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Key People

Management

Ben Smith IV, Chairman & Co-Founder

Ben Smith is founder of telemarketing company MerchantCircle. Smith was caught in a pedophile sting in the Bay Area in 2004 (http://mktplace.net/business/valley-corruption-blues). According to B2B Marketplace, "Shortly after forming Spoke, Smith was caught in a local police sting of child sex predators.".

Ben Smith, CEO/Chairman

Ben T. Smith, IV is a Bay-Area consultant and entrepreneur. Smith spent a significant portion of his career at A.T. Kearney. Smith was caught in a pedophile sting in the Bay Area in 2004. According to B2B Marketplace, "Shortly after forming Spoke, Smith was caught in a local police sting of child sex predators. According to police officers, posing as a 12 year old boy on a web chat site, Smith repeatedly made advances." Smith served as Interim CEO of Casbah, an EDS-funded B2B start-up. The Casbah funding was made by Smith when he was still with EDS and A.T. Kearney. Cashbah's assets were sold off to NextSet. After 2002, Smith helped found Spoke Software with USVP and raised funds from Sierra, Partech, DCM. In 2004, Smith was removed by the Spoke board of directors, and Frank Vaculin was hired as Spoke's new Chief Executive Officer. Ben was an Executive in Residence at Rustic Canyon Ventures after Spoke. Smith is currently Chairman and Co-founder of MerchantCircle (A local online advertising start-up). Ben Smith serves on the advisory boards of Tapulous, Mesmo.tv, and SpongeFish and remains involved in Spoke as a board observer.

Monica Laurence, marketing

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Daniel Swartz, visual designer

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Wes Mitchell, Development

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Doug Kilponen, VP Business Development

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Wayne Yamamoto, VP of Products

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Board of Directors

Ben Smith IV

View bio above.

Alexander Lloyd

Alex joined Rustic Canyon, a venture capital firm, as a Venture Partner in 2003. Before joining Rustic Canyon, he was founding partner of Accelerator Venture Partners, and made investments in a broad range of technology startups including Cloudmark, N8 Systems, Soundflavor, Vykor, and Zappos.com. He is a Board observer for Loop Net, Merchant Circle, MobilePlay, and Practice Technologies Inc. Prior to founding Accelerator Venture Partners, Alexander was the Business Development Manager in Microsoft's Silicon Valley office responsible for relationships with the West Coast venture capital community. Alex has worked as a Product Manager in SGI's workstation division and held marketing positions at Activision and Apple Computer. He began his career at Goldman Sachs, where he spent three years as a financial analyst.

Patrick Grady

Patrick Grady is the founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Rearden Commerce. A recognized pioneer in Web Services and On-Demand technologies, Patrick Grady has guided Rearden Commerce to a commanding leadership position within the Services-On-Demand market. Five years in development, the company has a large and growing patent portfolio and enjoys first mover advantage, with a host of name-brand enterprise customers and several major technology and marketing partnerships

Patrick is a sought after speaker with engagements including PC Forum, Supernova, Burton Catalyst Conference, AlwaysOn, Red Herring, Comdex, InfoWorld Symposium, Enterprise and Internet World.

Prior to founding Rearden Commerce, he spent 10 years in various venture capital, private equity, and operational roles in the technology sector. Patrick led investments in successful start-ups within the software, wireless, high-performance computing, and networking sectors

He is also on the Board of Directors of the Greater Bay Area Chapter of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

Sharon Wienbar

Sharon joined BA Venture Partners with over 15 years experience leading strategy, marketing and product management organizations in software and other technology industries.

At BAVP, Sharon works with enterprise software and Internet infrastructure and services companies addressing high value business issues. Sharon sits on the board of Teros, Inc. and works with BAVP's investments in PlaceWare, OuterBay Technologies, and XTRA Online.

Prior to joining BA Venture Partners, Sharon led marketing at Critical Path and Amplitude Software and was responsible for driving product/service and business integration strategies for a series of acquisitions which led to growth from $16M to over $140M revenue in one year. Before Amplitude, Sharon led Adobe Systems' entry into and growth in a number of segments, including enterprise applications, web commerce, and Asian markets. Prior to Adobe, Sharon practiced strategy consulting at Bain & Company focused on technology and healthcare. Sharon holds both a BA and MA in Engineering from Harvard University, and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Susan Bratton

Susan’s recent work, assembling a crack team of sales and marketing pros at Maven Networks, gave her an opportunity to be involved in innovative interactive broadband technology for marketers for the second time in her career. Inventing broadband advertising with her team at @Home Network in the nascent days of the Internet was her “1.0.”

Steeped in interactive marketing, Susan also brought innovative advertising solutions to pioneering marketers and agencies by rolling up @Home Network, Excite, BlueMountain Arts, Enliven and MatchLogic as SVP Sales & Marketing.

Susan also launched the critically-acclaimed spam-free consumer email service from Mailblocks, successfully acquired by AOL.

An indefatigable crusader for interactive marketing, Susan has served on numerous corporate boards and logged five years of service, including election as Vice Chair, for the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). AdAge has recognized Susan as a “Digital Media Master” and one of the “10 Internet’s Pioneers.” She continues to be a sought-after speaker, presenting at over 50 media, marketing and interactive conferences and winning the coveted DEMO God award in 2004.

Mark Hull

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Josh Kopelman

Josh Kopelman has been an entrepreneur and investor in the Internet industry since he began his career in 1992 while at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania where he co-founded Infonautics Corporation – an Internet information company which went public in 1996. Following the success of Infonautics, Kopelman went on to be founder of Half.com in 1999 which was later acquired by eBay in 2000 and where he remained for three years running the business unit and growing eBay’s Media marketplace.

In late 2003 Kopelman was co-founder of TurnTide, an anti-spam company that created the world's first anti-spam router and was acquired by Symantec six months later.

In addition to being an active angel investor, Josh has served as an entrepreneur-in-residence at Comcast Interactive Capital - a $350 million venture capital fund affiliated with Comcast Corporation. Kopelman’s other experiences include five U.S. patents for his work in Internet technology and the Kopelman Foundation, a non-profit organization created by Kopelman and his wife in 2001.

Kopelman earned a Bachelor of Science degree cum laude in entrepreneurial management and marketing from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Oliver Muoto

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Mark DiMaio

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Mark Menell

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Mark Granovetter

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Michael Aronson

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Holly Simmons

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Scott Hilleboe

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