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Management

Munjal Shah, CEO & Co-Founder

When CEO and Co-Founder, Munjal Shah, took a look at his 38,015 and growing digital photo collection, he saw the need for a tool to help him find the photos he wanted. He also believed that there were many others out there who had the same need. With his prior experience as the CEO and Co-Founder of the successful eBay seller auction management service, Andale he knew nothing was impossible and set out to put together a team to make it happen.

Munjal has an MS in Computer Science from Stanford, a BS from UCSD and was nominated one of the top 10 "Up and Comers" in Business week in 2001. He has previously worked for Baan, IBM and Blaxxun, and co-founded Round Zero, a Web 1.0 networking forum for early stage entrepreneurs.

Munjal is also one of those guys that everybody instantly likes. He's not only a nice guy with great ideas and passion, but he can also blog like a pro. Part of this is due to the fact that he has a passion for life and doesn't believe in limitations.

Burak Gokturk, CTO & Co-Founder

Burak is the 'brain' behind Riya's photo recognition technology, and leads the research team. It is Burak's desire to bring the usefullness of the computer vision science to human's attention in this exciting venture. His team's current work aligns with this goal and includes detection and recognition of faces, text and objects in photos taken under uncontrolled conditions.

Prior to Riya, he developed computer vision algorithms at Canesta, Intel and BEKO. He has been in the vision field for more than 8 years, published more than 30 papers, and holds more than 15 patent applications. His computer vision algorithms have been prototyped and/or implemented in various computer vision products. He developed a 3D shape representation scheme, called “Random Orthogonal Shape Sections”, which achieved one of the best recognition rates for the detection of colon cancer. His other research concentrated on tracking, detection and recognition of 3D shapes and faces, medical imaging and 3D image compression. Burak received a BS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science form Bogazici University, and MS and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.

Burak is also one helluva soccer player.

Azhar Khan, VP, Engineering & Co-Founder

Azhar Khan is a 'planning poet', which means he has the creativity of a super engineer with the planning skills of a COO.

Azhar has over 13 years experience in the software industry including extensive experience in running successful offshore technology programs. He worked for many years with leading CAD provider Autodesk before founding a collaboration company that was subsequently acquired by Citadon, the largest collaboration software company in the United States. Most recently, he was the Managing Director of India & VP of Engineering at BuildOnline, the largest European provider of collaboration, document management and tendering software. Azhar has a BS from Cornell University and an MS from Stanford.

He manages the engineering team in the US and India as well as coordinates the entire company.

Mark Moran, VP, Business Development

Mark is tasked with making Riya synonymous with image search, fine-tuning the company's business model and with driving revenues. (His favorite Riya search is a photo of a $100 bill.)

Mark brings approximately 20 years of business development, sales and executive management experience to Riya. He was most recently at Tribal Fusion, where he was head of business development and general manager of its two performance marketing divisions. Previous startup experience include President & COO of Pivia, Inc. (purchased by Swan Labs, then by F5) and VP Corporate Development at Owners.com.

Prior to Tribal Fusion, Mark led the eBusiness Group at Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, where his scope of responsibilities ranged from strategic planning, business development, site production, and vendor management. Mark holds a BA from Pomona College and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Danny Yang, sr. researcher

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Board of Directors

Munjal Shah

View bio above.

John Malloy

John Malloy, Managing General Partner, co-founded BlueRun Ventures in 1998. BlueRun Ventures began as a hybrid fund that combined the financial discipline of traditional early stage venture capital models with the reach and technical expertise of a leading global technology company. Today BlueRun Ventures operates globally as a single, ROI driven fund investing in early stage mobile and information technology companies. Prior to BlueRun Ventures, John spent more than 15 years in management and executive roles at technology and communications companies. John serves or previously served on the Board of Directors of Bitfone, fusionOne, Kilopass Technology, Inc, MicroDisplay, PAR3 Communications, PayPal and SunRocket.

Peter Rip

Peter Rip brings over 22 years of experience as a successful entrepreneur, private venture investor, and institutional investor. He has focused exclusively on early stage technology companies.

Before becoming a venture investor, Peter co-founded Silicon Compiler Systems, a major IC design automation company acquired by Mentor Graphics in 1991. He began venture investing in 1992, investing in several early stage companies acquired by AOL, Microsoft, HNC Software, and Infoseek. Prior to co-founding Leapfrog Ventures in 2000, Peter was the Managing Director of Knight Ridder Ventures, the venture capital subsidiary of Knight Ridder, Inc.

Peter has a Ph.D. in Marketing from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a B.A. from Brandeis University. He has also been a member of the marketing faculty of the University of Chicago GSB.

David Hayden

Currently, David is the Executive Chairman of JetEye LLC and CEO of JetEyeNetwork (2002). He founded Magellan Search in 1994, Critical Path in 1999, Archipelago LLC in 2000, and NameTree in 2000. David was a board member at Andale, GGNPA, Spectrum Holobyte, MeetWorldTrade, Arzoon, eHatchery, E*Trade. Currently developing a new global solution for authentication and identity management.

A true visionary, he has developed new business ideas and turned them into highly successful companies. Mr. Hayden firmly believes the Internet provides the essential communication and commerce medium that will eventually touch and unite every aspect of our global society. Mr. Hayden's leadership qualities and vision serve him well in the rapidly changing, creative world of Internet businesses.

Mr. Hayden holds a B.A. in Political Science from Stanford University.

Neal Dempsey

Mr. Dempsey is managing partner at Bay Partners, a venture investment firm with interests in information technology and healthcare. He joined Bay Partners in 1989 after serving in a range of roles, including five years as chief executive officer of Qubix Graphics Systems, one year as chief executive of Envision Technology, and several senior management positions with Zentec and Harris Corporation. Mr. Dempsey looks for entrepreneurs with domain expertise and the ability to listen to their customers. He has been instrumental in the success of category-creating companies such as Brocade, Informatica, and Shiva.