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Key People

Management

Shawn Hardin, CEO

Shawn is President and Chief Executive Officer of Flock, the innovative social Web browser based on Firefox.

Shawn has front-line experience in technology-driven entrepreneurial ventures in addition to a business background with NBC and AOL. He has been working at the intersection of media and technology for over twelve years, and his creative and business experience spans Entertainment, Film, Television, Information Technologies, Mobile and the Internet.

Prior to joining Flock, Shawn was most recently Yahoo!’s Head of Youth, Health & Games. In this role he oversaw the strategic direction, product & programming and business
operations for these key businesses. His complete portfolio collectively attracted 30 million unique users and over 2.3 billion minutes of consumer engagement each month.

Prior to joining Yahoo!, Shawn was a senior vice president at America Online, where he played a central role in forming the AOL Broadband Division, while overseeing all aspects of AOL’s broadband product and programming strategy. Prior to joining AOL, Shawn spent seven years working with the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) and rose to the position of EVP, chief product officer and group general manager for NBC Internet. Before joining NBC, Shawn worked as a filmmaker and cinematographer on more than seventy film and video productions.

As a Board member for the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, Shawn oversaw creation of the industry’s first Emmy Award recognizing creative excellence in Interactive Programming. He is currently a director member of the Directors Guild of America and has served on Advisory Boards for National Public Radio, the American Film Institute and the Producers Guild of America.

Shawn is a graduate of the University of Southern California, School of Cinema/TV. He lives in the San Francisco/Bay area with his wife and daughter.

Geoffrey Rayner, CFO

Geoffrey -- aka Fredo -- is a Flock co-founder and continues to advise when he is not busy running his latest venture, dancejam, with MC Hammer. He comes from Andover, Massachusetts, and claims to be socially awkward, philosophically opposed, and a flockupational hazard. Geoffrey went to skool and has an Sc.B. in neural science from Brown University and an MBA from MIT.

In his former life he did a one-year stint in Seattle and headed up product management for RealPlayer, RealAudio, and RealVideo. While that job helped him transition from enterprise to consumer technology product marketing and management, it did not take long for him to realize that he is, at heart, an entrepreneur, and that his heart is most at home in the California Bay Area.

Geoffrey's favorite color is "green... green plaid." In his spare time he likes to nap, read, travel, cook, with his family, and of course spend countless hours online Flocking.

David Westendorf, VP of Business Development

David is Flock's VP of Business Development, which puts him in the exciting position of talking to a number of great companies about how they could work best with Flock (in other words, he gets lots of cool swag).

David enjoys numerous "Californian" activities, such as surfing, skateboard, and photographing the world through a very large camera lens.

David calls the employees at Flock "the most infinitely capable engineers I've ever met".

David listens to every band ever, and one of his major goals at Flock is to have at least 12 sources of music playing at once.

Before his new role at Flock, David ran the WW Partnerships group for Kodak. This included Apple, Adobe, Google, Microsoft in addition to Verizon, Cingular, and several EU operators. He lives in Half Moon Bay with his wife Courtnee -- an Apple veteran -- and two daughters. They send lots of text messages with their family plan.

Clayton Stark, VP of Engineering

Clayton joined Flock in the middle of 2006 as Flock's Director of Product Development and quickly climbed the small corporate ladder we keep behind our toolshed to become Flock's Vice President of Engineering.

Previously, Clayton was the Chief Operating Officer at Mercurial Communications where he built and led the Netscape/AOL Project team. His experience includes VP of Marketing for GenoLogics Life Sciences Software, and Senior Project Manager, Software R&D for Power Measurement Ltd.

Clayton works from Flock's Canadian office and claims to have the ability to make a hockey analogy out of any business discussion.

Board of Directors

David Cowan

David Cowan is at Bessemer Venture Partners and is the lead investor in Vimo Inc. In his career at Bessemer, David has made 43 early-stage investments, including 19 that have gone public, and 16 that have been acquired by public companies. David’s investment interests are diverse and include such firms as VeriSign, Cienna, PSI-Net and Postini. David’s notable other Internet services investments include such firms as Hotjobs, KeyNote Systems, Flycast and Blue Nile Inc.
David also teaches computer science at the Keys Middle School in Palo Alto. He received both his A.B. in math and computer science and his M.B.A. degrees from Harvard University.

Tod Francis

Tod Francis has more than 20 years of experience working with marketing and consumer driven companies. Since 2004, Tod has been a managing director of Shasta Ventures where his investment focus is technology-enabled consumer companies. Some of his current investments include Logoworks, Flock, Turn and companies still operating in stealth mode. Prior to co-founding Shasta Ventures, Tod was a general partner at Trinity Ventures for ten years where he was involved with 16 companies serving the consumer and small business such as Blue Nile, FatBrain, LoopNet, NextCard, Wedding Channel and BabyCenter.

Previously, Tod spent 10 years in marketing and management positions including serving as a partner at Ram Group Marketing Management and as a product manager at Johnson & Johnson on the Tylenol brand.

Jed Smith

Jed is the Managing Partner of Catamount Ventures. Catamount was founded to focus on the underserved seed/early stage venture investment market. Catamount is investing out of its second fund and has approximately $45M under management. Prior to Catamount, in 1997 Jed was the founder of drugstore.com (NASDAQ: DSCM), and served on its board of directors with John Doerr, Brook Byers, Peter Neupert, Howard Schultz and Jeff Bezos. Prior to drugstore.com, Jed co-founded and spent four years at Cybersmith, a retail store chain that showcased the latest advances in information technology and multimedia software. Before that, Jed was Vice President of Sales at Tribe Computer Works (a networking hardware and software company that was successfully sold). Jed began his career in technology working for Tom Siebel at Oracle Corporation, ultimately serving as District Manager for Eastern Region VARs.

Jed has advised many private companies and currently serves as an observer or member on the Boards of Bocada, Inc., SignalDemand, Inc., Linden Lab, Siterra Corp., Verdiem, Flock, Piczo and Liquid Engines, Inc. Jed also has served on the board of several education and non-profit institutions, including the Board of Trustees of Middlebury College, Shackleton Schools, the Interactive Mathematics Program, and the Cambridge Center for Adult Education. He is a recipient of the Albert Einstein High Technology Award. Jed holds a BA from Middlebury College and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Bart Decrem

A Belgian washed up on the California shores, Bart likes working on big new things, especially projects that bring people together. Fresh out of law school, Bart started Plugged In, one of the first “digital divide” programs in the country, helping low-income families in East Palo Alto tap into the power of the network. Next up: Bart was a cofounder of Eazel (making Linux easier to use), headed marketing and business affairs for the Firefox 1.0 launch, and was the founding CEO of Flock, the social web browser. Most recently, Bart was an Entrepreneur In Residence at venture capital firm DCM.

Bart got his iPhone on June 29, 2007, and was hooked straight away. A few months later, he noticed that guys like Sean and Nate were building awesome iPhone apps — six months before the SDK shipped. Connections were made, and that’s how Tapulous got started.

Board of Advisors

Larry Cheng

Larry Cheng focuses on investment opportunities in Internet applications, information services, financial services and consumer technologies. Larry currently serves on the boards of Prosper, MFG.com, Cortera (formerly eCredit) and mindSHIFT Technologies. He is also a Board observer on Flock and The New Orleans Exchange. Larry previously led Fidelity Ventures' investment in Verid which was acquired by EMC. Prior to joining Fidelity Ventures, Larry was a senior associate at Battery Ventures, where he was an early investor in Ruckus Network, OpenNetwork Technologies (acquired by BMC Software) and Ximian (acquired by Novell). From 1998 to 2000, he was an associate for Bessemer Venture Partners where he focused on software investments. Prior to Bessemer, Larry was an associate consultant at Corporate Decisions Inc. Larry earned a B.A. in Psychology from Harvard College

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