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 Digital Media 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.
Brian Sugar
Founder of POPSUGAR
Brian Sugar is the President at Group Nine Media.
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About Group Nine Media, POPSUGAR, Sugar Capital: PopSugar is an online network of websites that offers updates, trends, and tips in entertainment, fashion, parenting, fitness, and shopping.
Kong Pham
CEO & Founder of Jumpcut
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About Jumpcut: Jumpcut creates captivating online courses.
Ann Daly
Co-Founder, Managing Partner of WndrCo
Ann Daly is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner at WndrCo. Ann is a long-time entertainment industry leader and innovator. Prior to co-founding WndrCo, she served as President and COO of DreamWorks Animation, where she was responsible for business strategy, creative, production, technology, and operating business units, helping build the company into the world’s largest animation studio as well as a center of production technology innovation.
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About DreamWorks Animation, WndrCo: WndrCo is a holding company that invests in, acquires, develops, and operates consumer technology businesses for the long term.
Sujay Jaswa
Founder & Managing Partner of WndrCo
Sujay Jaswa is founder and managing partner at WndrCo, a holding company that invests in and acquires consumer technology businesses. He serves as Chairman of Aura, Twingate, VPN Super, and is a Director of The Infatuation. Board member of Vy Global Growth (Nasdaq: VYGG). Advisor at Seven1 Sports & Entertainment Agency. He is also a lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He formerly served as business founder, vice president of business, and CFO of Dropbox from 2010 to 2015. At Dropbox, Sujay created and led the global business and finance organization. He has a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Princeton University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
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About Pango, WndrCo: WndrCo is a holding company that invests in, acquires, develops, and operates consumer technology businesses for the long term.
Jeffrey Katzenberg
Co-Founder, Managing Partner of WndrCo
Jeffrey Katzenberg is the Founder, Managing Partner at WndrCo.
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About Quibi, WndrCo: WndrCo is a holding company that invests in, acquires, develops, and operates consumer technology businesses for the long term.
Rob Fan
Founder & CTO/COO of Sharethrough USA
Rob leads all product and technology strategy for the company. He is a practitioner, student and teacher of the “lean startup” methodology. In his spare time, Rob, hacks and plays with new technology and advises early-stage startups about the successes and pitfalls he has learned thus far. Prior to Sharethrough, Rob worked as a technology consultant for Booz Allen Hamilton advising various three-letter government agencies. As an early adopter of the Facebook platform, Rob was one of the teaching assistants for the first-ever “Facebook Class” while at Stanford. Rob holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University and a MS in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University.
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About Sharethrough USA: Sharethrough is one of the top global independent omnichannel ad exchanges
Dan Greenberg
Founder & President of Sharethrough USA
Dan Greenberg is the founder and CEO of Sharethrough, a 150+ person SF-based software company that powers in-feed, native ads for premium publishers like Time Inc, Hearst, People and brand marketers like Pepsi and P&G. Dan also acts as the co-chair of the IAB Native Advertising Committee. Dan comes from a research background at Stanford in persuasive technology, and regularly teaches classes in brand content, modern monetization, and viral engineering. Dan was recently named to the Inc “35 Under 35” list, the Forbes “30 Under 30″ list and has been honored as an Ad Age Media Maven. He organizes and hosts the Sharethrough Native Ad Summits, is a regular speaker at advertising and technology conferences, and contributes to industry publications including Forbes, AdAge, and TechCrunch.
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About Sharethrough USA: Sharethrough is one of the top global independent omnichannel ad exchanges
Christopher Rudy
Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Cut.com, Inc.
Christopher Rudy is the CEO, Co-Founder at Cut.com.
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About Cut.com, Inc.: Cut makes little stories of some interest.
Yves Sisteron
Managing Partner and Co-Founder of Upfront Ventures
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About Upfront Ventures: Upfront Ventures is the venture capital firm focusing on early-stage technology companies.
Ross Hinkle
Founder + Chief Fan of Liveset
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About Liveset: Liveset is a digital platform that provides live concert events for web and mobile devices.
Michael Ritter
Founder & CEO of Maple Media
Michael Ritter is the Founder and CEO of Maple Media, a mobile apps and games company backed by private equity firm Shamrock Capital. Maple Media is a mobile media, advertising and technology company that acquires, manages and operates mobile applications focused on the utility, productivity, games and entertainment verticals. Popular titles include Snowboard Party: World Tour, Skateboard Party, Minesweeper Classic, Sudoku 🙂 and CalConvert. Previously he was SVP of Business & Corporate Development for Jam City, a large social and mobile game company based in Los Angeles where he oversaw mergers & acquisition activities, publishing, licensing, distribution, sales, legal and partnerships for social and mobile games. Michael was also the Founder and Publisher of Saturday Night Magazine, which at the time, he built into the largest circulated monthly collegiate lifestyle and entertainment magazine in the country.
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About Fantasy Baseball Arbitration, Maple Media: Maple Media is a mobile media, advertising, and technology company that acquires and operates category-leading, consumer apps.
Tom Impallomeni
Co-Founder of SuperAwesome
Co-founder & CEO, Tribe VR
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About SuperAwesome, Tribe XR: SuperAwesome offers kid-safe tools and technology for the children’s digital media ecosystem.
Arjun Mehta
Founder & CEO of Moment House
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About Moment House, Trakfire: Social live media platform for creators.
Mark Bailey
Co-Founder and Partner of DFJ Growth
Mark Bailey is a Co-Founder and Partner at DFJ Growth. Mark has been with DFJ since 2002 serving as a Venture Partner for DFJ ePlanet Ventures (investors in Baidu [BIDU] and Skype) focusing on growth stage investments prior to co-founding DFJ Growth in 2006. Mark has over 29 years of experience with entrepreneurial deal making in both investment and operating roles. Mark has served as a high impact executive in both private and public high technology companies. Mark has played an integral role, as an executive and officer, in building two billion dollar public companies: Symantec Corporation [SYMC], where he led the M&A effort through most of the 1990s and Healtheon/WebMD [WBMD] where he led the early M&A effort pre and post-IPO. Mark also co-founded WebPartner and served as an executive at Portal Software. Mark’s investment experience includes interning as one of the first associates at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (during which time he first met Tim Draper and John Fisher while they were at Alex. Brown & Sons) and serving as a general partner at Venrock Associates. Over the course of his career, Mark has served as a board-member and advisor to numerous companies. Mark graduated Cum Laude with a B.S.E. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Princeton University and earned an MBA from Harvard Business School.
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About DFJ Growth: DFJ Growth is a late-stage global venture capital firm that provides capital to companies in seed, early, and growth-stages.
Randy Glein
Co-Founder and Partner of DFJ Growth
Randy Glein is a co-founder and Managing Director of DFJ Growth. His career spans more than 25 years as a venture capital investor, operating executive and entrepreneur. Randy has led investments in numerous high-growth technology companies, including Box, DataStax, Performics (Google), SpaceX, Tesla Motors (NASDAQ: TSLA), Tremor Video (NYSE: TRMR), Tumblr (Yahoo), Twitter (NYSE: TWTR) and Yammer (Microsoft). Previously, Randy was CFO of FeedBurner, a DFJ portfolio company acquired by Google, and a member of the founding team at DIRECTV. He also served in senior roles at Tribune Ventures and Hughes New Ventures. Randy began his career as an engineer with Hughes Space & Communications.
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About Coinbase, DFJ Growth, Threshold: DFJ Growth is a late-stage global venture capital firm that provides capital to companies in seed, early, and growth-stages.
John Fisher
Co-Founder and Partner of DFJ Growth
John H. N. Fisher is a Managing Director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, with 27 years of venture capital investing experience. On behalf of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, John has served on the boards of many companies, both private and public. At present, his board positions include SolarCity (NASDAQ: SCTY), Good Technology, CafeMom, SCIenergy, Pulsepoint, and Raydiance. In addition, John serves on the Investment Committees of DFJ Growth Fund (Menlo Park), DFJ Esprit Ventures (London), DFJ ePlanet Ventures (global) and DFJ New England (Boston). Previously, John worked at ABS Ventures, where he focused on enterprise software and services. In addition to his venture capital experience, John gained further investment industry experience at Alex. Brown & Sons and Bank of America. In the non-profit realm, John serves as a Trustee of the California Academy of Sciences, and he is on the board of Common Sense Media. John is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Business School.
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About DFJ Growth, Threshold: DFJ Growth is a late-stage global venture capital firm that provides capital to companies in seed, early, and growth-stages.
Pat Hanrahan
Co-Founder & Chief Scientist of Tableau
Pat Hanrahan is Tableau Software’s Chief Scientist. He is also the CANON Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, where he teaches computer graphics. His current research involves visualization, image synthesis, and graphics systems and architectures. Before joining Stanford he was a faculty member at Princeton. Pat has also worked at Pixar where he developed volume rendering software and was the chief architect of the RenderMan Interface – a protocol that allows modeling programs to describe scenes to high quality rendering programs. Pat has received two Academy Awards for Science and Technology, the Spirit of America Creativity Award, the SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award, the SIGGRAPH Stephen A. Coons Award, and the IEEE Visualization Career Award. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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About Tableau: Tableau helps global organizations unleash the power of their most valuable assets: their data and their people.
Katherine Power
Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Clique
Katherine Power is the Co-Founder and CEO of Clique Media Group (CMG), the parent media company of WhoWhatWear (fashion), MyDomaine (lifestyle) Byrdie (beauty) and Obsessee (new omni-channel platform, specifically targeted at Gen-Z). In 2006, Katherine left her editorial role at ELLE to launch Who What Wear with her co-founder, Hillary Kerr. The goal was to disrupt the DNA of the magazine industry with a simple idea: do it digitally. By bringing print magazine sensibilities to the online space, CMG was born to offer readers elevated and curated access to their core passions: fashion, beauty, home and shopping. At CMG, Katherine drives all business operations, advertising and brand partnerships, along with the development of branded technology products. Just within the last year, Katherine has led the charge on exciting new initiatives for CMG, which include announcing the brand’s first foray into product with the launch of the Who What Wear collection at Target, a Series B round of funding that Amazon participated in, international expansion to the UK and Australia, and the acquisition of Wantering, a Canadian startup and social shopping search engine. Additionally, a third co-authored book, The Career Code, which serves as the modern girl’s guide for creating your own professional success, came out in the spring of 2016. As a leader that constantly innovates about what readers and consumers might want next, Katherine and her CMG team are continuing to enhance their offerings and user experience for the new generation of consumers.
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About AVALINE, Clique, MERIT Beauty, Sonoma Brands, Versed, Who What Wear: Clique is a media and commerce company
Jeremy Jordan-Jones
Founder of Amalgamated Media
Jeremy Jordan-Jones is an American entrepreneur and musician with a storied career in business development, financial technology and creative media. He is the founder of Amalgam: The Blockchain Company and Amalgamated Media. Jordan-Jones is widely recognized by his peers as a thought leader and innovator in the business development and music technology industries. Jordan-Jones has landed high profile partnerships with with organizations such as the Los Angeles Clippers, Netflix, IMG, Fenway Sports Management and more.
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About Amalgam: The Blockchain Company, Amalgamated Media, International Economic Development Council: Amalgamated Enterprises (formerly known as Amalgamated Media) is a US-based media and technology firm.
Daniel Chu
CEO and Co-Founder of MakersPlace
Daniel Chu is the CEO and co-founder at MakersPlace. He is a product and engineering leader with a passion for applying technologies to drive real-world change.
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About MakersPlace: MakersPlace is an authentic and unique digital creation platform powered by blockchain technology for digital creators.
Bradley Deyo
Co-Founder, Co-Chairman & COO of Mars Reel
Bradley Deyo is a Co-founder and COO at Mars Reel.
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About Mars Reel: Mars Reel is a content and consumer products company focused on high school sports and youth culture.
Tyler Bleszinski
Founder of Vox Media
Tyler is the founder of SB Nation which laid the groundwork for the creation of Vox Media. He served as the CEO of SB Nation for the first four years of its existence. The disruption of traditional sports media started with Bleszinski’s coverage approach and led to massive growth immediately. The young company’s rapid success attracted the attention of investors and future CEO Jim Bankoff. Tyler now functions as SB Nation’s vice president of talent, serving as a mentor, advocate and teacher for the team blogs in the network. He manages the team blog leadership and leads the recruiting, credentialing and editorial planning for our team blogs. He has a keen eye for talent, with many of the current full time sports employees starting as bloggers early on in SB Nation’s history. Tyler started the network when he launched his Oakland Athletics site Athletics Nation in November 2003. The site became the model for how to approach coverage in the new media landscape with an open and distinct bias. He set out with the purpose of raising the level of discourse that existed at the time and empowering fans to embrace their own community on the Web. His approach became the blueprint for the company’s success as he developed a close relationship with A’s general manager Billy Beane as well as owner Lewis Wolff. He remains a driving force behind the team blogs today.
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About SBNation, The Verge, Vox Media: Vox Media is an operator of an online media publishing agency created to influence editorial properties and premium advertising.
Alex Beckman
Founder & Chief Executive Officer of GameOn Technology
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About Elastic Holdings, GameOn Technology: Our technology powers intelligent chat applications across multiple platforms for some of the world’s largest brands.
Kalin Stanojev
Founder & CPO of GameOn Technology
Founder and CPO of GameOn.
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About GameOn Technology: Our technology powers intelligent chat applications across multiple platforms for some of the world’s largest brands.
Nate Simmons
Founder & COO of GameOn Technology
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About GameOn Technology: Our technology powers intelligent chat applications across multiple platforms for some of the world’s largest brands.
Sarah Lacy
Founder, Editor-in-Chief, and CEO of PandoDaily
Sarah Lacy is the founder, editor-in-chief, and chief executive officer of [PandoDaily](http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/pandodaily), a web publication that offers technology news, analysis, and commentaries about Silicon Valley-based startups. Lacy is also an award winning journalist and author of two critically acclaimed books, Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0 and Brilliant, Crazy, Cocky: How the Top 1% of Entrepreneurs Profit from Global Chaos. Lacy has been a reporter in Silicon Valley for nearly fifteen years covering everything from the tiniest startups to the largest public companies. She was formerly a staff writer and columnist for [BusinessWeek](http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/businessweek), the founding co-host of Yahoo Finance’s Tech Ticker, and a senior editor at [TechCrunch](http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/techcrunch). Born on December 29, 1975, Lacy currently lives in San Francisco, California.
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About Chairman Mom, PandoDaily: PandoDaily is a web publication offering technology news, analysis, and commentary, focusing mainly on Silicon Valley and startup companies.
Chris M. Willliams
Founder & CEO of pocket.watch
Chris M. Williams is the Founder & CEO at pocket.watch.
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About pocket.watch, pocket.watch: Pocket.watch is a new studio creating global franchises from the YouTube stars and characters loved by Generation Alpha.
Alan Chan
Co-Founder & CEO of Joy
Alan Chan is the Cofounder & CEO of Joy (https://joy.co)
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About Joy: Joy is the first Smart Photo Album – an all-in-one hardware, software and cloud solution for families to organize and relive their memories.
Co-Founder, CEO of Samba TV
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About Carrot Capital, i/o Ventures, Samba TV: Samba TV enables the next-generation TV experience powered by its first-party data and helps viewers engage with relevant media.
Sepideh Nasiri
Founder & CEO of Persian Women In Tech
Sepideh (“Sepi”) Nasiri is an award winning serial Entrepreneur with 16 years of experience working in the Tech Industry, the Founder of Persian Women In Tech, the former Vice President at Women 2.0 and a life-time advocate for women, diversity and inclusion. Mrs. Nasiri started her career as a Co-founder and Managing Editor of a digital and print Los Angeles Magazine and later joined a number of successful startups in Silicon Valley. In 2014, she was recognized by San Francisco Business Times/Journal “40under40” and Diversity Journal’s 2014 “Women Worth Watching”. Currently, Mrs. Nasiri advises early stage startups including at global initiatives such as WeMENA (a program by the World Bank) and mentors globally many female entrepreneurs and founders in technology serving as an advisor to initiatives such as TechWomen, an initiative of the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA).
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About Persian Women In Tech: Persian Women In Tech supports Iranian women in Tech/STEM from all across the Globe’s landscape.
Carlos Watson
Co-Founder & CEO of OZY Media
Carlos Watson co-anchors MSNBC 2 p.m. news program from NBC headquarters at 30 Rock. A Harvard grad, he got his start in politics, serving as campaign manager and chief of staff for Florida Representative Daryl Jones and managing Bill Clintonâs 1992 Election Day effort in Miami-Dade County. While at Harvard, he also worked with Senator Bob Graham, DNC Chair Ron Brown, and Miami Mayor Xavier Suarez. After graduating from Stanford Law, where he edited the Law Review, Watson joined the business world, advising Fortune 500 companies as a management consultant for McKinsey & Company. He later struck out on his own and co-founded Achieva College Prep Services, which helped thousands of high school students prepare for college and was written about in Time and Forbes, among others. Watson sold the firm to the Washington Post/Kaplan in 2002.
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About Achieva.com, OZY Media, The Stimulist: OZY Media is a premium media and entertainment for curious people — across TV, events, podcasts and news.
Jim McKelvey
Founder & CEO of Invisibly
Jim co-founded Square, where he now serves as a Director. Jim is also a General Partner at FINTOP Capital and Green Visor Capital. He serves as a Director of the St. Louis Federal Reserve and as a Trustee to Washington University in St. Louis. Jim’s first venture was co-founding Mira Digital Publishing in 1990, which is a leader in electronic publishing for scientific conferences. In 2013, he founded the LaunchCode Foundation, currently bringing free computer education and jobs to 5 US cities. In addition to his businesses and philanthropy, Jim is a glassblowing artist and co-founded one of the nation’s top glass centers, Third Degree Glass Factory. He has published two books on computer programming and one on glassblowing. He is a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis.
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About Arch Grants, FINTOP Capital, Invisibly, LaunchCode, Mira Smart Conference, Square, Third Degree Glass Factory, Washington University in St. Louis: Invisibly puts the power of your data back in your hands.
Chris Kantrowitz
CEO, Founder of Gobbler
Chris is a serial entrepreneur in gaming, technology, and music. At age 14, he founded his first company– a game testing business for clients like Sony Imagesoft. After university, he co-founded 3D Groove, online gaming technology company that powered the first online 3D games at sites like shockwave.com and nickelodeon.com. In 2003, he started ODVD games, whose premiere title, “Shout!â€, a pop culture interactive DVD trivia game,was distributed globally by Hasbro and is returning in 2011. In 2006, Chris combined his passion for creative and technology and co-founded Frank the Plumber, a leading concert design and production company creating digital and live experiences for such artists as Akon, The Strokes, Lady Antebellum, Stevie Wonder, Beyonce, Katy Perry and Madonna and brands like Ford, Apple and AOL. Most recently, he founded his third technology company, Gobbler, along with his sister Jamie. Gobbler is a purpose built cloud for media creators and the software companies who provide tools to them.
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About Gobbler, Mootral: The largest marketplace for subscription pro-audio plugins.
Jed Simon
Founder & CEO of FastPay
Jed Simon is the founder and CEO of FastPay, providing liquidity and financial workflow solutions to the digital media industry. Formerly, Simon was an investment banking analyst program at Morgan Stanley & Co. in New York working on IPOs, debt finance transactions, and M&A for media companies. After joining DreamWorks SKG in 1996, Simon managed aspects of its finance, distribution, marketing, and new media businesses, and was a senior executive at DreamWorks Records before assisting in the sale of the company to Universal Music Group. His last position with DreamWorks was Vice President of International Distribution and Marketing for DreamWorks Pictures, based in London.
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About DreamWorks Studios, FastPay: FastPay is the definitive financial platform for digital media.
Russell Simmons
Co-Founder and Chairman of All Def Digital
Russell Simmons CEO, Rush Communications Entrepreneur, author, activist and philanthropist Russell Simmons has launched scores of groundbreaking careers and innovative enterprises in arenas as varied as music, film, television, fashion, comedy, poetry, digital platforms, theater and finance. His lifelong mission has been giving a voice to extraordinary talent and empowering underserved communities as they in turn shape the mainstream of culture. After having produced or managed artists such as Kurtis Blow, Run DMC, Whodini and Jimmy Spicer, Simmons joined forces with producer Rick Rubin to found Def Jam Recordings. Under Simmons’ leadership as Chairman, Def Jam signed acts including the Beastie Boys, Public Enemy, LL Cool J, Jay Z and Kanye West. Simmons’ long-running HBO series “Def Comedy Jam” helped make household names of comics including Jamie Foxx, Chris Tucker, Martin Lawrence, Bernie Mac, Dave Chappelle, Kevin Hart and JB Smoove. “Def Poetry Jam,” also on HBO, won a Peabody Award and a Broadway version netted Simmons a Tony®. Simmons’ numerous big-screen hits include The Nutty Professor, which grossed more than $273 million. Simmons has written three New York Times best-selling books, including Success Through Stillness: Meditation Made Simple, which was published in 2014. He has also launched a multitude of diverse business ventures including pop-culture website Global Grind, UniRush Financial Services, Simmons Jewelry, Run Athletics and clothing subsidiaries Phat Farm, Baby Phat, Argyleculture, and American Classics. Most recently, he has been building All Def Digital, a premium, multi-platform digital media company and entertainment hub, curating, developing and connecting a new generation of content creators to global fans. He also co-founded the digital marketing firm Narrative. A longtime champion of social justice and equality, Simmons was honored with the 2011 GLAAD Excellence in Media Award. He is also a leading animal rights activist, having been named PETA Man of the Year in 2011. His charitable endeavors include the Diamond Empowerment Fund, a global organization that supports educational initiatives for disadvantaged people in diamond-producing African nations, Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation, which gives young people opportunities to create and appreciate art, and Foundation for Ethnic Understanding which he serves as chairman promoting understanding and cooperation between and among ethnic groups to help reduce the existing tensions among diverse racial and ethnic communities. A native of Queens, NY, Simmons has two daughters, Ming Lee and Aoki Lee.
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About All Def Digital, Def Jam Recordings, Global Grind: ALL DEF DIGITAL is a premium, multi-platform digital media company and entertainment hub
Roger Mincheff
Founder & President & Chief Content Officer of Big Boots
Roger Mincheff is the Senior Vice President of Branded Entertainment for Digital Content at Fox Filmed Entertainment, a division of News Corporation.Roger joined Fox after serving as CEO of Spacedog Media, a full-service digital marketing agency he founded in 1998. Under his guidance, Spacedog utilized new media to develop engaging brand experiences across Internet, mobile, digital signage, print and event platforms. The company developed entertainment content opportunities for major brands including Qantas Airways, Carls’ Jr., Hardees, Mazda, Harley-Davidson, Universal Music, HBO, Boost Mobile, McDonalds, and others.
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About Big Boots: Big Boots is a studio dedicated to incubating, building, and launching engagement platforms.
Mike Melby
Co-Founder and Co-CEO of FITLAB
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About ELECTRIC, FITLAB, FITLAB, FITLAB, Mayweather Boxing & Fitness, XPT: FitLab powers experiences that inspire you to move.
Clark Benson
CEO & Founder of Ranker
Clark Benson is a serial entrepreneur with 5 startups under his belt including an internet exit eCrush (primary site was http://www.espin.com) to Hearst in 2006. Ranker is his current startup and he also funded the seed round. Benson’s other startups have been in the music industry. 2 of them have been merged into Almighty Music Marketing (http://www.almightymusicmarketing.com) which his partner Joel Oberstein runs. He has also been an angel investor, in Jumpcut/Miravida which sold to Yahoo! in 2006.
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About Ranker: Attracting more than 30 million monthly unique visitors worldwide, Ranker is the leader in fan-powered rankings on just about everything.
Darren Lachtman
Co Founder of Brat
Darren was previously the senior director of business development for Bedrocket Media Ventures. He has an extensive background in digital media and marketing, working alongside brands like ESPN, EA and Google.
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About Brat: Brat is a teen-leaning digital production company.
Kyle Wong
Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Pixlee
Kyle Wong is the CEO & Co-Founder of Pixlee, a visual marketing platform that helps brands market and sells with customer photos and videos. The company works with more than 150 brands such as Kenneth Cole, Gaiam, Levi Strauss and Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants to develop a more authentic marketing experience and create stronger relationships with their most passionate customers. Apart from that, he is currently working as a contributor with Forbes magazine and as a leadership council with Ad Council. Kyle attended Stanford University where he studied engineering and co-founded Pixlee out of his dorm room in 2012. He is a mentor for the Stanford Accelerator (StartX) program, where he advises several early-stage VC backed tech startups. Kyle has been featured in Forbes’ 30 Under 30 List and is a regular speaker and domain expert on influencer marketing and driving consumer engagement through social media. He is also an active contributor for Forbes and Fortune Magazine where he writes on digital marketing, entrepreneurship, and various leadership and career topics.
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About Ad Council, Forbes Magazine, Pixlee: Pixlee is a user-generated content marketing platform that helps brands to market and sell by using real customer photos and videos.
Valerian Bennett
Founder of POP Network
Valerian Bennett is founder & CEO of PopChest. Mr. Bennett is a veteran television producer/editor having worked on hit TV shows for E!, MTV, A&E, and many more. Valerian is a Silicon Valley native and graduated from the University of Southern California film school.
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About POP Network: The POP Network is a decentralised solution to the delivery of monetised video using micro payments and token rewards.
Matthew Levin
Co-Founder and CEO of Donut Media
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About Donut Media: A digital network for the next generation of automotive enthusiasts.
Raju Sagiraju
CEO/Founder of Dime Development
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About Dime Development: Digital Agency to help brands
Michael Deng
Founder & CEO of ArcSoft
An unusual entrepreneur – with a finely balanced scientist’s left brain and artist-photographer’s right brain – Michael initially sought out funding from friends and family to start ArcSoft in 1994. His original idea was to build an imaging software title with sophisticated photo editing functionality that was not only effortless to use but could be enjoyed at a nominal cost. Since those early days, Michael’s strategic, customer-focused vision for the future together with his deep industry knowledge has transformed ArcSoft into a global leader in imaging technology and multimedia software, licensing its products and IPs to mainstream digital camera, mobile phone and multimedia PC manufacturers.
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About ArcSoft: ArcSoft is a software developer of multimedia technologies and applications across desktop, mobile and embedded platforms.
Cristobal Viedma
Founder & CEO of Lingokids
Viedma Cristobal is the Software Engineer: Head of platform at Viki Inc.
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About Lingokids, Viki: Helping families around the world raise amazing kids.
Brian Graden
Founder and CEO of Brian Graden Media
For generations of young people, the name Brian Graden might not ring a bell. A glance at his resume certainly will. This longtime production pacesetter has spent a career developing and fostering cutting-edge television as well as steering the programming divisions of major entertainment networks: with his talented hand, some of the most forward-thinking, edgy, and plain entertaining television of the past 25 years has come to life. His accomplishments each stand on their own as signposts of a career that’s anticipated every major turn. From his earliest days as a junior executive overseeing the trailblazing COPS and America’s Most Wanted, to his guiding hand in the development of South Park, to transforming the formerly staid VH1 into a pop culture powerhouse, Brian Graden’s work has consistently helped to define it’s time while also pointing to what’s next. During his time as MTV Networks President of Entertainment, he oversaw the creation of a new canon of young people’s programming with shows like TRL, Pimp My Ride, Punk’d, Jackass, Jersey Shore, and countless others. Striking out on his own, Brian started Brian Graden Media in 2013. BGM’s forays into the digital world have continued the success he started on television, garnering an Emmy award for the genre-bending interactive show HitRecord on TV, and developing a suite of YouTube Original programming and unconventionally fascinating cable shows, each tuned into what’s driving views and clicks in today’s evolving media landscape. With his track record, it’s hard to bet against BGM. It’s not entertainment alone that defines Brian Graden. A passionate advocate for equality, Brian personally spearheaded MTV’s Fight for Your Rights: Take a Stand Against Violence campaign while at the network. He’s been the recipient of numerous awards for his advocacy including the GLAAD Media Vito Russo Award for Excellence in Media, the EQCA Award for Commitment to Advancing LGBT Equality, and the Equality Forum’s National Role Model award. He’s also delivered keynote addresses at the Harvard Gay & Lesbian Caucus Annual Commencement, the Reaching Out MBA Conference, and the Cellcom Media Conference. When he isn’t working, Brian is an avid musician, having manned the keyboards for cover band Ace Oxygen and the Ozones in high school before turning his ambitions towards Hollywood. Today, his musical tastes are as varied and diverse as his shows’ audiences. Brian Graden currently lives in Los Angeles, California.
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About Brian Graden Media: Brian Graden Media an Emmy award-winning television production company based in Hollywood, CA.
Thomas Kramer
COO, Co-Founder of Paladin
As Co-Founder and Head of Product at Paladin, Thomas focuses on building enterprise software for next-generation media companies. Prior to Paladin, Thomas served as VP of Product at Bent Pixels and as the Senior Director of Content Strategy and Optimization at Maker Studios (The Walt Disney Company), a top multi-channel network (MCN). At Maker, Thomas led a team focused on audience development strategy consulting for many Disney brands (Marvel, ESPN, Disney Animation, and Disney Parks) and online video creators (PewDiePie, GameGrumps, and the Shaytards). Thomas has rich experience working with brands, agencies, and content creators on multi-platform video strategy. He is a co-founder of Ready Influence, an advisory initiative for content creators, and has spoken at several conferences, including Media Summit New York. Thomas is a graduate of the University of Oregon.
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About Measure Studio, Paladin: Paladin is the essential influencer marketing platform for brands and agencies.
Anjelika Temple
Co-Founder + Chief Creative Officer of Brit + Co
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About Brit + Co: Brit + Co is a media company that inspires, educates, and entertains real women with a creative spirit.
Brian Nam
CEO and Co-Founder of DIVE Studios
Brian Nam is a Co-founder & CEO of MINDSET.
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About DIVE Studios, MINDSET: DIVE Studios is a podcast production company creating a world of audio that positively impacts culture and society.
Jeremy Zimmer
Founder of United Talent Agency
Jeremy Zimmer is one of the Hollywood agency’s 6 owners and is a UTA co-founder and managing director. The grandson of legendary Hollywood studio chief Dory Schary began his career at age 19 in the mailroom of the William Morris Agency. After moving to Los Angeles in 1984, he joined ICM and eventually ran both the Motion Picture Literary and Motion Picture Packaging departments. Zimmer was asked to leave ICM for an infamous episode when he told an Industry gathering that the agency profession was engaged in “raping and pillaging”. He became a partner at the Bauer/Benedek Agency, and in 1991 he helped found United Talent Agency through a merger of Bauer/Benedek and Leading Artists Agency. Clients represented by Zimmer include Andrew Adamson, Noah Baumbach, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, Christopher Guest, Curtis Hanson, Jimmy Hayward, Anthony Hopkins, Barry Levinson, director-producer Frank Marshall, Peter Morgan, director-producer Brian Robbins, Chris Wedge, as well as verge culture retailer Karmaloop and HiT Entertainment. Zimmer is also involved in United Entertainment Group, the joint venture company formed with advertising veteran Jarrod Moses, which is among the industry’s largest independent branded entertainment and integrated media firms. Zimmer’s official bio credits him with establishing UTA’s Branding, Licensing & Endorsements division as well as UTAOnline and UTA’s Agent Trainee Program.
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About United Talent Agency, UTA Ventures: United Talent Agency is a talent and literary agency representing actors, writers, directors, producers, recording artists and more.
Peter Benedek
Founder of United Talent Agency
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About United Talent Agency: United Talent Agency is a talent and literary agency representing actors, writers, directors, producers, recording artists and more.
Stefan Lederer
Co-Founder & CEO of Bitmovin
Stefan Lederer is co-founder and Head of Business of bitmovinin 2012, a company which focuses on products, cloud services and consulting in the area of adaptive HTTP streaming. He received his B.Sc. (Bakk.) in Information Management in Aug’10, his M.Sc. (Dipl.-Ing.) in Computer Science in Mar’12 and his M.Sc. (Mag.) in Marketing and International Management in Jun’13, all with distinction from the Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt. He gained practical and international expertise in various companies (IBM, McKinsey&Company, Dolby, Hillside, Ilogs, etc.) and has a strong business focus in marketing and international management. He founded his first company in 2008 and led several IT projects in central and eastern Europe. In his position of an Assistant Professor at the Alpen-Adria Universität Klagenfurt, Institute of Information Technology (ITEC), Multimedia Communication Group he participated in several EC-funded projects (ALICANTE, SocialSensor). His research topics include transport of modern/rich media, multimedia adaptation, QoS/QoE as well as future internet architectures and he has published more than 20 papers in these areas. He participated in the MPEG-DASH standardization, contributed several open source tools (DASHEncoder, DASHoverCCN VLC plugin) and datasets.
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About Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Bitmovin: Bitmovin is a multimedia technology company providing adaptive streaming video infrastructure for global digital media companies.
Christopher Mueller
Co-Founder & CTO of Bitmovin
Christopher Mueller is CEO and Co-founder of bitmovin and Head of Technology. He received his M.Sc (Dipl. Ing.) in Computer Science from the Aplen-Adria University Klagenfurt with distinction. He gained practical expertise in various companies, notably Infineon Semiconductors and Dolby Laboratories Inc. Los Angeles, USA. His main research interests are multimedia streaming, networking, and multimedia adaptation. In his position as an Assistant Professor (Univ. Ass.) at the Alpen-Adria University Klagenfurt, Institute of Information Technology (ITEC), Multimedia Communication Group (MMC) he has published more than 20 papers in these areas and currently holds 2 U.S. patents. He participated in the MPEG-DASH standardization and is the author of the MPEG-DASH reference software libdash. He contributed several open source tools, notably MPEG-DASH VLC plugin and libdash, worked in various EC-funded projects, e.g., ALICANTE and SocialSensor, and he is the supervisor and main contributor of the MPEG-DASH ITEC blog (dash.itec.aau.at) with more than 100k views per year.
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About Bitmovin: Bitmovin is a multimedia technology company providing adaptive streaming video infrastructure for global digital media companies.
Alok Bhat
Founder & CEO of ADVIDS
Founder & CEO at advids.co
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About ADVIDS, COVOCO: ADVIDS is an online platform and concierge service to produce web videos.
Jeff Yasuda
CEO & Founder of Feed Media Group
Jeff is the CEO and Founder of Feed.fm (Feed Media Inc.). Feed.fm helps game developers, content publishers, and e-commerce retailers increase customer engagement, retention, and conversions by incorporating popular music into their environments– at the lowest possible cost. These engagement metric improvements in turn improve financial metrics– including increased ARPU (average revenue per user), reduced average CAC (customer acquisition cost), and lower churn. API documentation and links to the iOS, Javascript, and Unity SDKs can be found at http://feed.fm/documentation. Music has always been an important part of Jeff’s life and he considers himself a bona fide hack on guitar. Prior to Blip.fm, Jeff has worked with numerous technology companies in software, hardware, computer services, semiconductor services and telecommunications equipment companies. Most recently, Jeff was Managing Director and CFO of Redwood Ventures where he managed investments in their technology portfolio. Prior to that he worked in Investment Banking at Lehman Brothers, and did strategic consulting, M&A and financial valuation at Arthur Andersen. Jeff is a CPA, has an MBA from New York University, and a BA from Dartmouth College. He is also a co-founding director for Little Kids Rock, a non-profit helping to teach music to children in our public schools.
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About Feed Media Group, Fuzz: Feed Media Group is for businesses that need licensed popular music to create engaging customer experiences.
Lauren Pufpaf
CMO, Co-Founder of Feed Media Group
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About Chief, Feed Media Group: Feed Media Group is for businesses that need licensed popular music to create engaging customer experiences.
Erik Huberman
Founder and CEO of Hawke Media
Forbes 30 Under 30. Erik Huberman is a brand marketing expert, serial entrepreneur and founder of Hawke Media, a full-service outsourced CMO for brands like Red Bull, Verizon, Evite and Eddie Bauer. Prior to Hawke, Erik founded, grew and sold Swag of the Month, and grew Ellie.com’s sales to $1 million in four months. Erik is also an Inc. Top 25 Marketing Influencer and received a 2016 Telly Award.
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About Hawke Media, Hawke Ventures: Hawke Media provides a host of services that help businesses strategize and realize their potential.
Dedric Reid
Founder of HelloVR
Dedric Reid is Founder @ HelloVR
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About HelloVR, MetaWorld: A digital content studio creating shared immersive experiences.
Douglas Colbeth
Founder & CEO of MedCircle
Douglas Colbeth became president and chief executive officer of Kinaxis in March 2003. As one of the true visionaries of the Internet explosion in the mid 1990’s, he envisioned the opportunity to be a leader in delivering an on-demand supply chain management service. He then came across what he describes as a “gang of supply chain geniuses” in Canada, who had already developed very powerful modeling and collaboration technology. After going public in 2014 – Kinaxis has a market capitalization of approximately $2 Billion. Doug understood what the Internet’s influence on consumer behavior would be and how it would dramatically increase demand volatility. The problem of effectively responding to consumer demand would be further exacerbated by the dramatic market shift of outsourced manufacturing operations. Under Doug’s leadership, Kinaxis developed a world-class offering which enables companies to build better supply chain plans and quickly respond to constant changes in demand, supply and product — driving breakthroughs in customer service and operations performance. Today, the Kinaxis RapidResponse® cloud service empowers front-line decision makers at brand name companies and contract manufacturers with multi-enterprise visibility and collaborative analysis tools to effectively respond to change across an entire distributed supply chain. Prior to Kinaxis, Doug was chief executive officer of Spyglass Inc., a leading provider of Internet software technologies. Spyglass technologies are utilized inside millions of products including PCs, televisions, telephones, and other hand-held devices. Most notably, Spyglass technology is the foundation of the Microsoft Internet Explorer browser. In June 1995, Spyglass became the first Internet software company to conduct a successful Initial Public Offering. In March 2000, Doug negotiated its merger with OpenTV Inc., at a value of $2.4 Billion. Outside of his work with Kinaxis, Doug and his wife Margaret are pioneer philanthropists in the area of juvenile brain diseases. Established in 2000, the Colbeth Clinic is operated by the University of Illinois Medical Center and serves inner city children in the Chicago area. This state of the art clinic employs a multidisciplinary approach to treating a wide range of brain diseases including: autism, depression, bipolar, OCD, ADHD, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Doug holds a Bachelor of Science in Economics from Siena College in Loudonville, New York, and studied Quantitative Economics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (R.P.I.) in Troy, New York. While attending R.P.I., Doug was awarded a research grant from Texas Instruments Inc. to develop modeling software for various Texas Instruments products.
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About MedCircle: MedCircle is a San Diego based company redefining the mental health care market
David Rosenberg
Co-Founder, COO and General Counsel of Gimme Radio
In business school I built a digital music service that created a secondary market for digital goods. While the business ultimately did not succeed, I have received a patent on the process that is highly relevant to the current issues today on the first sale doctrine.
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About Gimme Radio, Zoom: Gimme Radio is a digital music platform designed for passionate music fans.
Tyler Lenane
CEO and Co-Founder of Gimme Radio
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About Gimme Radio: Gimme Radio is a digital music platform designed for passionate music fans.
Jon Maples
Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of Gimme Radio
Jon is a product leader who has been perfecting fan experiences for digital music services for the past 20 years.
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About Gimme Radio: Gimme Radio is a digital music platform designed for passionate music fans.
Rob Emrich
Founder & CEO of The Mobile Majority
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About Alliance for Audited Media, The Emrich Foundation, The Mobile Majority, YPO: We help brands realize the full potential of mobile.
Ben Goldhirsh
Founder of GOOD
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About GOOD: GOOD is an integrated media platform for pragmatic idealists working towards individual and collective progress.
Marc Simons
Co-Founder of Giant Spoon
Marc Simons has been a creative catalyst dedicated to thinking about how emerging technologies will change the face of media and marketing at a number of large advertising and media agencies before starting his own independent agency. Prior to co-founding Giant Spoon, Marc was the West Coast Director for OMD’s creative media group, the Ignition Factory at Omnicom. Marc has a number of “firsts” under his belt, including embedding a web-connected video screen in a magazine for the CW, the first television script published to Amazon’s Kindle Store as a marketing stunt, the first “Shazam-able” TV ad with Levi Strauss & Co., and the first advertising on Flipboard. Marc has also helped countless startups tackle their advertising products while pairing brands with the next wave of disruptive technologies.A Boston University grad, Marc resides in Los Angeles, CA
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About Giant Spoon: Giant Spoon is a marketing strategy and innovation agency that provides short- and long-term marketing and business planning.
Ryan Born
Founder & CEO of HAAWK
Ryan Born is the Founder & CEO of HAAWK, Inc. a VC backed digital rights management and copyright administration agency specializing in YouTube and Facebook/Instagram rights management and digital distribution services. He started his career in the Atlanta office of PricewaterhouseCoopers’ (PwC) Assurance and Business Advisory Services Practice where he gained experience in an array of industries. Ryan later transferred to New York City to broaden his experience in the firm’s Tax and Legal Services division. After PwC, he served as VP of Finance and Financial Controller at WireImage.com during which time the Company was acquired by Getty Images for $208 million. After WireImage, he angel invested in Internet Marketing Inc. and NewCondosOnline.com, the largest one-stop resource for finding and comparing new condo developments, where he also served as CFO. In 2007, he relocated to Los Angeles and founded AudioMicro, Inc, which operates a network of digital content licensing marketplaces, each targeted at a specific vertical — celebrity photos (ImageCollect), stock music & sound effects (AudioMicro), and YouTube monetization (AdRev). In 2015, the Zealot Networks acquired a majority of the company for over $20M. Prior to Zealot’s acquisition, the Company was backed by DFJ Frontier, part of the largest VC network in the world with over $7B under management, and Fotolia LLC, a leading stock photo marketplace with over 12 million images which itself was acquired by Adobe in 2014 for $800M. Ryan graduated Beta Gamma Sigma with an undergraduate degree in Accounting/Marketing & Art history and a Studio Art minor from Emory University. In addition, he possesses a Masters of Accounting Science degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He holds an active CPA license with the State Board of Accountancy of his home state, Tennessee, and previously served on the Board of Directors of the Los Angeles Venture Association (LAVA).
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About AudioMicro, HAAWK: HAAWK polices, administers, distributes, & licenses content to UGC video sites on behalf of copyright holders.
John O. Ryan
Co-Founder of Rovi Corporation
Co-Founder of Macrovision.
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About Rovi Corporation: Rovi Corporation provides digital entertainment technology solutions for the discovery and management of entertainment content.
Kristoph Oedman
Co-Founder and COO of ProGuides
Kristoph Oedman is the co-founder and COO of ProGuides.
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About ProGuides: ProGuides is an esports training platform where millions of committed gamers get better.
Sam Wang
Founder & CEO of ProGuides
Founder & CEO of ProGuides.
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About ProGuides: ProGuides is an esports training platform where millions of committed gamers get better.
Matthew Adell
Co-Founder and CEO of OnNow.tv
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About MetaPop Inc., OnNow.tv: Discover, Share and Promote Livestreams
Sergii Mashevskyi
Founder, CEO of Cameo FX
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About Cameo FX, Prope: Visual effects and animation company
Jonathan Skogmo
Founder & CEO of Jukin Media
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About Jukin Media, pocket.watch, Producers Guild of America: Jukin Media is the global leader in user-generated entertainment.
Max Child
Founder of Volley
Max Child is the Co-Founder of Volley.
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About Volley: Volley builds voice-controlled entertainment experiences for Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and smartphones.
James Wilsterman
Co-Founder and CTO of Volley
James Wilsterman is the Co-Founder and CTO at Volley.
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About Volley: Volley builds voice-controlled entertainment experiences for Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and smartphones.
Abdur Chowdhury
Co-Founder and CEO of Aura Frames
Abdur Chowdhury was the co-founder of Summize which he sold to Twitter in 2008. He then became Twitter’s Chief Scientist. A few years ago, he left and started a new company called Pushd, which is backed by a couple of million in seed funding from various angels, as well as Betaworks. On September 4, 2014 Pushd, Inc. released an Emoji based mobile app called Steven.
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About Aura Frames: Aura Frames is a smart picture frame designed to fill their home with beautiful photos of their family and friends.
Eric Jensen
Co-Founder & CTO of Aura Frames
Eric Jensen is a chief technology officer at Pushd, Inc. He also co-founded Summize, Inc., which was later acquired by Twitter. Prior to Pushd, Inc., Jensen worked at Twitter as a relevance tech lead. Jensen earned his PhD in computer science from [Illinois Institute of Technology](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/illinois-institute-of-technology-chicago).
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About Aura Frames: Aura Frames is a smart picture frame designed to fill their home with beautiful photos of their family and friends.
Jake Litke
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of MediaJel
Jake is a highly-regarded visionary leader with fifteen years in the mobile and advertising industries. Before founding MediaJel with his business partner, Aaron, Jake started the mobile advertising company, Media Cannon. As CEO, he built the company up and led it to a successful exit in 2010. He’s created successful mobile products, ad-tech platforms serving millions of users, and has a proven executive management track record. He has an encyclopedic knowledge of everything, as far we can tell. And no, you won’t beat him at trivia.
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About MediaJel: Digital Marketing platform for Cannabis, CBD, and Alcohol Brands – it’s our thing.
JM Yujuico
Founder & CEO of Vicarious, Inc.
J.M Yujuico is a 3-time founder that has built large scale companies from the ground up in varying industries. A sci-fi fan and lover of media and technology led him down the VR rabbit hole and to founding Vicarious. He sees the path to large scale consumer adoption coming from a product that leverages the most ubiquitous digital behavior (sharing photos and videos online) and marries it with VR’s ability to put you into the experience of another person. Live Vicariously on Vicarious.
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About Vicarious, Inc.: Sharing your life’s moments in VR by using your media mixed with 3D animated stickers, particles, environments, 360 media and audio.
Valerie R. Coffman
CTO and Co-Founder of Swayable
Valerie is a graduate of Johns Hopkins and received a PhD in Physics from Cornell where she wrote software for studying the fracture properties of materials. After graduation, she spent 5 years at the National Institute of Standards and Technology writing open source software for materials science research. For the past three years she has been providing data science consulting to startups, specializing in natural language processing and search engine technology.
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About Swayable: Swayable is a data platform that predicts changes in consumer opinion and intentions
Tyler Williams
CEO & Founder of Nextbeat
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About Bubl, Nextbeat: Nextbeat is an interactive video platform that lets you hang out with your favorite creators and your fellow fans in real time.
Ruben Vardanyan
Founder & CEO of Joomag, Inc.
Dr Ruben Vardanyan is an innovative and result-driven leader with more than a decade of experience in building hi-tech companies. He is a founder and Chief Executive Officer of Joomag, a US based SaaS company that provides integrated solution for creating interactive digital publications. Under Vardanyan’s guidance the company developed a series of revolutionary products and became an industry leader. He has extensive experience working with SMBs as well as large enterprises including Fortune 500 companies. He is an angel investor, advisor and serves as a board member for various tech startups. Prior to his Joomag experience, he was the founding CEO of mobile app development company Magy. The company produced several best-seller and award winning apps. In addition to being a master strategist, Vardanyan is an aficionado of all aspects of computer programming, security, databases, software, protocols and web servers. In fact, he co-authored “Principles of C++” and authored “Programming in Macromedia Flash Action Script.” Along with his Executive Education from Harvard, Vardanyan holds a PhD in Computer Science and maintains active involvement in workshops, trainings and is a guest speaker at several international conferences.
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About Joomag, Inc.: Joomag is the all-in-one platform empowering businesses large and small to create, distribute, track, and monetize their interactive content
David Aslanyan
Chief Customer Officer & Co-Founder of Joomag, Inc.
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About Joomag, Inc.: Joomag is the all-in-one platform empowering businesses large and small to create, distribute, track, and monetize their interactive content
Charles King
Founder & CEO of Macro
Charles D. King is founder and CEO of MACRO. Launched in 2015, MACRO is a newly formed venture that sits at the intersection of content, technology and brand curation. With a focus on creating film, television and digital content for African-American, Latino and Multicultural consumers (ALM), the company is perfectly positioned to capitalize on the explosive growth in this important market. Formerly, King was Partner/Agent in the Motion Picture Department at William Morris Endeavor (WME). His career as an agent spanned over 15 years, during which he was known for his innovative deal making and strategy in developing brands for and around his clients. King has been featured in many national media outlets and publications, including NPR, Essence, The Weekly Variety, and the Los Angeles Times. Fortune Magazine has named him one of the nation’s most influential Latino, Asian or African-Americans in their 2005 Diversity Issue, and he was recently included in the 2014 Ebony Power 100 List. King is an active angel investor in synergistic ventures at the nexus between the technology sector and the media content business. A graduate of Vanderbilt University and the Howard University School of Law, he resides in Los Angeles, CA with his wife Stacey, a fashion designer/executive and their two young sons, Noah and Julian.
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About MaC Venture Capital, Macro: Macro is a disruptive media company focused on the multicultural market.
Julie Uhrman
Founder & CEO of OUYA
Julie Uhrman is a video game entrepreneur. She is founder and CEO of OUYA—an innovative gaming console that enables any developer to publish a console game by bringing the mobile app model to the TV. OUYA is a powerful, beautifully designed, open and inexpensive alternative to traditional game consoles. Julie started in the game business ten years ago. Before launching OUYA, she held several executive roles with video game companies such as GameFly, IGN (where she led digital distribution and business development) and Vivendi Universal. Julie loves to play games: she plays platformers, 3rd person shooters and she loves playing games on a TV. But the last few years, she’s played more on mobile phones, because that’s where the action’s been. She wants to go back to playing on a TV. By combining a classic console format with the ease of access of open mobile SDKs, Julie seeks to make OUYA the open pathway for all developers—AAA and indie alike—to bring their craft to the world.
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About Angel City, Highway1, OUYA: OUYA develops and delivers open video game consoles for televisions.
Garrett Dodge
Co-Founder, CEO of Rockbot
Garrett is the Co-Founder and CEO Rockbot. As such, he is responsible for all marketing, business development, and operational activities for the company.
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About Rockbot: Rockbot is a streaming media platform for businesses including TV, background music, mobile app and digital signage applications.
Ketu Patel
Co-Founder, CTO of Rockbot
Ketu dreamt up Rockbot at his hometown bowling alley, Porterville Lanes. He’s a huge music nerd but isn’t afraid to admit the first tape he ever owned was C+C Music Factory’s seminal classic, “Gonna Make You Sweat”. When he’s not furiously coding and picking 5+ upvote jams on Rockbot, Ketu likes to snowboard and be disappointed by Cal football.
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About Rockbot: Rockbot is a streaming media platform for businesses including TV, background music, mobile app and digital signage applications.
Nicolas Cole
Founder of Digital Press
Nicolas Cole is an author, 4x Top Writer on Quora, and Top 30 Columnist for Inc Magazine, with over 50 million views of his work. His writing has appeared in TIME, Forbes, Fortune, Business Insider, The Chicago Tribune, Apple News, Slate Magazine, and many more.
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About Digital Press: Thought Leadership Content Marketing
Beau Lewis
Co-Founder and VP Content of GoldieBlox
Entrepreneur and Viral media expert with over 250 million earned views, an Emmy, and a free Super Bowl Ad. Producer of award-winning products (iOS app of the year, Toy of the Year) and content (Ad Age ad of the year, Best of fest Documentary). Stanford Engineer ’04. Oxford University.
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About GoldieBlox: GoldieBlox a children’s multimedia company out to show the world that girls deserve more choices than dolls and princesses.
Debbie Sterling
Founder / CEO of GoldieBlox
Debbie Sterling is the founder and CEO of GoldieBlox. She never knew what engineering was until her high school math teacher suggested she pursue it as a college major. Debbie couldn’t figure out why her math teacher thought she should be a train conductor! Nevertheless, she gave engineering a try during her freshman year at Stanford. Four years later, she graduated with a degree in Mechanical Engineering / Product Design. Bothered by how few women there were in her program, Debbie became obsessed with the notion of “disrupting the pink aisle” with a toy that would introduce girls to the joy of engineering at a young age.
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About GoldieBlox, GoldieBlox: GoldieBlox a children’s multimedia company out to show the world that girls deserve more choices than dolls and princesses.
Evan Asano
Founder and former CEO of Mediakix
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About Mediakix: Mediakix connects brands and influencers on YouTube, blogs and Instagram. Driving reach, ROI and sales for top brands.
Jj Maxwell
Co-Founder of Upcast
Founder at Upcast.
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About JetFuel, Real Labs, Upcast: UpCast is a plug-in that allows the customized display of podcasts with special enhancements.
Sheldon Owen
Founder and CEO of Vana
Sheldon is a proven entrepreneur and senior business operator with over 20 years of experience developing emerging technology companies. Sheldon is the Founder of Digital Tower, Inc. (dba Muncheez) and the Co-Founder of Unified. Prior to starting Muncheez, Sheldon was the founding CEO of Unified for nearly five years. During his tenure as CEO, Unified successfully raised over $60 million in venture financing, grew to hundreds of customers and 150 employees, made two successful acquisitions, won countless awards, and became one of the industry’s most recognized marketing technology startups. Prior to co-founding Unified, Sheldon held many senior executive roles throughout his career including Vice President at CA Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: CA), EVP/General Manager at Connexus and Founder of tmpSocial, an early Facebook Marketing Partner. Sheldon is an active startup advisor, mentor, board member, speaker and angel investor. He is a member of the Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO), an advisor for Techweek, and an advisor to hedge funds and professional investment firms on industry trends in software, marketing technology, mobile, digital advertising, and social media.
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About Vana: Leading recommendation engine and compliant marketing platform for the legal cannabis and CBD industry
Dana Loberg
Entrepreneur & Founder of Leo
Dana Loberg is a Yale graduate, artist and and serial entrepreneur living Silicon Valley working on cutting edge technologies. She’s currently the co-founder and CEO of Leo AR, the #1 consumer facing app in AR. Leo allows anyone, anywhere to redefine their reality using AR. Dana also co-founded MojiLaLa, one of the largest platforms for high quality stickers. Previously she co-founded and sold MovieLaLa, a social network and movie marketing platform.
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About Leo, MojiLaLa: Leo is an augmented reality app that allows people to experience advanced augmented reality through realistic animated and 3D objects.
Cedric Rogers
CEO/Co-Founder of Culture Genesis
Cedric Rogers is a co-founder and CEO of Culture Genesis.
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About Culture Genesis: Culture Genesis is a digital studio, focused on remixing digital technology for urban multicultural audiences.
Jim Jannard
Founder/CEO of RED Digital Cinema
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About RED Digital Cinema: Red.com is an American manufacturing company that produces digital cinema cameras.
Magnus Sorlander
CEO, Founder & Member of Edisen, LLC
Magnus Sorlander is the Founder and Chairman at Edisen.
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About Edisen, Edisen, LLC: SAAS, Digital Asset Management
Glenn Cole
Founder / Chief Creative Officer of 72andSunny
Glenn Cole is founder and creative cochair of 72andSunny, a marketing, advertising, and design company that specializes in brand transformations and whose mission is to expand and diversify the creative class. At 72andSunny, Glenn is responsible for fostering a culture that recognizes the creativity in everyone and for setting the company’s standard for innovation. Prior to 72andSunny, Glenn spent 10 years at Wieden&Kennedy as a Creative Director for Nike’s global soccer business, with a few years in between dedicated to personal creative exploration and a stint directing commercials and music videos. Today, when not helping global brands like Google, Adidas, and Coors fulfill their brand aspirations, Glenn serves as Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors for The One Club, the world’s leading creative non-profit organization. Most recently, Glenn co-founded Sundae, a next-generation Influencer Network where purpose-led brands and purpose-driven creators can collaborate to make an impact in the world.
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About 72andSunny, Hecho Studios, Sundaecollective: 72andSunny drives transactions by making brands matter in culture. They have offices in Los Angeles and Amsterdam.
Alexandre Williams
Co-Founder and COO of Create Music Group
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About Create Music Group, CreateTV, INC: Create Music Group is a music and media technology company
Jonathan Strauss
Co-Founder and CEO of Create Music Group
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About Create Music Group, CreateTV, INC: Create Music Group is a music and media technology company
Nancy Chen-Salgado
Co Founder of OfficeNinjas
Co-Founder of OfficeNinjas.
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About OfficeNinjas: Publication, Marketplace and Community for Office Managers & Assistants
Edwin Salgado
Co Founder of OfficeNinjas
Co Founder of OfficeNinjas.
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About OfficeNinjas: Publication, Marketplace and Community for Office Managers & Assistants