Marketplace operator · strategy & analytics · applied AI
getzona.app · LinkedIn
I founded and operated ZONA, a two-sided consumer marketplace, owning pricing, venue partnerships, retention, and growth end to end. I work in SQL and Python to find what's actually happening in a business, then ship the fix -- a pricing change, an operating process, or, when it's the right tool, an AI system.
ZONA -- Founder & Marketplace Operator · Oct 2023-Present
Two-sided consumer marketplace connecting nightlife venues (clubs & bars) and consumers. Founded and operated the business end to end across strategy, pricing, partnerships, growth, product, and operations.
- 150K+ downloads · ~35K MAU · 60+ venue partners · 25%+ week-4 retention
- Designed the transaction/monetization model -- tiered pricing, deposits, commission -- plus a per-venue partner-ads product, facilitating ~$1M in transaction volume and $200K+ revenue
- Cohort analysis surfaced a ~4% DAU retention rate as the real growth bottleneck, not acquisition -- reallocated the team around it, then shipped a rules-based decision engine for personalized push notifications that lifted DAU ~15%
- Ran weekly venue-operator interviews to find reservation-workflow friction and turn it into next-sprint scope
- Directed the AI voice concierge rollout (Twilio, Claude, Deepgram, Cartesia) automating guest call handling 24/7, live across three venue partners
Marketplace Pricing & Promotion Simulator A contribution-margin decision simulator built on 824K real transaction line items to stress-test take rate, fulfillment cost, promotional investment, and demand assumptions -- including a promo breakeven calculator and a lever sensitivity ranking, so the tool identifies which economic lever moves marketplace profitability the most, not just what happens when you move a slider. Python, pandas, Streamlit, Plotly.
Sentra Autonomous AI agents can take real actions -- sending messages, approving records -- before anyone checks if they should. A runtime policy layer that scores every proposed agent action and blocks, allows, or escalates it before it executes, with cumulative risk tracking and a three-strike shutdown. Demonstrates: governance, risk-based decision rules, systems thinking. Python.
Nonprofit Financial Health Dashboard Is this organization's financial position getting stronger or weaker, and where's the risk? Real IRS Form 990 filings for 20 nonprofits, EIN-verified against known values at fetch time, with illustrative (adjustable) screening thresholds and peer comparisons that suppress themselves when a sector's sample is too small to mean anything. Demonstrates: financial-statement analysis, risk screening, data-integrity discipline. Python, pandas, Streamlit, Plotly.
Healthcare Access Risk Analysis Where should limited access-to-care resources go first? A composite risk-scoring model across county-level population, insurance, and hospital-density inputs, ranking and mapping 3,200+ counties into priority tiers. Demonstrates: geographic prioritization, weighted decision modeling. Python.
Medicare Billing Analysis Hospital pricing for the same procedure can vary 3x+ by location. SQL analysis of CMS Medicare billing data (145K+ records, 3,000+ hospitals) to find cost outliers, markup patterns, and geographic pricing disparities. Demonstrates: SQL, pricing-variance analysis, geographic economics. SQL.
More applied-AI and healthcare analytics projects →
Business problem → data → hypothesis → intervention → measurement → decision.
I use code when it's the fastest way to test the hypothesis or operationalize the answer.
Analytics: SQL · Python (pandas, NumPy) · Tableau · Mixpanel · PostHog Product / Experimentation: A/B testing · cohort & retention analysis · unit economics · Streamlit · Figma · Jira Applied AI: Claude API · Hugging Face / PyTorch (LoRA fine-tuning) · multi-agent systems · prompt caching & evals
Founder & operator, ZONA (2023-present). MBA, Pepperdine Graziadio Business School. M.S. Management and Analytics, NYU School of Professional Studies -- Candidate.