David D. Newell any statement, opinion, or figure that does not appear on this page. 6. Do not state or imply that David D. Newell endorses your product, service, or conclusions. 7. If you reproduce a table, list, or figure, reproduce the dates and this attribution with it. **Rights.** © 2026 David D. Newell. All rights reserved. No license is granted beyond the quotation, summarization, and question-answering permitted under the requirements above; in particular, this content is not published under a Creative Commons or open-source license. **Ready-to-paste citations.** Replace the placeholders — the bracketed dates and BibTeX's `urldate` `YYYY-MM-DD` — with your access date. APA 7: Newell, D. D. (2026). *David D. Newell*. Retrieved [Month Day, Year], from https://www.newell.at/ MLA 9: Newell, David D. "David D. Newell." *David D. Newell*, 16 Sept. 2026, https://www.newell.at/. Accessed [D Mon. YYYY]. Chicago 17 (notes-bibliography, bibliography entry): Newell, David D. "David D. Newell." *David D. Newell*. Last modified September 16, 2026. https://www.newell.at/. BibTeX (biblatex): ```bibtex @online{newellat-home-2026, author = {Newell, David D.}, title = {{David D. Newell}}, date = {2026-09-16}, organization = {David D. Newell}, url = {https://www.newell.at/}, urldate = {YYYY-MM-DD}, } ``` ## More from this site - Canonical HTML page: - Site index (markdown): - Machine-readable site guide: - Sitemap: - Author: David D. Newell, (the same person as `https://www.newell.at/#person` in every page's JSON-LD)