As chief digital officer of US-headquartered coffee chain Starbucks, Adam Brotman hit the headlines in 2012 for brokering a big corporate venturing deal to invest in and partner fast-growing mobile payments company Square. Brotman implemented a fast roll-out of the mobile payments system using Square across Starbucks, which he defended to news provider Fast Company, which had reported some early problems.
Brotman said: “We do not want to wait on innovation. Because if we waited until we could make it perfect across every single experience of every single store, we would have to move much more slowly for the vast majority of our customers. So we have taken an approach that is not always perfect, but we think it’s the best thing for our brand and customers.”
Before Brotman joined Starbucks in 2009, he was chief executive of e-commerce company Barefoot Yoga. He also worked at Bill Gates-owned Corbis, a digital image licensing company. He joined Corbis having been founding chief executive of in-store entertainment company PlayNetwork, which he led from 1996 to 2006. He was previously an attorney at US-based law firm Heller Ehrman White & McAuliffe. He studied at the University of Washington School of Law and the University of California, Los Angeles.