Best Startup
At Best Startup US we track over 1,000,000 US startups and over 3 million people who hold key positions in these companies. We use this directory of startups to highlight top employees, founders and board members we think deserve more appreciation than they are currently getting.
This list showcases the top California based Founder operating in the CRM space. If you think a Founder is missing from this list, feel free to contact our editor on editor@beststartup.us.
The individuals on this list have been included because of exceptional performance in one of the following categories:
- Innovation – Operating as a key part in an extremely innovative business or startup.
- Growth – Operating as a key figure in the growth and upscale of a market leading business or startup.
- Management – Showing exceptional management skills.
- Societal impact – Putting their business on the map for their positive societal or environmental impact.
Our Data – We source our data from OSINT (open source intelligence) and public directories such as Crunchbase, SemRush and many more. The data from these sources should be treated with a degree of caution and verified yourself.
Mathilde Collin
CEO and Co-Founder of Front
Mathilde Collin is the co-founder and CEO of Front.
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About Front: Front is the leader in customer communication that brings teams together to offer tailor-made service at scale
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Laurent Perrin
CTO and Co-Founder of Front
Laurent Perrin is the CTO and co-founder at Front.
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About Front: Front is the leader in customer communication that brings teams together to offer tailor-made service at scale
Urmas Purde
Co-Founder of Pipedrive
Co-Founder of Pipedrive.
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About Pipedrive: Pipedrive is the global sales-first CRM and revenue platform for small businesses
Parker Harris
Co-Founder, EVP Technology of Salesforce
Parker Harris founded salesforce.com along with Marc Benioff, Dave Moellenhoff and Frank Dominguez in the spring of 1999. As Executive Vice President, Harris oversees the development of all software for salesforce.com. Prior to founding salesforce.com, Harris developed web application and salesforce automation expertise at Left Coast Software, a private consulting company he co-founded, as well as at Metropolis software, an early pioneer in field sales force automation subsequently acquired by Clarify. Harris has over twelve years of software engineering and management experience. He graduated from Middlebury College with a Bachelor’s Degree in English Literature.
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About Salesforce, Salesforce Ventures: Salesforce is a global cloud computing company that develops CRM solutions and provides business software on a subscription basis.
Erez Marom
Founder / Owner of Workiz
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About Workiz: Workiz is a provider of an online platform for managing home services work teams.
Idan Kadosh
Founder / Owner of Workiz
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About Workiz: Workiz is a provider of an online platform for managing home services work teams.
Kim Stiefel
CEO & Co-Founder of Repeat
Kim Stiefel is the CEO and Co-Founder of PRZM.
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About Repeat: Repeat is a SaaS platform that enables consumer-packaged-goods brands to turn one-time buyers into repeat customers.
Harsha Pamulaparthi
Founder and CEO of Standav Corp.
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About Standav Corp.: Standav offers CRM, CPQ , API Integration delivery and Contract Analytics
Francisco Larrain
CEO, Co-Founder of Sudo
Francisco Larrain is the Co-Founder & CTO at Topsort.
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About Maxxa, Sudo, Topsort: Sudo is a venture-backed startup that is enabling people to talk to their company’s CRM system.
Amit Koren
Co-Founder, Chief Product Officer of Sudo
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About Brim, Sudo: Sudo is a venture-backed startup that is enabling people to talk to their company’s CRM system.
Bhupesh Bansal
Co-Founder, Platform/Infrastructure of Sudo
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About IntroLogic, Sudo: Sudo is a venture-backed startup that is enabling people to talk to their company’s CRM system.
Gaston L’Huillier
Co-Founder, Algorithms/Data Science of Sudo
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About IntroLogic, Sudo: Sudo is a venture-backed startup that is enabling people to talk to their company’s CRM system.
Bastin Gerald
Founder, CEO of Apptivo Inc.
Have a proven track record of taking initiatives and turning them to market-leading products and world-renowned award-winning positions. Established product strategy, recruited top talent and led international development teams that delivered profitable multi-million dollar new business application products covering Finance, Supply Chain Management & Product Lifecycle Management. Established mutually profitable strategic alliances to get favorable positioning for products. Developed aggressive field readiness plans and coordinated with marketing, analyst relations and media relations for several product launches. Authored well-received book targeted at business users and consultants.
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About Apptivo Inc., Profit.co, Sirahu Technologies: Apptivo is an integrated Cloud Suite with over 40+ apps for all types of businesses, including CRM, project management, invoicing, and more.
Boaz Hecht
Founder and Chief Executive Officer of SkyGiraffe
Boaz Hecht is the Co-founder and CEO of SkyGiraffe.
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About SkyGiraffe: SkyGiraffe is an enterprise mobility platform that mobilizes back-end data, enabling employees to manage business processes on any device.
Matthew Darrow
Co-Founder & CEO of Vivun
10+ year enterprise software leader with experience growing businesses, building global teams, and delivering product.
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About Vivun: Vivun provides the world’s first AI-Powered PreSales Intel & Ops platform
John Bruce
Co-Founder & CTO of Vivun
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About Vivun: Vivun provides the world’s first AI-Powered PreSales Intel & Ops platform
Claire Bruce
Co-Founder & COO of Vivun
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About Vivun: Vivun provides the world’s first AI-Powered PreSales Intel & Ops platform
Dominique Darrow
Co-Founder & CCO of Vivun
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About Vivun: Vivun provides the world’s first AI-Powered PreSales Intel & Ops platform
Alex Meshkin
Co-Founder & CEO of Flow Health
Alex Meshkin is currently Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of GroupMD, a patient care social network enabling healthcare providers to effectively communicate, collaborate and coordinate care. Additionally, Meshkin is Executive Chairman of huvi, a social commerce platform, enabling consumers to buy and sell digital movies. huvi works in partnership with major Hollywood studios to reduce piracy, monetize consumer to consumer transactions and enable a secondary market for digital goods. In 1999, at the age of 19, Meshkin launched his first consumer internet start-up and experienced the ups and downs of entrepreneurship. In the years that followed, Meshkin became the CEO of Toyota Motorsports’ flagship NASCAR racing team, Bang! Racing. Toyota selected the young Meshkin from 83 NASCAR race team candidates; to lead Toyota’s factory supported NASCAR racing team. Toyota’s partnership with Meshkin created one of the most successful racing organizations in its first year of operations. In 2004, Bang! Racing made NASCAR history – setting numerous milestones. As the principal owner of Bang! Racing, Meshkin became the youngest team owner in NASCAR history and the team became the most successful first year NASCAR race team – winning Toyota’s first two races in their inaugural season. Bang Holdings, the parent company of Bang! Racing was also a success off the race track. In its first year of operations, Bang generated over $15 million in revenues; partnered with Vertrue to form a joint venture; and with their strategic technology partner eBay created and operated a NASCAR consumer membership and affinity marketing club. By the age of 23, Meshkin was one of NASCAR’s elite team owners and a recurring guest on Fox News Channel and CNBC Squawk Box; and featured in numerous publications, including Fortune, Sporting News, Racer, Associated Press and Sports Illustrated. Bang! Racing sponsors included, Toyota Motor Sales, DuPont, Viacom (Showtime Networks), Line-X, Valvoline and Snap-On Tools. In 2005, the race team was acquired by Toyota Motorsports and Bill Davis Racing. The technology divisions were merged in 2006 into Cloverleaf Partners and the NASCAR membership club became FastTrack Savings operating as DealPass.com. Prior to Bang! Racing, Meshkin founded and operated a global software development company and interactive agency with a focus on healthcare and pharmaceuticals with clients such as Johnson & Johnson and Eli Lilly. Additionally, Meshkin served as Director of Product and Strategic Development of cyberCFO, a venture funded financial services firm and later as VP and GM at Cloverleaf Partners. Keep up with Alex on Twitter @alexmeshkin. And to learn more about please visit his blog at http://alexmeshkin.com and LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/meshkin. Check out his videos on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/alexmeshkin
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About Flow Health, GroupMD: Flow Health is a collaboration platform based of universal health data, combining data from all sources around a patient
Nate Smith
Founder & CEO of Lever
Nate is on a mission to build the next generation of enterprise software. He’s our tech visionary and the author of DerbyJS, our JavaScript framework for realtime, collaborative applications. DerbyJS is the first and only open source MVC framework that syncs all data via Operational Transformation, the same algorithm that powers Google Docs. Nate attended Olin College where he majored in electrical and computer engineering. Prior to Lever, Nate was a product manager on the Google Search team. He led the first major redesign of Google’s image search UI, which launched in July 2010.
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About Lever: Lever is a talent acquisition suite that provides talent leaders with the solutions they need to build strong relationships with candidates.
Peter Gassner
Founder and CEO of Veeva
Peter is responsible for the overall direction and management of Veeva Systems. In 2010, Peter was named to the PharmaVOICE 100, which recognizes the 100 most influential people in the life sciences industry. Peter is a twenty year veteran of the software industry. Prior to founding Veeva, Peter was Senior Vice President of Technology at salesforce.com where he had responsibility for building the salesforce.com platform including product, marketing and developer relations. During Peter’s tenure, salesforce.com completed its public offering and grew the technology into the most successful SaaS platform in the industry. Before salesforce.com, Peter was with PeopleSoft for 9 years as both Chief Architect and General Manager of PeopleTools. Peter led a team of over 450 professionals who provided the development, strategy, marketing and customer support for PeopleSoft’s technology platform. PeopleTools was widely regarded in the industry as the best application platform of its day. Peter began his career with IBM in relational database development and research at IBM Silicon Valley Lab and then at IBM Almaden Research Center where he had the privilege of working closely with some of the inventors of relational database technology. Peter holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from Oregon State University.
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About Veeva: Veeva Systems is a provider of cloud-based business solutions for the global life sciences industry.
Tiago Paiva
Founder and CEO of Talkdesk
Tiago Paiva is the Founder of Talkdesk, Inc. and serves as its Chief Executive Officer.
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About Talkdesk: Talkdesk offers an enterprise contact center platform that allows companies to make the customer experience a competitive advantage.
Collin Wallace
CEO and Co-Founder of ZeroStorefront
Collin Wallace is the CEO and co-founder at ZeroStorefront.
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About ZeroStorefront: ZeroStorefront connects local business applications to drive more orders and better customer experiences.
Sridhar Vembu
CEO and Founder of Zoho
Sridhar Vembu is the CEO of [Zoho Corp.](/organization/zoho) (formerly AdventNet Inc.), the company behind the Zoho suite of online applications. He co-founded AdventNet in 1996, and has been CEO since 2000. AdventNet has transformed itself from a modest beginning as a software company serving network equipment vendors to a be an innovative online applications provider. It has maintained growth and profitability, without needing outside capital. Prior to AdventNet, Sridhar worked as a wireless systems engineer at Qualcomm, Inc. where he was fortunate to work with some of the leading minds in wireless communications. He obtained his Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, and PhD in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University.
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About Site24x7, Zoho: Zoho offers a suite of business, collaboration, and productivity applications.
John Rudolph
Founder of Music Analytics
John is an advisor to many media and tech firms, as well as an investor. He is a trusted advisor to seed stage and large companies with a specialty in the creative industries, media rights and business structuring.
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About Music Analytics: Media and tech advisory services
Josh Curl
Founder & CTO of Hightouch
Josh Curl is the Co-Founder of Hightouch.
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About Hightouch: Hightouch is a data platform that helps sync customer’s data from the data warehouse to their CRM, marketing, and support tools.
Tejas Manohar
Founder of Hightouch
Tejas Manohar is the co-founder of Hightouch.
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About Appupa, Carry, Hightouch: Hightouch is a data platform that helps sync customer’s data from the data warehouse to their CRM, marketing, and support tools.
Kashish Gupta
Founder of Hightouch
Kashish Gupta is the co-founder of Hightouch.
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About Carry, Hightouch: Hightouch is a data platform that helps sync customer’s data from the data warehouse to their CRM, marketing, and support tools.
Armen Adjemian
Co-Founder & CEO of DISQO
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About DISQO, Survey Junkie: DISQO develops an audience insights platform designed to connect brands and people.
Jerry Jao
CEO & Founder of Retention Science
Jerry started his path to entrepreneurship at the age 8, making $3 a day by recycling his classmates’ plastic cans after school. Years later, he moved on to e-Commerce and started selling comic books and video games online. He’s been an online entrepreneur ever since and is now CEO and founder of Retention Science. Prior to founding Retention Science, Jerry founded two other e-Commerce marketing technologies. He was an analyst with Morgan Stanley, and an engagement manager with BearingPoint Management Consulting (KPMG Advisory), where he advised FORTUNE 50 companies. He was most recently an advisor to the CFO of Clear Channel, working on digital sales initiatives and iHeartRadio. Jerry currently serves on the Board of Directors of Penango, an enterprise email & cloud security company. Jerry is a graduate of UC Berkeley, where he received a B.S. in Business Administration and a full-tuition scholarship as an Alumni Scholar, and Yale School of Management.
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About Retention Science: Retention Science is an AI-driven platform designed to engage and retain customers.
Fredrik Thomassen
CEO & Founder of Superside
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About Superside: Superside is an always-on design company that delivers great design at scale to Enterprise teams.
Dave Stephens
CEO & Co-Founder of FreeAgent CRM
Dave Stephens is the CEO & Co-Founder at FreeAgent CRM.
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About FreeAgent CRM: Leading the way to a better workday
Ryan Manning
Co-Founder & CRO of FreeAgent CRM
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About FreeAgent CRM: Leading the way to a better workday
Praful Saklani
Co-Founder and CEO of Pramata
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About Pramata: Pramata helps B2B enterprises maximize revenue by knowing the exact contract details and order history for each customer.
Dennis Velasco
Founder and CEO of Xtendly
There’s 5 things that I’m super passionate about: 1) Creating inspiring organizational cultures in order to help my team live their dreams by reaching levels of success that they never thought were ever possible. 2) Finding ways to deliver wow-like customer experiences that turn into life-long relationships and evangelism. 3) Innovating new but SIMPLE ways to solve REAL world problems. 4) Having FUN because life ain’t worth living unless you can “stop and smell the roses”. 5) Growth hacking. Today, I lead a boutique digital marketing and software development firm with the best-of-the-best talent located around the world in the USA, Philippines & Latin America. Our focus is helping Small to Medium-sized businesses improve their digital presence, increase website traffic and boost lead conversions. We do this as an “all-in-one” managed WordPress service at an affordable monthly pay-as-you-go fee.
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About Xtendly: Xtendly is a marketing-as-a-service firm that offers website design, modern marketing, and cloud software services.
Ben Lilienthal
Co-Founder & CEO of ScreenMeet
Ben has successfully started and sold two Internet communications infrastructure companies. The first one, Nascent, to CMGI in 1999 and then Vapps, in 2008, to Citrix. He earned his MBA from NYU and his BA from Amherst College. He is a member of the Henry Crown Fellows Class of 2010 at the Aspen Institute.
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About ScreenMeet: ScreenMeet – Enterprise Remote Suppor
Benjamin Howard Lilienthal
Co-Founder & CEO of ScreenMeet
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About ScreenMeet: ScreenMeet – Enterprise Remote Suppor
Abinash Tripathy
Founder & CEO of Helpshift
Abinash Tripathy Co-Founder & CEO, Helpshift, is utilizing his 20 years of experience with technology and CRM to re-imagine CRM for the post-PC era. Prior to founding Helpshift, Abinash created and ran a number of early and growth stage companies where he was responsible for conceptualizing and delivering the world’s first IP-based Voicemail/Unified communications, Mobile Photo Messaging (in Japan) and MMS products to the market. He started his career at Oracle where he wrote the first in-house CRM solution.
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About Helpshift: Helpshift is a conversational customer service platform that leverages AI, bots, and messaging-based communication.
Rory Cutaia
Founder, Chairman, Pres. & CEO of VERB Technology Company
Rory originated the concept of bBooth and the idea that it could be used as a revenue-generating casting vehicle for TV shows. Rory created the Company’s business plan and marketing strategies, financed its start-up costs, including all research and development, then assembled a world-class management team of successful Hollywood, entertainment, and technology veterans to execute his vision to disrupt the talent discovery and fan engagement industries. Keenly focused on building shareholder value, Rory provides the vision and leadership for his management team and sets the goals and objectives for the Company’s growth and expansion. A successful serial entrepreneur, Rory’s previous endeavors include Founder, Chairman and CEO of telecom technology icon, The Telx Group, which he built and sold in 6 years for approx. $250M, returning 18x invested capital to early investors; and Executive Chairman and Co-Founder of Allied Fiber, a new nationwide fiber-optic network, being deployed along railroad rights-of-way; among other successful endeavors.
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About VERB Technology Company: VERB Technology Company specializes in business-focused interactive video webinars, CRM, sales, and marketing applications.
Geoffrey Nudd
CEO and Founder of ClearCare
Geoff founded ClearCare after personal experience as a family caregiver.He realized that there had to be a better way to give transparency to family members leading to ClearCare’s early point-of-care innovations and a cycle of ongoing innovation in partnership with ClearCare’s customers. Geoff has over fifteen years of experience in software development and is an alumnus of companies such as Motorola, Andersen Consulting, and Merrill Lynch. Prior to launching ClearCare, Geoff successfully sold his last venture to a Google/Facebook company. Geoff received his B.A. from Northwestern and M.B.A. from Kellogg.
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About ClearCare: ClearCare is a web-based software solution that helps home care agencies efficiently focus on what’s important: providing better care.
Meng Sui
Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer of EEnovate Technology
Meng Sui currently works as the Co-Founder and CEO for Eenovate Technology. He previously worked at Greenberg Traurig as the Patent Paralegal.
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About 4C Air, EEnovate Technology: EEnovate Technology provides software and CRM solutions for businesses throughout the State of California.
Cyrus Karbassiyoon
CTO & Co-Founder of Scratchpad
CTO and Co-founder at Scratchpad .
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About Scratchpad: Scratchpad is an all-in-one sales efficiency toolkit that allows users to consolidate and streamline the different aspects of sales.
Vahe Kuzoyan
President & Co-Founder of ServiceTitan
As co-founder and Chief Product Officer, Vahe is the principal domain expert and product visionary behind ServiceTitan’s innovations. Vahe’s father is a plumber, and Vahe built ServiceTitan as a “thank you” to his dad and fellow contractors. Vahe holds degrees in Computer Science, Neuroscience, and Business Administration from the University of Southern California.
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About ServiceTitan: ServiceTitan is a service management software that helps home services businesses generate more leads and close more sales.
Toby Scammell
Founder & CEO of Womply
Toby Scammell is the founder and CEO of Womply, a technology company that helps small businesses attract, engage, and retain more customers. Mr. Scammell founded Womply in 2011 after seeing first-hand how underserved America’s small businesses were by technology. Today, he leads the strategic vision for many of the company’s core functions and works closely with all members of Womply’s executive team, with a particular focus on the intersection of product development and go-to-market activities. Under Mr. Scammell’s leadership, Womply has acquired more than 100,000 paying small business customers, become the leading software partner to America’s credit card processing industry, raised $50 million in growth funding, and expanded to hundreds of employees across offices in San Francisco; Portland, Oregon; and Lehi, Utah. Mr. Scammell is a serial entrepreneur with a strong business background. Prior to founding Womply, he co-founded Feastery, where he spent over a year solving customer acquisition and loyalty problems for restaurants in San Francisco. Before that, he was a successful associate consultant at Bain & Company, one of the world’s top management consulting firms. During high school and college, Toby started and ran a variety of small online businesses including a Costco-delivery service and company that sold advertising to local restaurants, bars, and lounges. Mr. Scammell graduated from the University of Southern California (USC) in 2006 with a bachelor’s degree in international relations, with an emphasis in global business.He is an active angel investor and advisor to a variety of startups.
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About Womply: A local commerce platform that provides apps, APIs, marketing, and financial tools for over 500,000 American businesses.
Cory Capoccia
Co-Founder, Chief Business Development Officer, and President of Womply
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About Verifi, Inc., Womply: A local commerce platform that provides apps, APIs, marketing, and financial tools for over 500,000 American businesses.
Kuldip Hillyer
Founder, CEO of Kugamon
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About Kugamon: CPQ (Configure Price Quote), Q2C (Quote to Cash), and SRM (Subscription Management) for Salesforce
Tyson Quick
Founder & Chief Growth Officer of Postclick
Serial Entrepreneur, Advertising/Marketing Innovator, Postclick & Instapage Founder/CEO
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About Instapage, Mesiab Labs, Postclick: The world’s leading solution for improving digital ad conversions-creating digital experiences that optimize and increase return on ad spend
Aleem Mawani
Co-Founder and CEO of Streak
Aleem is the Co-Founder and CEO at Streak.
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About Streak: Streak is the only CRM integrated entirely within your Gmail inbox. Use it to track sales, partnerships, support, hiring, and much more.
Vijay Sajja
CEO / Founder of Evergent Technologies, Inc.
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About Evergent Technologies, Inc.: Fast, Flexible, Scalable Subscription, Billing and User Management for Global Cloud Video Service Providers.
Zafar Jafri
CEO & Founder of Inprintz, Inc.
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About Inprintz, Inc.: Inprintz is a large format printing company.
Fred Hsu
Founder of UserCare
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About UserCare: UserCare is customer service software that helps companies deliver exceptional customer service by blending support, CRM and data analytics.
Lea Endres
Co-Founder & CEO of NationBuilder
Lea Endres is the Co-Founder & CEO at NationBuilder.
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About NationBuilder: NationBuilder is a community organizing software platform that helps people organize and build community-based relationships.
Jim Gilliam
Founder & Executive Chairman of NationBuilder
Jim Gilliam is the founder and CEO of 3dna, a startup building internet tools to shake up a broken political system. Previously, he co-founded Robert Greenwald’s Brave New Films, building a non-profit grassroots media company of a million members and producing four documentaries. In the late 90’s, he launched Business.com as its Chief Technology Officer, and worked at Lycos, one of the first internet search engines.
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About NationBuilder: NationBuilder is a community organizing software platform that helps people organize and build community-based relationships.
Francois Nadal
CEO & Founder of OneUp
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About OneUp: OneUp is an online accounting software for small business owners and accountants.
Zachary Goldstein
Founder & CEO of Thanx
Zach Goldstein is the founder and CEO of Thanx. He is passionate about retail customer retention and satisfaction and the Sacramento Kings. Dartmouth College (BA) and Stanford Graduate School of Business (MBA).
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About Thanx: Guest engagement that delights!
Aaron Newton
Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer of Thanx
Aaron Newton is at his best when he is working on highly technical, user facing challenges that combine numerous technologies to create something novel. He is well versed in agile development concepts, product management, hiring and management. The ideal product is one that enriches my life in some way; I don’t have to be the primary customer, but it’s nice to be one of them.
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About Thanx: Guest engagement that delights!
Darren Cheng
Co-Founder & CTO of Thanx
Darren is a born-and-raised East-Coaster, currently enjoying the West Coast life. He joined Thanx as employee and engineer #1 in 2011 and has enjoyed cultivating the codebase from its inception to what it is now. Darren received his BA in Computer Science from Dartmouth.
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About Thanx: Guest engagement that delights!
Zhou Sha
Co-Founder & CEO of Percept.AI
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About Percept.AI: Percept.AI is an AI-powered virtual agent technology provider.
Parsa Rohani
Chief Executive Officer, Founder of Neudesic
As the leader of the executive team, Parsa is responsible for the vision, direction and investment decisions of the company. Parsa’s vast experience with Microsoft solutions and products, coupled with his design, deployment and implementation skills, gives Neudesic the agility and strength necessary to succeed. Prior to co-founding Neudesic, Parsa worked at Microsoft for ten years as an architect within the company’s services division. He provided extensive and in-depth technical direction to Microsoft’s most strategic partners and customers. He also served in managerial roles and served as the Vice President of Marketing and Strategic Planning for a network storage company. His technical expertise ranges from advanced hardware design and computer vision to the development of coarsely integrated, distributed computing architecture for a variety of applications and industries. Parsa earned his Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California. He currently resides in Laguna Beach, Calif.
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About Neudesic, PriceSpider: Neudesic is a Microsoft Gold Certified and Managed Partner with a proven track record of providing reliable, effective solutions based on
Tim Marshall
Chief Technology Officer, Founder of Neudesic
As the leader of the technology team, Tim is responsible for defining the technological trail Neudesic blazes to empower organizations in understanding and leveraging business solutions using the Microsoft Technology Platform. Tim’s wealth of experience in different technologies, along with his extensive expertise across a wide breadth of vertical markets, enables him to assist organizations in making proper technical decisions that help them achieve their visions. His involvement with the technical aspect of the business is deep, as evidenced through his expert presentations at major industry events and his work with development teams nationally. Prior to co-founding Neudesic, Tim was a well-respected software architect at Microsoft. His technical expertise has enabled many organizations in a wide variety of industries to execute their technical vision. Tim received his Bachelor of Science in Computer Science with a minor in Mathematics from California State University, Fullerton. He currently resides in Irvine, Calif.
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About Neudesic: Neudesic is a Microsoft Gold Certified and Managed Partner with a proven track record of providing reliable, effective solutions based on
Augie K Fabela II
Co-Founder and CEO of Fastforward.ai
Augie K Fabela II is the Co-Founder and CEO at Fastforward.ai.
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About Fastforward.ai, Veon: FastForward.ai is a social media engagement and commerce platform company
Jasbir Singh
Founder, Head of Strategy, CTO & Growth Marketing of Wavespot
As a Founder and CTO, Jasbir manages Wavespot’s product roadmap.
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About Pronto Networks, Wavespot: Wavespot is a social relationship management service for local businesses.
Nagesh Challa
Founder & CEO of Waagu
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About Waagu: Waagu offers a collaborative customer engagement platform for content, web, and mobile customer interactions.
Clint Oram
CSO & Co-Founder of SugarCRM
Clint Oram is a Chief Marketing Officer and Co-Founder. Clint helped found SugarCRM in 2004 with the goal of enabling companies around the world turn their customers into loyal fans. Today, he leads marketing and corporate development strategy for the company. Clint was one of the original architects and developers of the Sugar application and has focused on building out the product, company, partners and community in a variety of executive roles. Prior to co-founding SugarCRM, Clint held senior roles in the development, professional services and product management organizations at Epiphany, Octane Software and Hewlett Packard. He has 20 years of experience in the enterprise software industry and over 15 years designing and building award-winning CRM software solutions. Clint holds a BS in computer science from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo and is the co-author of multiple CRM software patents. Clint enjoys traveling and speaking at conferences on a variety of customer experience and entrepreneurship topics, and has visited SugarCRM customers and partners in over 25 countries.
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About SugarCRM: With Sugar, you let the platform do the work—no blind spots, no busy work, and no roadblocks.
Nikhil Dixit
Co-Founder & Chief Business Officer of Arbor
Nikhil Dixit is the Working with early stage startups of Various Start-Ups.
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About Arbor, Various Start-Ups: Arbor operates the first marketplace for people-based data.
Peter Kennedy
Founder & President of Tagger Media
Peter Kennedy is the Founder and President at Tagger.
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About Tagger Media: Tagger Media is an influencer marketing management platform helping brands through the planning, activation, and reporting phases.
Taylor Cavanah
Founder & CEO of PetDesk
Taylor Cavanah is a physicist, futurist, and creative marketer. He graduated from Rice University with a BA in Physics and from The University of Texas at Dallas with a MS in Physics. The summer before grad school he worked at Sony America in a think tank forecasting products ten years in the future. He started his career at Zyvex Corporation. During his time there he moved from a technical role to a business role that led to the eventual spin out of his division; Zyvex Instruments. He then managed the sales, marketing, and business development operations that led to the company’s sale to a larger industry partner. He became general manager of the new division before leaving to launch his first company – Locai, Inc. Locai, Inc id doing business as PetPartner and helps pet care providers better connect with their clients to promote pet health.
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About PetDesk: PetDesk offers CRM software for pet care providers to promote pet health.
Danny Goodman
Founder of Switchback Ventures
Danny leads product and software development for MetaMind’s deep learning platform. Prior to MetaMind, Danny was Director of Data Science at MetroMile. There, he led the creation of data-backed driver services, scaled the data pipeline 100x, filed 6 patents, and prevented millions of dollars in parking tickets with street sweeping alerts. Danny has an MS in Computer Science from Stanford, a BA in Math from Harvard, and was an ASP Fellow studying Machine Learning at MIT. He has 4 publications in machine learning and computational biology, and likes to play classical piano, blindfold chess, and outdoor sports.
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About Switchback Ventures: Switchback Ventures develops custom AI solutions for enterprise clients & runs AI strategy sessions for executive teams.
Vik Singh
CEO & Co-Founder of Infer
Prior to founding Infer, Vik was an Entrepreneur in Residence at Sutter Hill Ventures (SHV), where he helped the firm identify new ideas as well as evaluate early stage investments. Before SHV, Vik helped create and architect Yahoo! BOSS, an open search platform that runs over 1 billion queries a month. At 24, MIT’s Technology Review listed him as one of the Top 35 under 35 Innovators for his contributions to search. He also worked at Google and Microsoft, both in research and products, helping ship Custom Search and XP SP2 Wireless. At MSR he worked with Turing Award winner Dr. Jim Gray, co-authoring a publication about the SkyServer. Vik has filed 13 patents in the areas of search, social networking, systems, and content optimization. Vik graduated with a Bachelor’s from the University of California, Berkeley in Computer Science.
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About Infer: Infer provides a predictive SaaS platform that helps businesses win more customers
Brad Perry
CTO & Co-Founder of DealerSocket
Brad’s role is to help the company align our business and technology strategy to achieve our aggressive growth objectives. Prior to joining FreightPOP, Brad was the Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer at DealerSocket.
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About DealerSocket, FreightPOP: DealerSocket is an industry leading automotive CRM–Customer Relationship Management and dealership training provider, serving auto dealers.
Jonathan Ord
CEO & Co-Founder of DealerSocket
As CEO, Jonathan Ord sets vision and drives overall strategy for DealerSocket. Jonathan co-founded DealerSocket in 2001 to create a revolutionary model for industry niche CRM applications. Both DealerSocket and Jonathan have received many accolades including being named Best Overall Company globally in the 2008 Stevie International Business Awards, Best Management Team in the 2009 American Business Awards, one of the Red Herring North American 100 in 2009. Additionally, Jonathan has been honored as one of the most successful young Entrepreneurs and Executives in Southern California, being honored with the 2010 Excellence in Entrepreneurship Award from the Orange County Business Journal
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About DealerSocket: DealerSocket is an industry leading automotive CRM–Customer Relationship Management and dealership training provider, serving auto dealers.
Lev Barinskiy
CEO & Co-Founder of Contactability
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About Contactability, Cyber Technology, InsuranceAgents.com, Lob, SmartFinancial: Lead Management and Marketing Automation
Mitch Jacobs
Founder & CEO of Plink
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About Fanbank, OnDeck, OnDeck Australia, Plink: Plink is a developer of a commerce automation platform designed to provide assistance in transactions and build customer relationships.
Ben Congleton
Founder & CEO of Olark
Ben Congleton is a Founder & CEO at Olark.
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About Olark: Olark is a live chat platform that enables businesses to talk to customers browsing their website.
Kent Perkocha
Co-Founder of Apttus
Kent Perkocha is the chief customer officer at [Apttus](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/apttus), a SaaS application provider that renders enterprise class applications for end-to-end management of business functions. He previously worked in sales at iMANY. Perkocha holds a bachelor’s degree in geography from the University of California.
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About Apttus: Apttus, a SaaS application provider, renders enterprise class applications for end to end management of business functions.
Ro Valiao
Chief Executive Officer, Co-Founder of Flipcause
Business executive and entrepreneur passionate about social impact and the nonprofit community. Experience includes renewable energy, technology, and social enterprise. Recognized for identifying problems, contributing innovative solutions, and spearheading change.
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About Flipcause: Fundraising technology and services for nonprofits
Emerson Ravyn
Executive Chairman, Co-Founder of Flipcause
Emerson Ravyn is the CEO and Founder of Flipcause, Inc. Flipcause is an award winning software company that helps thousands of nonprofits across the US optimize their development programs through innovative technology. Mr. Ravyn, a San Francisco Bay Area native, has over a decade of experience building businesses, developing software, and helping nonprofits fundraise. Throughout his career, it became clear to Mr. Ravyn that many nonprofits lacked the technical staff to implement and maintain a modern technology infrastructure. With that in mind, Mr. Ravyn spent the last 5 years working to ensure that any sized organization, regardless of their budgets or technical chops, have access to the tools they deserve at a price they can afford. @emravyn @flipcause
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About Flipcause: Fundraising technology and services for nonprofits
Howard Brown
Founder and CEO of Revenue.io
Howard Brown is a three-time entrepreneur with a proven track record of success and innovation in marketing, sales, and cloud computing. Thanks to his study and practice of clinical psychology as a marriage and family therapist, he brings a unique perspective to the technology companies he has created. With his newest venture, RingDNA, Howard has combined his passion for the science of conversation with his expertise in revenue performance optimization. RingDNA is poised to transform the sales industry through integrated communications, data science, user-centric design, and optimized workflow.
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About Revenue.io: Revenue.io powers high-performing teams with real-time guidance.
Chuck Ganapathi
Founder & CEO of Tact.ai
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About Tact.ai: The customer engagement company for life sciences
Michael Linnert
CEO & Founder of SymphonyRM
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About SymphonyRM: SymphonyRM is a healthcare software platform designed for health CRM and AI for healthcare organizations.
Mani Doraisamy
Founder & Creator of Guesswork
Mani is a hand-on technology architect and has built middlewares ranging from rule engines to machine learning products for 15 years. He is the founder of Guesswork – a vertical machine learning service that focuses on mining customer information. Prior to Guesswork, he co-founded OrangeScape, where he created 2 cloud products: Visual PaaS and Kissflow – the top workflow app on Google Apps Marketplace. Before that, he was the Technical Lead of Selectica Foundation Services, the technology platform for Selectica’s eInsurance product, which was acquired by Accenture.
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About Guesswork: Guesswork is a machine learning service to predict customer intent.
Shyam Rao
Founder / CEO of Punchh
Shyam Rao is the Co-founder and CEO of Punchh, which was recently acquired for $500M by Par Technology Corporation (nyse:PAR), a leading global provider of restaurant technology. Punchh delivers dynamic, one-to-one customer engagement through data- driven, omnichannel loyalty, offers, and customer engagement for restaurants, c-stores, and other retailers. Shyam holds a degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Toronto and a MBA from the University of Chicago.
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About Punchh: Punchh is a company providing digital marketing products for brick and mortar retailers, combining AI and machine learning technologies.
Sastry Penumarthy
Co-Founder / Head of Strategic Alliances and Partnerships of Punchh
Sastry Penumarthy defines and executes on marketing strategy and partner strategy. Prior to co-founding Punchh 2010, Sastry held leadership roles in product development and marketing at large and emerging technology companies including Siebel, BEA, InsideView, and Foxboro. He co-founded and led business development for two companies, Nuevora, a Big Data CRM analytics services firm, and a sports-card vending machine company that works with local businesses. Sastry earned a master’s degree in engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and an MBA from the University of Chicago. Most crave-able restaurant dish on Sastry’s mind: Sizzling Chili Lime Chicken
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About Punchh: Punchh is a company providing digital marketing products for brick and mortar retailers, combining AI and machine learning technologies.
Aditya Sanghi
Founder / CTO of Punchh
Aditya brings his technical expertise and diverse business experience to building enterprise-grade web and consumer-facing mobile applications that are stunningly easy to use. As a core contributor to RubyOnRails, an open source, full-stack web application framework for the Ruby programming language, he is well known among his international peers in the Ruby community for his efforts to make practical technologies accessible and useful. Aditya founded and led Rising Sun and Salaree.com. Aditya has worked with Accenture, ADC Telecom (now CSG Systems) to build large enterprise systems. He has lived and worked in several countries including Australia, Germany, India, and Sweden. He is fluent in English, Hindi and knows a bit of German and Thai. Aditya earned a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science from Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia. Aditya recently founded Godly. Godly is aggregating temples into one app for darshans, donations, commerce and engagement for devotees. Godly is defining digital devotion for a billion+ devotees.
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About Cospective, Godly, Punchh: Punchh is a company providing digital marketing products for brick and mortar retailers, combining AI and machine learning technologies.
Russ Ruffino
Founder & Owner of Clients on Demand
Russ Ruffino is the founder & CEO of Clients on Demand. COD helps coaches, consultants, thought-leaders and service pros attract the right clients, at the right price, anytime they want. Visit our site to learn more: www.clientsvalley.com/workshop
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About Clients on Demand: Clients on Demand is the most reliable client attraction system in the world, with experts to help you maximize your business’ potential.
Joel Rodriguez
Founder & CEO of ReferIn
Joel Rodriguez is an entrepreneur, sales leader and product manager based in New York City. He is currently Founder & CEO of ReferIn, a SaaS platform that enables sales teams to predictably generate more pipeline by scaling referrals. Previously, Joel led sales teams at 4 venture-backed companies – Rebel (acquired by Salesforce), Bluecore, Persado, and SumAll. Before leading sales teams, he founded Acquaintable (acquired by Reveal, formerly LikeBright), a venture-backed startup in the online dating space which also used social networking data to connect people. Joel has also worked in venture capital as an Associate at Commonwealth Capital Ventures. Joel started his career in strategy consulting where he was a Senior Associate Consultant at Bain & Company. Joel graduated Cum Laude from Duke University in 2006 with a B.S. in Economics.
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About ReferIn: Predictable Referrals. Enabling sales teams to systematically generate more pipeline by scaling referrals.
Mike Moone
Founder, CTO of BrightReps
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About BrightReps: BrightReps is a customer support tool that helps teams build fast and functional workflows.
Jai Rawat
Founder of Zinrelo
Jai Rawat is the Founder of Zinrelo.
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About TheFind, Inc., TiE, Zinrelo: Zinrelo (f.k.a ShopSocially) brings you the world’s best loyalty rewards and referral programs.
Patrick O’Leary
Founder & CEO of boostr
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About boostr: boostr is a CRM and order management platform designed for the media & advertising industry.
Nancy Duitch
CEO & Founder of VisionWorx, LLC
Nancy Duitch is the CEO and Founder of VisionWorx, bringing a highly successful and influential track record of over 30 years as an entrepreneur and CEO with an expertise in the consumer products industry. She has been responsible for marketing/branding campaigns which have generated over $2 Billion in revenue for some of the most widely known brands. Nancy’s legendary track record and ability to develop talent has enabled her to build successful global branding campaigns. Nancy was recognized for a long running track record for developing successful products and campaigns ranking among the top marketers in America and was profiled in Response Magazine as among the “Top 25 Most innovative People in Consumer Product Goods.” Ms. Duitch along with her mother, Doris Goldman, embarked on a mission to raise awareness, education and resources to help fight sudden death in children and young adults and founded The C.A.R.E. Foundation in 1995. Their activism was initially motivated by several losses within her own family. Ms. Duitch’s philanthropic activities include organizations supporting children in need.
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About Sera Labs, VisionWorx, LLC: We are experts on taking your strategy and weaving it into a story to connect your brand with your audience.
Shiv Shankar M S
CEO, Co-Founder of SalesX.io
CEO & Co-founder at SalesX.io | Sales Enablement Enthusiast | Student turned Serial Entrepreneur | Father to the sweetest girl and an ok husband to an awesome wife
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About Agilite Group, SalesX.io: Sales platform for conversation intelligence
Usman Sheikh
Founder and CEO of xiQ
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About xiQ: The xiQ platform collects data from the internet, social media and public records and converts it into personalized, real-time intelligence.
Aakrit Prasad
CEO / Co-Founder of AptEdge
Aakrit is a software entrepreneur and product executive. He has previously lead products & teams at early stage, growth stage, and public technology companies.
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About AptEdge: AptEdge helps businesses understand customer challenges to build a better product experience.
Scott Schopen
Co-Founder & CEO of Performiture
Scott was part of the founding team and Vice President of Product at Coremetrics, one of the first SaaS companies and a leading website analytics company which was acquired by IBM. He has also held executive roles in investment banking at Piper Jaffray and technology companies such as Specific Media which was acquired by Time, Inc. Scott is passionate about bring the power of predictive sales analytics to B2B companies. Scott graduated from Princeton University.
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About Performiture: Performiture is a cloud-based, predictive sales analytics and forecasting solution that helps fast-growing B2B companies improve sales.
Igor Fridman
Co-Founder & CTO of Performiture
Igor has over 15 years of experience leading engineering teams. Igor was one of the early engineers at Metareward, VP Engineering of Experian Interactive Innovation Center, Director of Technology at Movoto, among several others. At Performiture Igor is responsible for applying his current interests in machine learning, big data and distributed systems to deliver a platform that’s powerful, yet simple to use. Igor graduated with a Bachelor’s from UCLA in Computer Science.
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About Amazon, Performiture: Performiture is a cloud-based, predictive sales analytics and forecasting solution that helps fast-growing B2B companies improve sales.
Thibaut Munier
Co-Founder & COO of Numberly
Thibaut Munier is a graduate of the EM Lyon Business School. He holds an MBA from the University of Texas at Austin and a Masters of Research in Database Marketing from the University of Dauphine in Paris. He conducted research on loyalty marketing and data mining for major airlines. He is passionate about how companies can become data rich through digital channels, and why programmatic CRM is the new future for retention marketing. For over 10 years, he has been working on leveraging machine learning for digital marketing in multiple contexts, from retail to CPG and luxury goods. His current areas of interest are People Based Marketing and incrementality through programmatic media. He is a frequent speaker on data driven strategies, the role of DMPs and the convergence of media and CRM. Amongst the speeches he has given are those for DataLead (Berkeley-ENSAE), Stanford (Center for Professional Development), the Appnexus Summit in NYC, EMLyon (Graduation ceremony), and the Watch Marketing International Conference in Switzerland.
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About Numberly: Numberly is a marketing technologist that helps advertisers build long-lasting relationships with their clients.
Yseulys Costes
Co-Founder & CEO of Numberly
Yseulys Costes is the Chief Executive Officer and Founder of numberly (1000mercis Group), a listed company. Passionate about Data and Marketing, Yseulys began to work on interactivity in 1995, at the Robert O. Anderson School MBA, USA. Numberly provide their clients with the most innovative digital strategies to increase their ROI in a targeted, measurable, programmatic and multichannel approach. As a researcher in interactive marketing, she has been invited at Harvard Business School and has taught Interactive Marketing at several prestigious institutions including HEC, ESSEC and Paris Dauphine. Prior to founding numberly, she wrote numerous books and articles on online marketing and databases and was the coordinator of IAB France. Yseulys has been in Palo Alto, CA since 2014 to launch develop the Group’s U.S. activities. Yseulys is a board member of Kering, Vivendi and SEB.
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About Numberly: Numberly is a marketing technologist that helps advertisers build long-lasting relationships with their clients.
Justin Hall
Founder, CEO of PopShop
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About PopShop, Running Geek: Customized talent solutions for startups and early stage companies everywhere.
David Landa
Chief Executive Officer & Founder of Kintone
David Landa is the Founder & CEO of Kintone & he attended Trinity College-Hartford in 1986.
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About Kintone: Kintone is a best productivity software to business transformation Platform.
Landon Ray
Founder and CEO of Ontraport
Landon Ray, Ontraport founder and CEO, is a serial entrepreneur whose personal mission is to educate, motivate and enable others to realize their goal of starting and growing their own business. At the age of 25, Landon transformed himself from a street-corner flower vendor into one of the nation’s top securities day traders in only twelve months. After beating the odds on Wall Street and again during the Great Recession, Ray has taken his research and personal experience and created ONTRAPORT, a small business automation platform and related family of services, which reflects his passion for educating and supporting entrepreneurs.
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About Ontraport: A breakthrough web app where CRM meets automation to power your marketing, sales and business systems all in one place.
Christopher Lafayette
Founder of The Armada
A discoverer in virtual, augmented and mixed reality, artificial intelligence, telepresence, disruptive media and several additional applied sciences. Christopher is a Silicon Valley and International speaker and supporter of the societal and accelerated benefit of Diversity and inclusion in technology where everyone can win. He’s committed to building tech-centric coworking platforms and media studios for those who build emergent and expansive products and tools. He’s executed and managed business development for hundreds of campaigns and internal projects. An expert in lab-to-market acceleration. He’s creating a series of Coworking Spaces around the world, fully equipped with Immersive Holodecks. Through advising, He’s working with corporations and startups to help bring more diversity and culture into hardware, software and content development. He’s committed to helping get underrepresented talent technology jobs through Post Modern Apprenticeship and Stem-to-Win Programs.
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About The Armada: The Armada is a series of platforms dedicated to advancing Technology, Opportunity and Creativity.
