WebPlay 2008
WebPlay Conference is an annual showcase of industry leaders, market trends, innovation, and the people are changing the world. There will be an accumulation of panels, startup demo, and keynote speeches.
Speakers at WebPlay 2008
Seth J. Sternberg, CEO of Meebo
After graduating from Yale in 2001 in Political Science, Seth looked to understand the black box of big-business decision making and spent three years in Corporate Development at IBM leading various M&A transactions. Seth then left for Stanford Business School. After a summer internship at private equity group Warburg Pincus, he co-founded a startup with two friends. meebo, a website for instant messaging, grew rapidly and Seth chose to put Stanford on hold to pursue the venture. Seth, meebo's CEO, led the initial capital raise of $3.5 million from Sequoia Capital. meebo continues to grow and serves 6 million people monthly, having raised an additional $9 million in funding from Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Seth enjoys tennis and rollerblading and is an avid private pilot.
David Scacco, Angel Investor
David Scacco is an adviser, investor, and board member for early stage companies focused on consumer internet, mobile, and advertising. Scacco joined Google in early 2000 (serving through 2007) and holds the distinction as the company's first advertising sales executive. In his role as Director of the Vertical Markets Group Scacco was responsible for building and managing an all-star team, which provided marketers with industry specific expertise across 12 macro categories including Travel, Finance, Consumer Packaged Goods, B2B Technology, and Agencies. In this capacity Scacco and the Vertical team built successful advertising partnerships with many of the world's best known brands and advertising agencies, as well as some of the fastest growing internet companies. Scacco received the prestigious Founders Award for his work at Google. Prior to joining Google, Scacco was Director of Business Development at Ziff-Davis where he created integrated cross media marketing partnerships with leading Tech and Telecom marketers. Prior to that Scacco spent 7 years with a direct response computer reseller where he held the position of VP of Marketing. Scacco began his career in ad agency account management. Scacco holds a BS from Northern Illinois University.
Rooly Eliezerov, Co-founder & President, Gigya
As President of Gigya, Rooly oversees U.S. corporate operations and supervises overall product strategy and development along with the CEO. He is a veteran of the Internet advertising and marketing industry, with a focus on product development. Before joining Gigya Rooly served on the board of Metacafe, held the position of General Manager at SmartShopper, and was the VP of Products & Marketing at Hotbar. Rooly holds a Bachelor of Architecture degree from the Pratt Institute in New York City.
Ofer Ronen, Co-Founder & CEO, Sendori
Ofer leads the strategy development and day-to-day operations at Sendori. Previously, he was a partner at Big Red Ventures, a seed level investment firm. In addition, he led development of Web applications at U.S. Trust, managed online magazine subscription systems at Time Warner, and founded a b-to-b e-commerce startup named Karanga. Ofer completed the accelerated MBA program at Cornell graduating with distinction. He holds a MS/BS in computer engineering from the University of Michigan.
Anand Jagannathan, Founder & CEO, iStorez
Anand Jagannathan is an experienced start-up CEO and technologist who has successfully founded and launched four companies - iStorez, Responsys, Reach Software and Banyan Systems. Anand's current company, iStorez (www.istorez.com) offers consumers a 360° online shopping experience - mirroring shopping in a mall with online theme-based shopping, personalization and comprehensive product search. Anand was the founding CEO of Responsys Inc, which is currently ranked by Forrester and Jupiter as the leader in on-demand email and lifecycle marketing. Responsys' Asia HQ is based in Singapore. Anand launched his entrepreneurial career with Banyan Systems (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banyan_(company)), which became a worldwide leader in enterprise networking and was the solution of choice for many leading Global 1000 companies. Anand's second company was Reach Software, an early pioneer in email and workflow that is also credited with delivering the first Windows based email application.
Anand has a Ph.D. from Rice University and a B.S. from I.I.T/Kanpur. He holds three patents for ideas that he developed at Reach Software and Bell Laboratories. He also has a number of patents pending on the iStorez technology.
Ty Levine, VP of Marketing, NeoEdge
Levine has over 15 years of experience spanning both traditional media and new media businesses. He serves as the company's Vice President of Marketing.
Most recently, Levine was the Director of Marketing at BlueLithium, a leading online ad network which was acquired in October 2007 by Yahoo. At BlueLithium Levine refined company positioning and value propositions that drove substantial increases in ad revenue and repeat advertising business. Prior, Levine served as Senior Director of Marketing at Knight Ridder Digital where he led the launch of Real Cities Network and built the network into 2nd place among local portal networks. Also at Knight Ridder he relaunched CareerBuilder.com. He was also responsible for one of the first truly convergent media marketing programs while at Infoseek. Earlier in his career, Levine worked for a startup division of CBS/Infinity Broadcasting focusing on some of the industry's first interactive properties.
Speakers
Eyal Hertzog, Founder, President & Chief Product Officer, Metacafe
Eyal Hertzog has three passions: technology, psychology, and music. The serial entrepreneur has combined all three to create Metacafe, a place where artists create, consumers interact on a social and emotional level, and technology makes it all possible. Prior to co-founding Metacafe, where he drives product innovation and content strategy, Mr. Hertzog co-founded Contact Networks in 1998, one of the first interpersonal, professional online networks. At Contact Networks, he was responsible for overall product, and managed strategic relationships with Nokia, GemPlus, Comverse and other large partners. Mr. Hertzog got his start in the technology industry in the Israeli military, where he served four years as an IT department manager for the Intelligence Core. After leaving the military in 1997, he joined the startup Class Data Systems as an application marketing engineer. The company was later sold to Cisco for $50 million, and Mr. Hertzog invested his windfall from the deal into his first startup, Contact Networks. In the rare break from spending long hours honing Metacafe's product strategy, meeting with partners and investors, or thinking about Metacafe's vision to become the highest-quality video destination site on the Internet, Mr. Hertzog plays in two bands. The accomplished musician plays bass guitarist for Israeli rock band, as well as Live Covers, which plays worldwide and has appeared on international television. He also studies psychology and practices windsurfing and snowboarding.
Jeremy Riney, CEO & Founder, Playlist.com
Jeremy Riney has over 10 years of entrepreneurial experience. His focus has been on internet and music related start-ups (admittedly a web and music nut). During his undergraduate studies, he started a textbook rental business, a online customer acquisition company and an online ticketing business. In his spare time he found time to work for the Disneyland Resort as a tour guide and guest relations host (also a theme park nut). Immediately after receiving his Bachelors Degree in Business Management (Magna Cum Laude), he started Music America Records, which was an online record label and music publishing company. After Music America Records, he simultaneously started Bluewire Connect and Praise Collection. Bluewire Connect provided custom branded social networks to recording artists and then expanded to colleges, universities, companies and organizations. Praise Collection acquired the rights to thousands of hours of rare, live performances featuring some of the world's most famous gospel and country artists including Chet Atkins, CeCe Winans, Fred Hammond, Yolanda Adams and many others. The performances were compiled into a subscription DVD service and sold through direct marketing channels. Jeremy started Project Playlist in February, 2006 as a weekend hobby. After launching a MySpace widget for Project Playlist, the site traffic exploded. Recently ranked by Comscore as one of the fastest growing sites on the internet, Project Playlist now has over 28 million registered users (growing at 80,000 new registrations per day) and 25 million playlist widgets embedded all over the internet.
Brad Jefferson, CEO & Founder, Animoto
As CEO of Animoto, Brad leads the charge in driving Animoto to be the global standard for turning images and music into professional-looking video content. Prior to co-founding Animoto, Brad spent eight years with Onyx Software. At Onyx, he was Director of Sales Operations and managed the national team of sales engineers. Previously, Brad managed Onyx's Professional Services team and customer base in the western US and was regularly the company's top services sales representative. Brad's clients varied in size and industry and included companies such as Starbucks and AAA. Through Brad's career at Onyx he saw the company grow from a 17-person start-up to an 800-person public company and eventually through an acquisition. Brad graduated from Dartmouth College, and currently resides in Oakland, California.
Bambi Francisco, Co-founder & CEO, Vator.tv
Vator was a side project of Bambi that was a mere concept with four video pitches in my Webmail box in June 2006, while she was a columnist/correspondent at Dow Jones MarketWatch. Bambi left in April 2007 and launched Vator.tv in June 2007. At Dow Jones, Bambi covered Internet trends and investments across the public and private sectors. She was a morning business anchor for KPIX (the local CBS affiliate in San Francisco), and reported on MarketWatch's business magazine show on CBS. In the 'mid-90s, Bambi worked as producer at CNN's financial news network, where she created, launched and produced business shows, including one on IPOs and new ideas.
Akash Garg, Co-Founder & CTO, Hi5
Akash Garg co-founded hi5 Networks, Inc., and is the company's chief technology officer. Akash oversees hi5's technology infrastructure and software development, and originally developed the core product concepts and underlying technology that has helped to fuel the rapid growth of the service. To support one of the most-trafficked sites in the world, Akash has guided the design and implementation of a highly scalable, highly available platform using a combination of open source and homegrown technologies on low-cost Linux machines. Prior to hi5, Akash was at Reactivity, assisting early-stage startups with technology strategy and direction, as well as architecting and implementing key portions of Reactivity's flagship product. His interest in computers and technology began at a very young age. His family had purchased one of the early IBM PCs, and Akash's initial interest in PC gaming led to an exploration and passion in programming. He later graduated with a B.S. and M.S. in computer science from Stanford University.
Shervin Pishevar, CEO & Co-Founder, Social Gaming Network
Shervin Pishevar is the CEO and co-founder of Social Gaming Network (SGN), which he helped incubate from within Webs.com Inc. Since its inception in September 2007, SGN has grown to more than a billion page views per month and more than 15 million users (www.socialgn.com). Named "Bill Gates' Worst Nightmare" by the Financial Times, Shervin is a visionary technology entrepreneur, published researcher and technology incubation expert, best known for helping usher in the on demand web computing era and the visionary behind the first web operating system with his first startup, WebOS. Shervin has an extensive track record for technology innovation and his achievements have been highlighted by the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, New York Times, LA Times, CNN and CNBC and Slashdot.
Alex Mehr, CEO & Co-Founder, Zoosk
Zoosk is the largest social dating destination. Zoosk.com makes online dating casual, social, and fun by allowing people to meet and connect through the context of their online social communities as it seamlessly integrates with the most popular social networking sites such as Facebook. Prior to Zoosk, Alex worked as a Scientist for NASA where he took on many cool projects. He received his B.Sc. degree from Sharif University of Technology, and Masters and Ph.D. from the University of Maryland.
Lance Tokuda, CEO & Founder, RockYou
Lance is the Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of RockYou, and brings over 15 years of software and management experience to the company. Prior to RockYou, Lance held Vice President & Chief Technology Officer positions in consumer and enterprise web services companies Iconix and Open Harbor, and was an early employee (number four) at Resumix, now Yahoo! HotJobs. Lance holds patents in text extraction and document categorization, with an email patent pending as well, and has received the American Association of Artificial Intelligence Award of Innovation for work on spatial text understanding. He received his Bachelors and Masters in Electrical Engineering from the University of Hawaii, and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Texas.
Mark Straub, DFJ Growth, Analyst
Mark joined the Growth Fund following a year overseas in India where he worked for Lok Capital, a microfinance venture capital fund based in New Delhi, investing in financial services companies serving "bottom-of-the-pyramid" clients across India. At Lok, he helped lead an investment in one of India's largest microfinance companies, Spandana Innovative Financial Services, serving roughly a million clients in the country's southern states. Mark began his career in investment banking, as an analyst with Banc of America Securities in San Francisco, providing corporate finance and M&A advisory to public and private technology companies. He is a graduate of the University of Virginia's McIntire School of Commerce, with concentrations in finance and foreign affairs.
Shaherose Charania, General Manager & Business Development, Women 2.0
Shaherose is at JAJAH developing products for consumers and enterprises to call the world from any mobile or landline on JAJAH's global IP network. Prior to that, she was at TiE overseeing governance, product development and operations of 40+ entrepreneurship centers in places like the US, India, the UAE, and Malaysia. She aspires to pour her entrepreneurial spirit into launching tech solutions for the developing world. Shaherose holds a B.A. in Business Administration from The University of Western Ontario's Richard Ivey School of Business.
Navid Oreizy, Associate, Technology Crossover Ventures
Navid joined TCV as an Associate in 2007, where he focuses on software and services as well as healthcare information technology investments. Prior to joining TCV, Navid spent several years at Lazard Fréres & Co. in the Technology, Media, and Telecommunications Investment Banking Group where he worked on a variety of strategic advisory assignments, mergers and acquisitions transactions, and equity financings. Navid holds a B.S. in Business Administration and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley.
Ryan Brenner, AlwaysOn
Presenting Company: Bojam
Website: http://www.bojam.com/
Location: Palo Alto, CA
Bojam is an online music collaboration service connecting musicians by giving them a platform to mix, record, and collaborate to produce original or popular music. Musicians of all levels create or discover mixes to contribute to and connect with compatible musicians worldwide. They can use the Bojam Mixer to experience a song in its multi-track format, controlling individual instruments (eg muting or panning a track) and learning how to play a given part. Users record what they play and mix it with the song, then use advanced editing and sound effect tools to clean it up. Mass collaboration has been utilized in text (Wikipedia) and software (Firefox). Bojam does so with music, open-sourcing all aspects of the music creation process, including a wiki-style platform for adding song info, lyrics and instrument tabs. Bojam is open-source music and our goal is to revolutionize the music creation process by harnessing the skill, enthusiasm, and creativity of the music community.
Presenting Company: Course Hero
Website: http://www.coursehero.com/
Location: Sunnyvale, CA
Course Hero was built by students to help students!
Course Hero is an open social learning network for students, educators and self-learners to publish, share and view academic resources online. In support of the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement, Course Hero providescritical and timely learning assistance through our user-contributed materials and most importantly online study groups comprised of students, educators and self-learners.
Today, Course Hero focuses its product and services on undergraduate and graduate students - providing a unique opportunity to share their knowledge and teach each other.
Intellectual honesty and integrity is a #1 priority of Course Hero. We DO NOT support any and all use of user submitted educational materials for unethical purposes, such as plagiarism or other forms of cheating. The educational materials found on www.coursehero.com should be used to supplement current study efforts within the defined limits of each student's respective university code of academic integrity.
Presenting Company: AirBed&Breakfast
Website: http://www.airbedandbreakfast.com/
Location: San Francisco, CA
AirBed & Breakfast is an online marketplace for peer-to-peer traveling.
We enable people to earn money by renting out extra space, and offer travelers a viable alternative to hotels.
Presenting Company: Cashcompare
Website: http://www.cashcompare.com/
Location: Sunnyvale, CA
CashCompare is the social information hub for your personal finance.
Users can research and discuss financial and banking products in our free online community. Information can be tailored to your age, income, lifestyle, location and life commitments; all while maintaining individual privacy.
CashCompare is also proud to introduce CoinCan, a casual finance management game aimed to demystify traditional banking and financial products.
Presenting Company: Noovo
Website: http://www.noovo.com/
Location: Palo Alto, CA
What is Noovo?
Once you join Noovo, we will start recommending stories, photos, videos, events, people and groups that we think may be of interest to you. As a member, you can follow your personal web feeds, publish your own content or republish content you discover. Feel free to share it with the world or just a few select friends.
Presenting Company: Involver
Website: http://www.involver.com/
Location: San Francisco, CA
Involver is on a mission to make video marketing easy and accessible to all. So far, online video has mostly focused on display, which is great if you want a place to host your content. But what if you're looking to use video to run a marketing campaign? That's where we come in.
Involver is the starting point for any marketer planning to create a video campaign for social networks. Involver's video campaign platform lets companies build, launch, promote, manage and monitor video campaigns that reach millions of social networking users. The platform's rich set of video plugins increase engagement, promote sharing, and enable viral distribution.
Key benefits of the Involver platform include:
- Self-serve, easy-to-use campaign builder
- Turnkey video syndication on Facebook and MySpace
- Interactive video plugins
- White-label social applications
- Instant campaign-wide changes
- Comprehensive reporting tools
Presenting Company: RateItAll
Website: http://www.rateitall.com/
Location: San Francisco, CA
RateItAll is an online community built upon one of the most extensive and diverse online databases of opinions, ratings, and reviews in the world. Participating members of RateItAll can earn cash for various activities on the site. At RateItAll, you own the content you contribute to the site, you can take your RateItAll reviews with you around the web via our widgets and feeds, and you can make a little money for your efforts. No other review site can say the same. RateItAll is a pioneer in the area of consumer-shared content. RateItAll relaunched in 2006 to enable the free and unfettered exchange of ideas and opinions. You can use this Web site to connect with people who share similar interests, find review content for your blog or MySpace page, and find, share, or solicit opinions on virtually anything - for example, consumer products, celebrities, politics, travel destinations, sports, local businesses, and much more.
Presenting Company: SocialCalendar
Website: http://www.SocialCalendar.com/
Location: Sunnyvale, CA
People use SocialCalendar to get their social life together - birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, get-togethers, other social occasions and associated gift-giving. People also share dates, plan events and coordinate going to movies and restaurants with their friends and family.
Since its launch in February 2008, SocialCalendar has now become a Top-20 application on Facebook according to Facebook Application Directory (Most Active Users). SocialCalendar is also a part of The Adonomics 100TM.
How SocialCalendar Got Started?
SocialCalendar founder Raj Lalwani and co-founder David Jordan relied on their wives to keep them in the loop with the family's social plans. For example, using a calendar that hung on the kitchen wall, David's wife kept track of important dates like their son's open house or dinner with the in-laws. David checked it whenever he remembered to. Unfortunately, David didn't look at the calendar often enough and frequently ended up saying, "That's today?"
Hence, the idea for SocialCalendar was born. Now their SocialCalendars are full of occasions created by their wives, and they get regular reminders in advance of the event.
Presenting Company: Koollage
Website: http://www.koollage.com/
Location: Sunnyvale, CA
Koollage provides a new online packaging platform that enables users to assemble, aggregate and deliver multimedia content in compact, easily navigable, instantly sharable Pods (Packages-On-Demand). Pods can be viewed via any web enabled device, including small-screen devices. A Pod is a micro-website or a mini-application with a distinct look and feel. Any type of rich media can be added to a Pod, including: audio, video and images, RSS feeds, ecommerce components, maps, games, music, search results, HTML and JavaScript. Koollage is currently available on the web and the Apple iPhone. Koollage combines Web 2.0 technologies along with a patent-pending search conversion technology to create multimedia packets of information. The net result is a faster and easier way to aggregate relevant content and reach audiences at the point of consumption, on any web-enabled form factor. Based in Silicon Valley, Koollage's team has years of experience building consumer friendly applications. Koollage was founded and incorporated in early 2007, and is now launching in public "beta" after about 12 months of development. Koollage recently closed a seed round of financing and is aiming to close a Series A round in 2008. Pods offer a compelling way to market products, services or brands, mobilize news, blogs, web pages, and much more. We link content to its original source - providing a channel to drive traffic and helping publishing partners reach their mobile audiences wherever they are.
Presenting Company: IndieGoGo
Website: http://www.indiegogo.com/
Location: Berkeley, CA
IndieGoGo is an online social marketplace connecting filmmakers and fans to make independent film happen. The platform provides filmmakers the tools for project funding, recruiting, and promotion, while enabling the audience to discover and connect directly with filmmakers and the causes they support. ounded on the principles of opportunity, transparency, choice, and action, IndieGoGo launched in 2008 to address the fundraising challenges and market inefficiencies affecting independent filmmaking today. IndieGoGo enables this "filmocracy" by providing filmmakers an open platform to pitch their projects to the world, and giving the fans a vehicle to experience and influence the once inaccessible world of filmmaking.
Presenting Company: Geckogo
Website: http://www.geckogo.com/
Location: Mountain View, CA
Geckogo is the fun and easy way to find out where to go and what to do based on your specific interests. GeckoGo wants you to get the most out of your travels. GeckoGo was built based on our own experiences traveling, and by talking and listening to dozens and dozens of travelers like you that we've met along the way. And we're always evolving.
