The Team
Diego Schmunis - Co-Founder
LinkedIn | Twitter | Blog | DJ Bal`e*ar"ic\
About fifteen years ago, Diego was on his way to Law School when he took a small detour to work for World Play Entertainment (later acquired by AOL) for what was to become one of the first online gaming networks. That was followed by a gnarly wave ride — that lasted five years — of startups, as he attempted to surf the swell that would turn into the infamous "bubble".
Burned out and 50 lbs overweight (darn all those free snacks!) he decided that it was time for a major life change and became a Personal Trainer (here's proof), which he did for nine years.
Diego always felt a strong urge to go back to high-tech and create his very own startup, which is the reason you are reading this now.
He loves dreaming up new ideas for startups and products; spends hours working on his wireframes and prototypes with such an obsessive detail-oriented eye, that he usually works on Photoshop at 3200% magnification (that's at the PIXEL level!!!). He is also a student of all things entrepreneurial and startup related.
Diego is an independent thinker and constraints contortionist. He can often be heard saying, "we are not limited by our ideas, only by the limitations that we impose on them."
He has finished four half Ironman, has a black belt in martial arts, was an international DJ (after 16 years he's at it again), loves close-up magic, and has a huge reading appetite (reading, cue, read).
Favorite movies: Star Wars (original trilogy) and Highlander
Favorite music: Queen and anything from the 80's
Favorite food: Sushi
Favorite quote: "Do or do not. There is no try."
Mr. Smith - Co-Founder
My parnter (Mr. Smith) has decided to remain incognito for now.
So let me just tell you how lucky I am to have him as my co-founder...
Not only is he a superb developer but he's also the best-super-duppper backend/frontend/thisend/topend/allends guy I've ever known. No implementation is too hard, no feature half-baked implemented and no bug escapes his detection. Probably the BEST part is that he's as neurotic as I am about the smallest of details and about doing things right even if they take more time and are more difficult.
Finally, we both share a deep, strong desire to start a business that we can grow and own together for a long time!
So, Mr Smith, if you are reading this: Thank You for sharing the ride with me!
Favorite movies? I have code to write!
Favorite music? Still have 10 servers to deploy
Favorite food? Is our code fast enough?
Favorite quote? Do we still have beer in the refrigerator?
The Advisors
Dror Matalon
LinkedIn | Twitter
Dror is a serial entrepreneur. He founded one of the first ISPs (DNAI) in the San Francisco Bay Area that was sold for eight figures to RCN, and Zapatec, a Web 2.0 company that he sold in 2009 to Funambol.
He has 25 years experience in the high tech industry and specialize in building strong technical teams that deliver powerful and scalable solutions focused on keeping the customer happy. Expert at building offshore teams that deliver quality products at a fraction of doing it locally. He enjoys thinking about all aspects of the business: from product architecture to support, marketing and customer acquisition. He posses a wide array of technical skills, both in the server administration and software development arenas. In the past he has: set up Apache, Tomcat, servers on EC2, optimizing an email server to do full text searches, involved in development in AJAX, Java, PHP, C++, C and mobile devices
He loves to work on projects where he can combine his expertise in software development with his passion for community building.
Adrian Blakey
LinkedIn
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Twitter
Adrian is an experienced software technologist, manager and innovator. For the last 10 years he's worked exclusively in health care technology developing clinical and financial systems for two of the largest health care providers in North America. Prior to this he was responsible for engineering at Accept.Com - a payments vendor who were successfully acquired by Amazon.Com, and BridgePath Inc. where he was VP of Engineering. He is a very capable problem solver and has been responsible for engineering systems that have had to run at scale. Adrian spent most of his career in the Bay Area working for several start-ups. He was educated in England and received a Physics degree from Bristol University.
Paul Vallez
LinkedIn
Paul Vallez is the GM of Worldwide Search at HP leading multiple teams across product strategy, search technology, and operations. With over 15 years of technical leadership within a wide range of b-b and consumer products Paul has an extensive background in search, online marketing, product strategy, demand generation, and e-commerce. Paul is a regular public speaker at Search Engine Strategies (SES), Search Marketing Expo (SMX), PubCon Webmasterworld conferences, Partner Summits, and management of media communication within the blog and media community. Prior to HP Paul spent 10 years at one of the leading search engines, Ask.com, leading product management and development and was the co-creator of the Ask Sponsored Listings platform in 2005 competing directly with Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo as one of the leading PPC platforms. Paul graduated from U.C. Berkeley with a bachelors degree in English.
