Below you’ll find extensive profiles on each speaker. Simply click a name to be taken to their information.
Rohit Bhargava
Ogilvy
“Vice President | Interactive Marketing”
Rohit Bhargava is Vice President of Interactive Marketing for Ogilvy Public Relations and a founding member of Ogilvy PR’s Digital Influence practice, a group focused on helping clients navigate the rapidly evolving world of consumer generated media and social media (including blogs, rss, podcasts, and other evolving formats). The team currently works with clients such as Intel, LG, Johnson & Johnson, Capital Grille and many others to help brands start connecting with consumers/audiences and using the principles of social media engage them in a dialogue rather than one-way message delivery.
His expertise in this area comes from personal experience – he is the author of the popular marketing blog Influential Interactive Marketing (http://rohitbhargava.typepad.com), and is a specialist in creative strategy using the Internet, mobile technology, portable media devices, and other emerging media channels. He has published several articles and thought pieces and is a frequent speaker at industry events on interactive marketing, and personal media. In the print media, Rohit has been interviewed for PR Week, Wired magazine, Jupiter, and has given audio interviews for several podcast programs.
Prior to joining Ogilvy, Rohit spent 4 years “down under” in Sydney, Australia including a role as Executive Producer in the interactive division of Leo Burnett led a creative team of designers and producers to deliver award-winning online promotional campaigns for Nestle, Kelloggs, Subaru, HP and Heineken. Internationally, he has worked in Australia, Singapore, New Zealand, Hong Kong and the Philippines. He holds a BBA in International Marketing from the Goizueta Business School, and also completed a Masters from George Mason University with a thesis in Usability and Interface Design. He is married and lives in Washington DC with his wife and 2 year old son.
Drew Curtis
Fark
“Founder”
Drew Curtis (b. February 7, 1973) is the founder and an administrator of Fark. He graduated from Luther College in Decorah, Iowa in 1995. From 1996 to 2002, he owned and operated DCR.NET, an ISP based in Frankfort, Kentucky. Curtis recently finished his first book, It’s Not News, It’s FARK: How Mass Media Tries to Pass off Crap as News, which will be released in May 2007. He attended the same high school as fellow internet author Tucker Max. – Wikipedia
Doug Hirsch
Daily Strength
“Founder”
Doug Hirsch has more than 12 years of experience conceiving, building and managing the biggest community and entertainment sites on the Web. As one of the first employees of Yahoo Inc., he conceived and/or managed product development for all of Yahoo’s community and communication products, including Yahoo! Mail, GeoCities, Yahoo! Groups, Yahooligans, Yahoo! Personals, Yahoo! Chat, Yahoo! Message Boards, Yahoo! Calendar, Yahoo! Local and much more. Between 1996 and 2001, Doug led product development for services which generated more than 75% of Yahoo’s traffic and registrations. During this tenure, Doug managed more than 40 direct reports, worked closely with Jerry Yang and David Filo (Yahoo’s founders), oversaw 2 acquisitions worth more than $4 billion, and rose to the position of Senior Director.
After leaving Yahoo to travel around the world in 2001, Doug returned to Yahoo as the General Manager of Yahoo! Entertainment, responsible for all aspects of Yahoo! Movies, Yahoo! TV, Yahoo! Entertainment and a joint-venture with Paramount’s ‘Entertainment Tonight’. Between 2001 and 2005, each of these sites became the #1 site in their respective categories (in excess of 15M unique monthly users and 600M monthly page views), and revenues grew from less than $1M to more than $60M.
In August 2005, Doug was hired by Facebook, Inc., as the Vice President Of Production, reporting to the CEO. In his short tenure at Facebook, Doug conceived, managed and launched Facebook’s photo sharing product (more than 100M photos uploaded in the first month); traffic grew from 2B to 8B page views), Facebook’s high school product (more than 1M registered users in 2 months), and much more.
Doug is a magna cum laude graduate of Tufts University, with additional coursework at Oxford University and UCLA. Doug was accepted at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, but opted not to leave Yahoo in 1996 to attend business school.
Nikhyl Singhal
Saynow
“President / Founder”
Nikhyl has been on the founding team of three startups, including his current role as CEO of SayNow. SayNow began in 2005 and delivers voice services to entertainers and other passionate communities. Prior to founding SayNow, Nikhyl was the co-founder and CEO for Cast Iron Systems. From 2001 to 2004, Nikhyl created and led the product direction for the Application Router, an appliance that solves mainstream application integration problems by blending the concepts from the enterprise application integration (EAI) space and the networking space. Nikhyl secured over $20M in venture capital from Sequoia Capital, Norwest Venture Partners, and Invesco. Additionally he was directly involved in building the management team and hiring the first 50 employees, as well as securing the first dozen customers and $1M in revenue.
Before Cast Iron Systems, Nikhyl had extensive experience in developing and managing development teams. Nikhyl served as the Director of Engineering for WebSwap/Tradia, where he co-founded the company, recruited the development team, and managed the operations and backend of the website. Prior to joining WebSwap, Nikhyl served as Manager of Object Products at Borland and was a senior member of the development team at Visigenic Software, which developed the VisiBroker Object Request Broker product line. Nikhyl holds a BS and an MS in Computer Science from Stanford University.
Hiten Shah
Pronet Advertising
“Founder”
Hiten Shah graduated from UC Berkeley in 2003. Since then he has been
engulfed in the Internet marketing world. He first started off with
offering SEO services by co-founding Advantage Consulting Services and
helping to write ACS’s company blog, Pronet Advertising. Soon after
he saw the need for better Internet marketing tools and started
creating web applications including Crazy Egg, Siteblimp, and Serph.
More recently along with his partners at ACS, he has been focusing on
providing Social Media Marketing solutions for companies of all sizes.
Jake Nickell
skinnyCorp (makers of ever popular Threadless shirts)“President / CEO”
Age: 26 years
Hometown: Crown Point, IN
General: I am currently studying to become a helicopter pilot. I was an army brat growing up and have lived in 8 different states. Colorado was my favorite and I’ll probably move back there at some point. Whitewater kayaking is my dream hobby that I’ve never had a chance to actually take up. My 2nd grade teacher was my all time favorite teacher. I’m a college drop out but have taught college courses.
I love coming to work everyday, working with my friends on stuff we love to work on.
Movies: I have a 5 movie Netflix account and use it regularly.
TV Shows: MacGyver!!!!!!
Books: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Steven Reading
Dogster
“Business Development”
Co-Founder and Chief Business Office, Steven oversees advertising, sponsorship,
business partnerships as well as legal and contracts for Dogster, Inc makers
of the popular online passion-centric communities Dogster.com and Catster.com.
Jake McKee
Big in Japan
“Lead Samurai”
Jake McKee is an evangelist for online and offline community building, social media, and customer-company interaction. He has been working with online communities, fan groups, and consumer groups since the early days of the Internet, and has a rich background in Web development, community management, business strategy, and product development.
Jake is the Lead Samurai at Big in Japan, a Dallas-based social media consultancy and toolbox. In a past life, Jake was the Global Community Relations Specialist for the LEGO Company, where he spent five years on the front lines of customer-company interaction. In January 2006, Jake’s work with LEGO was featured on the cover of Wired and Forbes. The Wired cover made him more than a little misty.
For more info about Jake, check out his blog at: www.communityguy.com or Big in Japan.
Joe Suh
MyChurch
“Co-Founder”
Joe Suh, along with his wife Carol, is co-founder of the church social-network, MyChurch.org. Within 3 months of launch in Sept 2006, 1400 churches have created communities on MyChurch.org. Joe is passionate about empowering and enabling online church communities between Sundays. Joe and Carol are both Computer Science grads from UC Berkeley, and attend The River Church Community in San Jose. They dreamed up MyChurch when they realized they weren’t well-networked within their own church community despite being members for 3 years. And they wanted to baptize Myspace!
Akash Garg
hi5 Networks
“Co-Founder / CTO”
Akash manages technology infrastructure and software development for hi5 Networks. He developed the core concepts and technology that fueled the creation of hi5.com, a site that is used by 10s of millions of people every day. Most recently, Akash was at Reactivity assisting early-stage startups with technology strategy and direction. Akash was also responsible for architecting and implementing key portions of Reactivity’s flagship product.
Premal Shah
Kiva.org
“President”
Premal Shah is helps run Kiva.org – a new online lending marketplace that connects internet users with developing world entrepreneurs in need of low cost capital. Prior to Kiva.org, Premal was a Principal Product Manager at PayPal, an eBay company. During his 6 year career at PayPal, Premal drove a number of key initiatives including a year long project defining eBay’s role in economically empowering the global working poor. A number of corporate initiatives have come out of this effort, including PayPal’s support of Kiva.org. Prior to PayPal, Premal was a strategy consultant at Mercer Management Consulting in New York. Premal has had a long standing interest in microfinance. In 1997, he was awarded a grant from Stanford University to research microfinance in Gujarat, India. More recently Premal co-founded the Silicon Valley Microfinance Network and spent 2 months in India working to refine / validate Kiva.org’s model. In 2006, Premal was a featured speaker at the Clinton Global Initiative and Global Microcredit Summit. Premal graduated with a B.A. in Economics from Stanford University.
Fred Stutzman
claimid
“Co-Founder”
Fred Stutzman is a Ph.D. student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Information and Library Science, and co-founder of ClaimID.com. ClaimID is a leading personal identity management website that helps people have a say in their online identity. Previously, he spent five years as a researcher, open source advocate, project manager and director of technology for ibiblio.org, one of the web’s largest hubs of open source technology. Before ibiblio, Fred worked for The Motley Fool and Nortel Networks in systems engineering and project management roles.
Fred has provided strategic executive and technological consulting to a number of companies, including members of the Fortune 500, established consumer-oriented software and telecommunications firms, web 2.0 startups, and the presidential campaigns of John Kerry and Wesley Clark. He conceived and continues to manage the Lyceum project, the premier WordPress-based multi-user blogging services software. In 2006, Fred organized BarCampRDU, the successful technology unconference that has served as a model for a number of other conferences.
In a research role, Fred often speaks on the topic of social networking, social software and identity; he has presented his research at both Google and Yahoo. He is sourced frequently on the topic of social networking in local, national and international news stories. In addition to his academic publications, he keeps a topical research blog at Unit Structures (http://chimprawk.blogspot.com). Fred’s research interests include identity, social software and networks, and the effects of social technologies; he approaches these areas from an information needs perspective.
Markus Frind
Plenty of Fish
“Founder”
Markus Frind is the creator of PlentyofFish, which currently ranks as
the top dating site in Canada (Alexa) and the fifth largest in the
U.S.A. (Hitwise).
Markus originally created the site in 2003 as a project to teach
himself ASP.NET. Most of the day to day tasks required to run
PlentyofFish have been automated and the site has been engineered to
grow by word of mouth, rather than through traditional online
advertising spends. He has no employees and works out of his
apartment in Vancouver, Canada.
Tara Hunt
Citizen Agency
“Founder”
‘Miss Rogue’ defines herself as a customer first, marketer second. In 2005, Tara became the marketing director at Riya, where her community marketing theories resulted in huge gains, such as national news mentions before launch and over one million photos uploaded within 24 hours of launch. She doesn’t believe in PR, only in the power of building relationships with a community. She co-founded Citizen Agency in 2006 with the mission of teaching her clients how to work more effectively with the communities they serve. Tara has over seven years experience in non-traditional marketing planning. She maintains a successful blog over at HorsePigCow.
Speaking of community, Tara is a community-based movement evangelist, spending all of her free time on Barcamp, Coworking and Winecamp. She is also a supporter of the Open Source movement, the EFF, Creative Commons and the Intelligrid.
Sean Suhl
SuicideGirls
“Co-Founder”
Sean Suhl is one of the two creators of SuicideGirls. Suhl began
creating websites in 1995 for television shows in Los Angeles. Over
the last decade he has built websites for The Aspen Comedy Festival,
Nike, Dark Horse Comics, CBS, The Emmys, Warner Bros Music, Razorfish,
Interscope, HBO and MTV. He has consulted on site builds for hundreds
of internet start ups and established media companies.
Suhl has been featured in Rolling Stone, Spin, Wired Magazine, The
Industry Standard, USA Today, The Red Herring, The Los Angeles Times,
BusinessWeek, CNN and countless other publications. Hollywood Insider
called Suhl a content and technology visionary and Los Angeles
Magazine called Suhl a “web whiz kid.”
Aside from SuicideGirls, Suhl has built numerous other online
communities, including thirsty.com. They all went out of business in
the early 00’s web bust because they spent too much money on fancy
Herman Miller furniture and not enough on hiring ad sales guys.
Matt Roche
Offermatica“Co-Founder”
Matthew is the CEO of Offermatica, the leading campaign optimization service that helps marketers improve advertising and website performance. Offermatica’s current clients include Timberland, C*NET, and Siemens. Matthew also writes and speaks about the radical transformation of marketing in the network-driven economy.
With over 10 years of online marketing experience, he previously held the CEO position of Fort Point Partners, an eCommerce firm that built online channels for brands like Nike, Best Buy, J. Crew and Martha Stewart. Matthew’s experience also includes developing Egghead.com, the first site to sell more than $1MM in a single day and establishing Webfactory/Data, a division of Webfactory, Inc., serving as its general manager.
Matthew holds a bachelor’s degree from Yale University where he studied computer science and complex adaptive systems.
Mike Jones
Userplane
“Founder”
Michael Jones, CEO of Userplane and Vice President of AOL, oversees Userplane’s business strategy, sales and operations. As a founder of Userplane, and Userplane’s CEO, Jones’ business leadership brought the business from startup to acquisition by AOL in August 2006. As a Vice President of AOL, he now focuses on the growth of the Userplane/AIM division as well as AOL’s strategic positioning as a platform provider to the online community marketplace.
Userplane software now reaches in excess of 50 million users in more than fifteen countries. Userplane-installed sites span the full spectrum of web communities, including top tier web properties like myspace.com, date.com, Red Bull, and Honda.
Jones founded his first digital production studio during his junior year at the University of Oregon, which he sold in 2000 after growing the company to profitability. He has since launched numerous business and participates in fund raising, angel investing and as an advisory board member in various online startups.
Jones frequently represents AOL and Userplane at conferences and in publications. Jones was the keynote speaker at the 2003 OFFF conference in Barcelona Spain, a featured presenter at Flash Forward 2003, BlogON 2004, iDate Miami 2004, SITRAS 2004, iDate Nice 2004, iDate Miami 2005, iDate Hong Kong 2005, iDate Miami 2005 and Digital Hollywood 2006. He has also been published in numerous internet journals including iMediaConnection.com.
Jones earned his Bachelor of Arts in International Business and Marketing from the University of Oregon.
My digital identiy keeps growing – here are the networks I use and
where to find me:
- A Small World (username
MikeJones) - MySpace
- Friendster
- ZoomInfo
John Vars
Dogster“Chief Product Officer”
Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer John oversees community features and
the development and implementation of new products and technology at Dogster,
Inc makers of the popular online passion-centric communities Dogster.com
and Catster.com.
Aaron Dignan
BrandPlay
“Founder”
Co-founder of Brandplay, Aaron Dignan is an accidental brand evangelist, who came to the industry from an education in psychology at the University of Colorado at Boulder. What began as fascination with the brand development processes at national brands like Apple, Starbucks, and JetBlue became a fanatical obsession with brand strategy, and eventually Brandplay, which was one of the branding firms selected by Seth Godin (author of Permission Marketing and Purple Cow) for inclusion in the Bull Market directory of remarkable resources.
A charismatic speaker for brands like McDonald’s, Leo Burnett, Columbia College, and the University of Colorado, Aaron’s thinking on the future of brands and the concept of “The Brand Utopia” has earned him a reputation as the next generation of brand guru.
Joe Hurd
VideoEgg
“Vice President, Business Development”
Joe is currently the VP, Business Development for VideoEgg, Inc., a FirstRound Capital portfolio company that is focused on video sharing, advertising and content distribution for online social networks. At VideoEgg, Joe is responsible for all distribution, product, and revenue-generating deals, having signed deals with Bebo, Hi5, Tagged, MyYearbook, Piczo, Military and 50 other partners in 2006. He is also the Managing Partner of The Katama Group, LLC, where he consults with Web 2.0 consumer-facing internet and mobile content companies on strategy and international business development. Some of his current and past clients include: Tagged, Inc. (social networking), Jookster, Inc. (social search), Renkoo, Inc. (web-based invites) and Mobissimo, Inc. (travel meta-search). Prior to founding Katama, Joe was VP, Business Development and General Manager, International for Friendster, Inc., a leading social networking web site. At Friendster, Joe grew the company’s international revenues from zero to $3 million, added 5 million international users and launched the first mobile SMS/WAP-based social networking application. Earlier in his career, Joe ran business development for AOL in Japan and Australia, and worked as a corporate lawyer at a London-based law firm. Joe sits on the advisory boards of a number of mobile content and consumer internet start-up companies.
Joe received his A.B. cum laude in East Asian Studies and Government from Harvard College, his Master of International Affairs degree from Columbia University, and his J.D. from Harvard Law School. Currently living in Los Altos, CA with his wife and daughter, Joe enjoys reading historical biographies, swimming and running.
Max Levchin
Slide
“Founder”
Max is the Chairman and CEO of Slide, an online personalization service
that helps people combine personal media with an ever-changing library
of simple yet powerful effects to produce fun, sleek, and portable
pieces of digital self-expression. As the co-founder and former CTO of
PayPal, Max pioneered the development of network and information
security technologies to combat transaction fraud and identity theft.
Max is also the co-creator of the Gausebeck-Levchin test, one of the
first commercial implementations of a Captcha. In addition to his work
on Slide, he also helped start Yelp, an online social networking and
review service. Max has a degree in Computer Science from University of
Illinois in Urbana-Champaign and a wheaten terrier named Uma.
Ted Rheingold
Dogster
“Top Dog”
An accidental entrepreneur, Ted is the founder and CEO of the popular online communities Dogster.com and Catster.com. He speaks about passion-centric communities, generating revenue, and DIY development. He writes about what tingles him at www.spideysenses.com.
Jeffrey Kalmikoff
skinnyCorp (makers of ever popular Threadless shirts)
“Chief Creative Officer”
Jeffrey has been working as a visual designer since late 1998. He started out designing club flyers in Chicago, and has since worked for magazines, ad agencies, and small shops. In 2002, he formed his own small graphic design company, inFORMATION Design Lab. In early 2004, he merged with a company created by his friends Jake and Jacob to form what is know as skinnyCorp, where he now works as Creative Director.
Jeffrey’s work primarily focuses on design for community-based websites such as Threadless, Naked and Angry, and ExtraTasty. He has been recognized internationally and has been published in many books and magazines. He also regularly speaks for students and peers nationally and internationally. Some highlights have been Parsons School Of Design, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, UCLA, the Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), Semi-Permanent Conference ‘05 (NYC), and many others.
You can check out his work for skinnyCorp or his personal site at callmejeffrey.com
Guy Kawasaki
Garage Ventures
“Founder”
I was born in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1954. My family lived in a tough part of Honolulu called Kalihi Valley. We weren’t rich, but I never felt poor-because my mother and father made many sacrifices for my sister and me. My mother was a housewife, and my father was, at various times, a fireman, real estate broker, state senator, and government official.
I attended Iolani School where I graduated in 1972. Iolani is not as well known as its rival, Punahou, but I got a fantastic and formative education there. After Iolani, I matriculated to Stanford University where I graduated in 1976. My major was psychology-which was the easiest major I could find.
After Stanford, I attended the law school at UC Davis because, like all Asian American parents, my folks wanted me to be a “doctor, lawyer, or dentist.” I only lasted one week because I couldn’t deal with the law school teachers telling me that I was crap and that they were going to remake me.
The following year I entered the MBA program at UCLA. I liked this curriculum much better. While there, I worked for a fine-jewelry manufacturer called Nova Stylings; my first real job was literally counting diamonds. From Nova, its CEO Marty Gruber, and my Jewish colleagues in the jewelry business, I learned how to sell. The jewelry business is the toughest business I’ve encountered.
I remained at Nova for a few years until the computer bug bit me. The Apple II removed the scales from my eyes, so I went to work for an educational software company called EduWare Services. However, Peachtree Software acquired the company and wanted me to move to Atlanta. “I don’t think so.” I can’t live in a city where people call sushi “bait.”
Luckily, my Stanford roommate, Mike Boich, got me a job at Apple. When I saw what a Macintosh could do, the clouds parted and the angels started singing. For four years I evangelized Macintosh to software and hardware developers and led the charge against world-wide domination by IBM. I also met my wife Beth at Apple during this timeframe-Apple has been very good to me.
Around 1987, my job with Apple was done. Macintosh had plenty of software by then, so I left to start a Macintosh database company called ACIUS. It published a product called 4th Dimension. I did this for two years and then left to pursue my bliss of writing, speaking, and consulting.
Later, I started another software company called Fog City Software with three of the best people in the world: Will Mayall, Kathryn Henkens, and Jud Spencer. We created an email product called Emailer that we sold to Claris and then a list server product called LetterRip.
In 1995 I returned to Apple as an Apple fellow. At the time, according to the pundits, Apple was supposed to die again. (Apple should have died about ten times in the past twenty years according to the pundits.) My job on this tour of duty was to maintain and rejuvenate the Macintosh cult.
A couple years later, I left Apple to start Garage with Craig Johnson of Venture Law Group and Rich Karlgaard of Forbes. Version 1.0 of Garage was to provide matchmaking services for angel investors and entrepreneurs. We upgraded to version 2.0 which was an investment bank for helping entrepreneurs raise money from venture capitalists. Today, version 3.0 is focused on being a venture capital firm and making direct investments in early-stage technology companies.
This brings me up to date. Currently, I’m a managing director at Garage as well as an author and speaker. I’ve written eight books and have four children. My latest book is The Art of the Start-the Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything. It reflects my experience as an evangelist, entrepreneur, investment banker, and venture capitalist.
Amit Gupta
Photojojo
“Founder”
Amit lives in midtown Manhattan at House 2.0 with four of his best friends. He enjoys taking photos, watching disaster movies, and dreaming up new ideas.
While at Amherst College in 1999, Amit Gupta co-founded The Daily Jolt, a network of student-run websites now operating at over a hundred college campuses. Over the past six years, clients such as The Peace Corps, Universal Music, Verizon, Samsung, and Virgin have used the Jolt as their gateway to college students. At the Jolt, Amit helped design and build the initial website, oversaw feature development, co-wrote the business plan, and helped raise capital and hire key talent.
In 2004, Amit helped create ChangeThis, a platform dedicated to spreading powerful ideas via email, RSS, and blogs, for Seth Godin. He co-wrote the business plan and, over a period of four months, oversaw a team of interns and an outside development firm in the creation and launch of the site. After launch, he served as managing editor for six months, and oversaw the operation of ChangeThis while working with business leaders and marketers such as Seth Godin, Tom Peters, Guy Kawasaki, Malcolm Gladwell, and Mark Cuban to publish and promote their manifestos. In early 2005, he helped transition ChangeThis to its new stewards, 800ceoread.
In 2005, Amit consulted for NYC-based Creative Good, the industry’s oldest customer experience firm. At Creative Good, he put his design and customer experience knowledge to use improving business metrics at companies such as Pearson and Apple. He also contributed to The Big Moo, a best-selling business book released in October of 2005, co-authored with Malcolm Gladwell, Tom Peters, Guy Kawasaki, Alan Webber, Mark Cuban, Chris Meyer, and more.
In early 2006, Amit brought BarCamp, the technology un-conference, to New York City. More than a hundred alpha-geeks decended from all over New York City and the country for a weekend full of ad-hoc technology presentations, demonstrations, and networking. The event included a Saturday-night sleepover and sponsors included RedBull, Squidoo, Mark Hurst’s GEL conference, Flock, SXSW, and more.
In April of 2006, Amit launched Photojojo, an email newsletter devoted to finding the very best Photo tips, DIY projects, and Gear. Photojojo has been mentioned in MAKE:, ReadyMade, 37 Signals’ Signal vs. Noise, Del.icio.us Popular, Lifehacker, news.yahoo.com, FlickerNation, and on the blogs of Derek Powazek and Heather Champ.
James Hong
Hot or Not
“Co-Founder”
James Hong is best known as the cofounder of the website HOTorNOT.com, where real people submit their photo for others to rate on a scale of 1 to 10. It is also the largest paid dating site focusing on the 25 and under demographic. He also cofounded SaveMyAss.com (a flower delivery service) and 10over100.org, an initiative to increase charitable giving. He is a graduate of UC Berkeley, where he earned a BS Electrical Engineering degree and an MBA.
Heather Luttrell
3jane & indieclick
“VP Business Development & President”
Heather Luttrell is President of multi-media advertising company, IndieClick. She is also VP Business Development of 3jane Digital Holdings, which includes 3jane professional services, 3jane|Brazil, 3jane|Hosting, and IndieClick. 3jane designs, develops, hosts, launches, markets and provides ROI services for web properties such as SuicideGirls, Revver, IndieClick, ZonaZoom, Comedy.com, SixApart, Last.fm and more.
IndieClick works with thousands of advertising clients and agencies to help them effectively target and communicate with the elusive and profitable 16-34 year old online audience.
IndieClick represents the best of online music, community, blog, culture, gossip, gamer, comic, college and entertainment communities. IndieClick works with advertisers and agencies to deliver relevant and targeted messaging to our discerning audience of more than forty million 16-34 year old “Influencers” and tastemakers.
Ms. Luttrell worked in the Global Interactive Strategy group for American Express, recommending strategic investments in the online space to the CEO. Prior to joining American Express, Ms. Luttrell was founder and CEO of online volunteering and philanthropy platform, Pangeea,. Ms. Luttrell also worked with angel investor and founding COO of Priceline, Jesse Fink, and she has provided strategic consulting and venture strategy services to a portfolio of online business clients.
Ms. Luttrell was a valuable senior member of KPMG Consulting’s financial services practice, working in the Capital Markets group. In addition to her work on the Chase/Chemical and Societe Generale mergers, Ms. Luttrell led a number of internal projects to develop strategies, pricing, structure and methodologies for KPMG products and services, including their equity investment program “Greenlight”, Customer Value Management Group and eLaunch Services. Through Greenlight, Ms. Luttrell was responsible for screening, selecting and developing growth and revenue strategies for their portfolio of sweat equity clients, and negotiated and signed a lucrative $35 million contract with a international online trading infrastructure provider.
Ms. Luttrell joined KPMG from prestigious New York customer analytics boutique, First Manhattan Consulting Group, where she performed customer analytics for the top 50 financial institutions in the country. She spent the first years of her career performing detailed economic analyses as an early member of Law and Economics Consulting Group, which is now a public company led by Stanford and Berkeley PHD Economists with more than 25 offices globally.
Ms. Luttrell holds a BA in quantitative and qualitatitive Economics from Claremont’s Scripps College, which she attended as a Founder’s Scholar with a National Merit and American Legion of Honor scholarship.
Mark Jacobstein
loopt, Inc.
EVP of Corporate Development and Marketing
Mark has a myriad of responsibilities within loopt, the most important of which include overseeing marketing, assuring that loopt’s products are safe and secure, and helping to develop the internal processes and procedures for the successful deployment of loopt’s products.
Most recently Mark was President& COO, President of Publishing, and a member of the founding team for Digital Chocolate, one of the world’s largest publishers of mobile games.
Mark is perhaps best known as the originator of fantasy sports on the internet. In 1994, Mark co-founded Small World Sports, the Internet’s first fantasy sports Web site, where he served as CEO before selling the company to The Sporting News. Prior to its sale Small World’s community had grown to more than three million members playing dozens of fantasy games.
Mark also co-founded Small World Software, an Internet technology consultancy, which he sold to iXL in 1998. Mark served as the Senior Vice President of Sales and Business Development for iXL’s New York office.
Mark studied Computer Science at Harvard, where he graduated cum laude in 1992, before starting his career as a software developer at Bloomberg L.P. Mark is active in a number of Bay Area philanthropies, including The Full Circle Fund.
Paul Smith
Previously, Paul co-founded and then sold bSource Inc. to Computer Associates in 2000. Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Fortune and Forbes adopted the bSource platform. Earlier, Mr. Smith was Director of Technology and Production at Red Sky Interactive, a premier middleware and web design firm owned by Omnicom.