Mike McLaughlin

Mike McLaughlin is a Senior Consultant at Forum Solutions LLC. Mike was previously the VP of Product at Picnic, a Seattle start-up that produced an award-winning Robotics-as-a-Service (RaaS) robotic pizza making system and was recognized as a leader in the nascent food automation sector.

At Picnic, Mike led the product and services portfolio and strategy, PR agency, marketing, customer success and service, design, and user experience (UX) teams. Mike also supported the CEO in business planning and steering, strategic partnership development, recruiting and organizational development, customer relationship management, and investor and board relations. Mike was responsible for customer identification, outreach, discovery, education, public and industry engagement, along with NPI / product launch.

Under Mike's leadership, the company delivered short and long-term product and services strategy, roadmap (features, performance, costs, base product evolution and ancillary products), and operating and financial models to ensure competitive success and investor confidence. Mike also instituted a customer success/service organization, product steering team, and program management organization that resulted in a company structure ready to scale and execute with critical org/functions gaps filled, business systems and processes in place, uniform communication across functions, and SOPs and KPIs to manage execution and success.

Mike was successful on-time delivery and execution at pivotal events: Seattle Mariners baseball concession operations; Smart Kitchen Summit (SKS); Enchant Christmas Seattle; Consumer Electronics Show (CES); and Disney Best of CES. These events propelled the company to secure $8M

Mike McLaughlin has a Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Washington. Mike also has certification from the State of Washington as a Professional Engineer (WA #27846).