Our Story
We founded Malava to continue searching for the answer to a simple question: What do people need in order to offer the best work of their lives?
Malava is firmly grounded in our lived experience: that many of today’s businesses still rely upon antiquated habits and assumptions that hamper our ability to be nimble, go fast, and do our absolute best work, especially as business grows. As lifetime entrepreneurs, we recognize that today’s complex, unpredictable world requires a correspondingly adaptive form of management that better harnesses human potential at global scale. Our ambition is to help today’s young businesses to find and travel that path.
Bill Bradford
Three decades of experience in Silicon Valley – including twice as a founder, with an exit to Google – have taught me to balance blue-sky ambitions with “where-the-rubber-meets-the-road” pragmatism necessary to move the ball forward every day. Along the way, I’ve held almost every role there is in sales (closing the initial enterprise accounts prior to a $3B+ IPO), plus served as VP Bus/Corp dev, Chief Growth Officer, President, and CEO. Prior to my time in tech, I studied anthropology at Stanford, which taught me that you can learn a great deal about effective problem-solving through careful observation and asking the right questions. You can find my LinkedIn profile here.
Mark Pastore
I am a three-time entrepreneur across diverse industries. The thread that connects my experiences is a love for exploring the possible: designing and building what’s next. I worked in Silicon Valley for the better part of two decades, helping manage a multibillion dollar line of business at Sun Microsystems, then with Bill, grew a software business from 4 to 350 people, through multiple product launches, key customer and partner acquisitions, four rounds of financing and an IPO. Pursuing a lifelong dream, I left the tech world to open an acclaimed Italian restaurant, named one “San Francisco’s Most Important Restaurants of the past 30 Years.” In the midst of that journey, I jumped into another new business: boutique food manufacturing and retail. Prior to my business career, I studied at Stanford and worked on the first Congressional policy study on climate change (Changing by Degrees). You can find my LinkedIn profile here, and my personal user guide here.
