The Team
Jessica Alter
Founder CEOJessica is Cofounder & Chief Connector of FounderDating. She is passionate about helping entrepreneurs through her work and is also a 500 Startups mentor. Previously, Jessica was CEO of Formative Labs and led Business Development and was GM of Platforms at Bebo (Acquired by AOL). She holds a BBA from University of Michigan and an MBA from Harvard.
Abby Beck
Designer ExtraordinaireAbby is the Designer Extraordinaire for FounderDating where her passion for design and HCI allow her to build lean, clean and user friendly products. She has a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in NYC where she graduated in the top 10% of her class. She can also be found curating art shows, on a plane going anywhere or fostering a sense of community wherever she goes.
Pete von Petrin
Software EngineerPete is a Software Engineer at FounderDating. He learned BASIC on a TRS-80 at summer camp and has been programming ever since. He can sometimes be found performing experimental music in small San Francisco venues.
Mike Preuss
ManagingDirector San FranciscoMike leads Business Development initiatives for Formspring where he oversees distribution across the web, media partnerships, and monetization. He is also in the Orr Entrepreneurial Fellowship and an advisor at EveryMe. Prior, Mike helped get a startup off the ground at Indiana University from which he graduated with degrees in Entrepreneurship and Finance.
Ryan Jackson
ManagingDirector San FranciscoRyan most recently founded MicroEval, a company focused on offering modern employee performance reviews. He was previously a product manager for Ooyala, helping to run the analytics and CMS teams. Ryan received his BS & MEng in computer science from MIT.
Tom Limongello
ManagingDirector New YorkTom Limongello is head of product marketing for Crisp Media, a mobile advertising platform based in NYC. Prior to Crisp, Tom commercialized new products at Unilever in Chicago/Shanghai. Tom has an MBA from Chicago Booth & certificates from General Assembly in Web Development and Chinese studies from John Hopkins SAIS. Tom organizes memes like Fail Whale and events including TC Disrupt Beijing.
Damon Clinkscales
ManagingDirector AustinDamon is a Web engineer at VitalSource building an e-textbook platform. Founded @austinonrails and @cafebedouins. Shepherd. Lover of ideas and the pursuit of dreams.
Etienne de Bruin
ManagingDirector San DiegoOriginally from South Africa, he grew up with a mad passion for coding and music. His first web app (musolist.com) helped form bands around the world. From encryption apps in Germany to data management in San Diego, CA, his current role as CTO at MonkDev, Inc. has him leading web and mobile strategies for internet products and services while helping build the San Diego Technology scene.
Sean Callahan
ManagingDirector San DiegoExperienced tech startup CEO, product manager, marketer, entrepreneur, moviegoer, music lover, photographer, runner, technology enthusiast, and world traveler.
Jennifer Newell
ManagingDirector San DiegoJennifer Newell is a community organizer for the San Diego startup community. A Colorado native, Jennifer found her passion for startups and entrepreneurship in Boulder. She is currently working with a handful of startups and small businesses on marketing, communications, and overall business strategies.
Michael Miller
ManagingDirector BostonMichael Miller is an author, speaker and globetrotting entrepreneur. He is the President of Culture Adapt: a company focused on helping diverse people develop international careers. Much of his interest in cross-cultural fluency developed while working and living as an expat in Suzhou, China. Now he continues his work at Culture Adapt, accelerating the career aspirations of people from around the world.
Patrick Campbell
ManagingDirector BostonPatrick is a Special Projects Analyst at Gemvara. He is essentially the “first boots on the ground” attacking different business needs. Prior to Gemvara, Patrick worked in Sales and Operations at Google. In his free time Patrick enjoys traveling, reading, and boogieing down with the Boston Startup Community.
Niall Smart
ManagingDirector SeattleNiall is currently GM of Product Management at RealNetworks. Previously, he founded Echodio, a digital music service backed by Y-Combinator and acquired by RealNetworks in 2009. He spends his weekends enjoying Seattle’s outdoors and live music scene.
Brian Schultz
ManagingDirector SeattleBrian is Director of Corporate Development at Microsoft where he focuses on acquisitions and investments across Microsoft’s portfolio. Prior, Brian cofounded two venture-backed technology companies, Ontela and Plectix Biosystems.
Patrick Vlaskovits
ManagingDirector LAPatrick is CMO at Drumbi, and a co-organizer of the Los Angeles Lean Startup Circle. He founded two startups, both dead-pooled. He Co-wrote The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development and is working on a second book, The Lean Entrepreneur (Wiley, Fall 2012). He also serves as a mentor at 500 Startups.
Andres Buritica
ManagingDirector LAAndres is a technologist who specializes in building scalable web services and social media platforms. He has worked as an engineer for early-stage startups such as Revver and Digisynd. He helped grow
Disney’s Facebook fans to 150 million by providing statistical analyses on viral campaigns. He is regular contributor to open source projects and is an active member of the LA startup community.
Eli Aleyner
ManagingDirector TorontoEli manages products at XtremeLabs during the day and bootstraps a startup evenings and weekends. Previously, he held engineering and product positions at Amazon and Microsoft. In hist free time (a rarity), he enjoys running, traveling, sailing and skiing.
Mani Fazeli
ManagingDirector TorontoMani has co-founded three companies and fostered their growth from inception to steady execution in a variety of industries. He typically holds a technical role while helping address operations, branding, and fundraising needs. Mani graduated from the University of Toronto (M.Sc. Medical Biophysics) and the University of Waterloo (B.A.Sc. Computer Engineering).
John Weiss
ManagingDirector PortlandAs the Executive Creative Director of WebMD Health Services, John’s work is guided by purpose, passion, simplicity, beauty, innovation and surprise. John has built and led high performing design teams as the Director, Experience Design at Waggener Edstrom and Experience Director at Ascentium. John founded FiveEdge Media in 2003, a Portland/Seattle based Experience Design Studio which was acquired in 2008.
Jimmy Jacobson
ManagingDirector Las VegasJimmy is currently an API Developer and Advocate at Zappos.com by day. By night he is developing Wedgies.com and attending hackathons and Startup Weekends in between. Loves #Vegastech
Thomas Knoll
ManagingDirector Las VegasFounder at clippPR.com Building community in #VegasTech. Mentor at 500Startups. Help startups with Community, product, marketing, and customer development.
Keith Privette
ManagingDirector NorfolkKeith is a Senior Project Consultant with Stratactical Consulting, building out how marketing, operations, HR, customer service, product & service development integrate and operate better with emerging technologies. Keith has over 14 years of experience with integrating and developing many different technology platforms and is now a leader in the #startnorfolk community.
Zack Miller
ManagingDirector NorfolkZack is the Project and Marketing Director at We Are Titans, a software development company that works with small start-ups and Fortune 500s. He’s very active in the entrepreneurial community, having founded Sparkroute, the Hampton Roads Entrepreneurs’ Mentorship Program (Startup Night), Drinks Downtown, Start Norfolk and Hatch. He is also a Principal at Aeir Talk and COO at VinylMint.
Irene Pylypenko
ManagingDirector MontrealIrene cofounded two companies, with experience in enterprise software development, web development and design, and data analysis in various industries including Technology, Life Sciences and Real Estate. She holds a BSc from University of Western Ontario, and MSc from McGill University.
Jessie Arora
Jessie Arora, Founder of Teacher Square, is passionate about cultivating the education startup ecosystem to help create tools and services that improve teaching and learning for all students. She is an active angel investor mainly focused on the education space, applying her experiences from Google, Citizen Schools & Stanford School of Ed. She blogs at edcrunch.org
Friends of FounderDating
Dave McClure
Dave is a greedy VC & founding partner at 500 Startups. He likes to hang out with entrepreneurs, and help or invest in their startups if they are foolish enough to let him. He’s been geeking out in Silicon Valley for over 20 years, and has worked with companies such as PayPal, Mint, Founders Fund, Facebook, LinkedIn, SlideShare, Twilio, Intel, & Microsoft. Dave also likes to play ultimate frisbee when his knees don’t hurt.
Manu Kumar
Manu is the founder and Chief Firestarter at K9 Ventures. He previously founded, grew and sold two successful ventures. He was the Founder, President and CEO of SneakerLabs, Inc. Manu served as the VP of Interactive Technologies for E.piphany and as Chairman and CEO of iMeet, Inc. Previously, Manu was a lecturer in the distance education program at the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University.
Saar Gur
Saar is a Partner at CRV. Saar currently sits on the boards of Progress Financial, Magnetic, Wonderhill, Altius and Blippy and was involved in CRV’s seed investment in social games company LilGreenPatch (acquired by Playdom), Viki and Storenvy. Prior to joining CRV, Saar was a co-founder of Brightroll and Carebadges.com (acquired by Facebook Causes) and was Saar was VP of Customer Acquisition for Adteractive.
Dave Schapell
Dave is the founder & CEO of TeachStreet and is a huge proponent of entrepreneurship and risk-taking. Prior to TeachStreet, Dave worked at Amazon, JibJab, and Unitus. He has a B.S. in Accounting from the Penn State University and attended the MBA program at The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Dave’s an investor in General Assembly, InternMatch, and Kima Labs. He loves dogs, in a normal way.
Phin Barnes
Phin Barnes is a Principal at First Round Capital. Before joining First Round Capital, Phin founded ResponDesign, an independent videogame company that developed and published Yourself!Fitness, the first fitness game for Xbox and PlayStation2. Phin earned his MBA with honors from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business.
Sean Lindsay
Sean is Co-Founder and CTO of Viximo, a leading social game publisher and distributor. Previously, Sean served in a variety of engineering and technology leadership roles at PanGo (acquired by InnerWireless), BEA (acquired by Oracle), Upromise (acquired by Sallie Mae), and Novera (acquired by Mercator). He’s also on the advisory board of several early stage startups and coordinates the independent FounderMentors program.
Hiten Shah
Hiten is Cofounder of KISSmetrics which helps web-based businesses understand their customers. Prior, Hiten co-founded Crazy Egg, and helped large corporations such as eBay, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, TechCrunch, Walmart, and Zappos better understand the user experience on their web sites. He also cofounded Advantage Consulting Services in 2003. He graduated from UC Berkeley in 2003.
Chris DeVore
Chris runs Founders Co-op, the Pacific Northwest’s only seed fund, along with his friend + business partner Andy Sack. Before going to the dark side, Chris was an entrepreneur himself: he created Patagonia’s online retailing business; built Adjacency, to help other big brands sell online, sold it to Sapient (NASDAQ: SAPE); and co-founded a local social search company Judy’s Book.
Andy Weissman
Andy Weissman is a partner at Union Square Ventures. Andy began his career in the Internet at AOL in the mid-90s, then managed a series of venture funds with Dawntreader Ventures. In 2007 he co-founded betaworks, which both created and invested in social, real-time applications and services. Andy was born in New York City and has a BA from Wesleyan University and a JD from Georgetown.
Joshua Baer
Joshua helps people quit their jobs and become entrepreneurs. He brought together 20 others to form the Capital Factory early stage accelerator to mentor and invest in tech startups. He founded his first startup in ’96 in his college dorm and now teaches a class at the University of Texas. He received CS and Information Decision Systems degrees from Carnegie Mellon University and lives in Austin, TX with his wife and three children.
Bill Boebel
Bill is an entrepreneur and angel investor. He is managing director at Capital Factory, and helps startups at 500 Startups and TechStars. Bill was the founder and CTO of Webmail.us (acquired by Rackspace). At Rackspace Bill helped integrate and grow the email business, as well as partnerships and M&A opportunities for the cloud business. In 2011 he left Rackspace to start working on new projects.
Special Thanks To
