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 United States based Founder operating in the Video Streaming 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.
Kevin Chou
Founder of Rally
Kevin Chou is co-founder and CEO of Kabam, a world leader in AAA mobile free-to-play games. Kevin is an entrepreneur who has guided Kabam’s explosive growth, which started with a handful of people working above a dim sum restaurant and catapulted to $400 million in revenue, sustained profitability, and a valuation of more than $1 billion in 2014. Since co-founding a company in 2006 that became Kabam in 2009, Kevin has led the disruption of the video game industry by revolutionizing the way players access and pay for games. He has secured partnerships with leading game platforms, as well as with Hollywood studio giants such as Disney, Lionsgate, MGM, NBCUniversal, Paramount and Warner Brothers for games based on some of the world’s most beloved movie franchises. Under Kevin’s leadership, Kabam has raised more than $240 million from venture and strategic investors, including some of the world’s largest entertainment and internet companies such as Alibaba, Google, Intel and Warner Brothers. Before co-founding Kabam, Kevin worked at the global venture capital firm Canaan Partners, which is Kabam’s initial investor and where he invested in 14 consumer technology and online media companies. Earlier, Kevin advised public technology companies on M&A and corporate finance as part of Deutsche Bank’s technology investment banking practice. Kevin graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from UC Berkeley with a BS in Business Administration. At UC Berkeley, Kevin was admitted to the inaugural class of Gates Millennium Scholars. In 2014 Kevin was named one Fortune magazine’s prestigious “40 Under 40” and, in 2012, was identified by Fortune as one of the “Smartest People in Tech.” The Los Angeles Times called Kevin “absurdly accomplished.”
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About Aftershock, Forte, Gen.G Esports, LUMA Capital Partners, Rally: Rally provides a blockchain platform for the development of video streaming and gaming apps.
Mahesh Vellanki
Co-Founder & VP, Growth of Rally
Mahesh Vellanki is an Associate with Redpoint Ventures where he focuses on early-growth investment opportunities in the internet, digital media, mobile, e-commerce, gaming and online education sectors. Prior to joining Redpoint, Mahesh was an Analyst in the technology investment banking division of Citigroup where he focused on internet, digital media, software, hardware and semiconductor companies. He advised a variety of clients on equity and debt financings, as well as strategic business development, M&A and LBO transactions. At Citigroup, Mahesh worked with companies such as Zillow, Groupon, AutoTrader, Synacor and Equinix. Mahesh earned a bachelor’s degree in Finance with honors from the University of Maryland.
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About Rally: Rally provides a blockchain platform for the development of video streaming and gaming apps.
Justin Waldron
Co-Founder and President of Playco
Justin Waldron is Co-Founder & President of Playco, and previously Co-Founder / EVP of Product of Zynga, the world’s largest mobile game company. Zynga IPO’d in 2011 with a $10 billion valuation and over $1b in annual revenue. Justin is an angel investor in Lambda School, Substack, and 60+ other companies. He mentors young entrepreneurs at The Thiel Foundation’s Thiel Fellowship program.
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About Playco, Zynga: Playco is a developer of instant-play games across a variety of platforms.
Doron Nir
President & Co-Founder of StreamElements
Doron Nir is a serial entrepreneur, gamer and visionary,driven by a passion for product development and the goal of generating revenue.
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About Happy Sale, StreamElements: StreamElements provides content creators the tools they need to engage, grow, and monetize their audiences.
Gil Hirsch
Co-Founder & CEO of StreamElements
Gil Hirsch is an angel investor. Gil has over ten years of experience in software architecture, product and general management in computer technology. Before co-founding face.com, Gil held multiple R&D, Product and Sales executive roles at Amdocs, Xacct Technologies and Telrad Networks. Gil is also the co-founder of the garage geeks community in Israel to drive non-commercial innovation activities.
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About StreamElements: StreamElements provides content creators the tools they need to engage, grow, and monetize their audiences.
Rishi Malhotra
Co-Founder & CEO of JioSaavn
Rishi Malhotra is Co-Founder and CEO of Saavn, India’s leading music streaming service. Rishi has led the company through significant and rapid user growth, while helping to secure partnerships with companies like Twitter, Facebook, Google, Shazam, T-Mobile, and Sonos. He is focused on driving the global Saavn team to deliver award-winning mobile products, big data systems for media, and industry-defining business innovation. Saavn is on track to become one of the largest streaming music companies in the world by 2017. Saavn is backed by leading institutional investors including Tiger Global, Bertelsmann Media, Liberty Media, Steadview Capital, and Mousse Partners. Previously, Rishi was VP, HBO On Demand and Multi-Platform for Home Box Office, Inc., where he pioneered HBO’s SVOD products, digital distribution, and original VOD content for many HBO franchises.
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About [212]Media, JioSaavn: Saavn is a music streaming service for Indian, Bollywood, and International content.
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.
Gordon Daily
President & Co-Founder of BoxCast
Gordon has always been a big dreamer and big thinker. Although he failed to achieve his childhood goal of starting in center field for the Cleveland Indians, Gordon has never lost his capacity for dreaming big and working tirelessly to achieve whatever he sets his mind to. His really big dream: To create a technology company that changes the way people communicate – through live HD video streaming. After receiving his BS and MS in computer engineering from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland in three-and-half years, a 12-year-career at Rockwell Automation followed. It literally took him around the world, including a stint in Singapore. It also gave him the opportunity to manage mission-critical projects early in his career. In Gordon’s Rockwell years, he tackled tough technical problems, crafted international business deals and came up with creative marketing solutions. He also managed to be awarded a half-dozen patents. Gordon lives with his wife Cara and their young children Quentin and Serena in a renovated convent on Cleveland’s West Side. When he isn’t with his family or working, he’s most often demonstrating his competitive side whether it’s skiing, kayaking or playing ping pong.
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About BoxCast: BoxCast is an end-to-end video-streaming solutions for organizations.
Dot Bustelo
CEO/Founder of Loupe
Dot Bustelo, CEO/Founder of Apple TV visual art streaming platform Loupe, recognized as a Creative Technologies/Entertainment Software Strategist. She developed Loupe in 2016 as a visual complement to streaming music platforms, featured by Apple and reaching #1 Lifestyle app around the world. An internationally-recognized Apple Logic Pro consultant, music producer, Emmy Award-winning sound designer, author and stage demonstrator of Apple software, Dot formerly worked on Apple’s Worldwide Product Team introducing Apple product software techniques to A-list artists, engineers and their producers such as Maroon 5, The Killers, John Legend, One Republic, T. Pain and M.I.A. After Apple, she went on to author #1 Amazon best-selling books on Apple software and online courses for Lynda.com and consulted to iOS and Mac audio app companies. An electronic music producer herself with licenses to Sony PlayStation, NBC, VH1, CBS, and MTV, she serves on the Recording Academy’s National Advisory Council of the Producers & Engineering Wing. In her spare time, Dot writes science fiction.
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About Loupe: Pioneering service transforming how art is experienced; #1 Lifestyle app in 64 countries on AppleTV/Fire TV/Android/PlutoTV/Samsung/Comcast
Uri Raz
Founder & Executive Chairman of Tango
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About Tango: Tango Live is a leading global social media platform connecting influencers and their followers through live mobile video engagement.
Rubin Gruber
Founder and Board Member of Verivue
Rubin Gruber is a well-known successful entrepreneur, having founded many innovative companies in the telecommunications, data communications and digital networking areas over a span of forty years. In 2007 he co-founded Verivue (acquired in 2012 by Akamai: AKAM), a company providing infrastructure products that support on-demand television and movies as well as content delivery networks. Before Verivue, Gruber co-founded Sonus Networks (NASDAQ: SONS), the leading provider of infrastructure equipment supporting IP Voice telephone networks around the world. Earlier, Gruber founded VideoServer, Inc (NASDAQ: VSVR), a leading provider of multimedia communications servers. Before VideoServer, Gruber served as Senior Vice President BBN Communications Corporation, where he introduced a new generation of packet-switching equipment in support of mission critical applications. Gruber also founded Davox (NASDAQ: DAVX, acquired Aspect and renamed Aspect), a leading supplier of outbound call-center systems. In the mid 1970’s, he founded Cambridge Telecommunications (CTX), which was the first company to incorporate microprocessors in communications equipment and an early supplier of packet network access equipment. CTX was acquired by GTE. Gruber served on the Boards of all the companies he founded, as well as a number of other private companies, including GreenVolts, a leading supplier of Concentrated Photovoltaic (CPV) Solar Systems, NetDevices (acquired by Alcatel-Lucent), Brix Networks (acquired by EXFO), 2Wire (acquired by AT&T, Telmex and Alcatel) and others. Gruber was a member of the board of directors of the International Softswitch Consortium, the International Packet Communications Consortium, and he was one of the founding members of the International Multimedia Telecommunications Consortium where he was awarded the Pioneer award. He was named to the Massachusetts Telecom Hall of Fame. He holds a B.Sc. from McGill University and an MA in mathematics from Wayne State University.
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About Metrika, Verivue: Verivue provides digital content delivery solutions to help network operators distribute and control IP-based media traffic.
Uzo Ometu
Founder, CEO of Black Oak TV
Uzo Ometu is the Founder at Black Oak TV.
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About Black Oak TV: Black Oak TV focuses on digital media, film, television, video streaming, and content such as black web series.
Susan Brazer
Chief Executive Officer and Founder of LionShare Media
Susan is a commercial visionary with a 2020’s view. She’s led the successful development, launch and scale of consumer-facing platforms, apps and services for world-leading media, tech and telecom companies: Apple, DirecTV, SES Astra, FIFA World Cup, Viacom, Virgin Mobile, and Nokia. Susan is the CEO of LionShare Media, which is launching the THIN/AIR™ Metaverse, a 5G cloud-native, blockchain-enabled distribution platform for premium entertainment and immersive media. Previously, Susan was VP, Strategy and Business Development at Nokia, and VP, Corporate Development and Entertainment Services at Virgin Mobile USA). Prior to this, Susan was EVP, Corporate Development at KirchMedia’s Venture Fund for the FIFA World Cup, where she raised $50M+ for interactive TV, gaming and mobile app ventures. Susan was the SVP, Networks & Marketing for Viacom’s Showtime service in the Middle East and Africa, overseeing a P&L and operations for MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, The Movie Channel, TV Land, Bloomberg, Paramount, Style and Discovery. Susan led the launch of DirecTV as VP, Marketing at Compression Labs and the migration of 85M European TVHH to digital satellite and cable services for SES ASTRA. The genesis of Susan’s product development and UI/UX expertise began at Apple Computer, where she launched its 1st portable computer, the Newton, and Knowledge Navigator (prototype for the iPAD and Siri). She was also served as an M&A analyst at PepsiCo and International Treasury Analyst at Phillip Morris. Susan holds a B.A. in Economics from Brandeis University, an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management and attended the London School of Economics. Susan is on the Board of Global Women in Blockchain, a UN Delegate for Media for Social Impact and a mentor at Princeton University’s Keller School of Engineering for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
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About LionShare Media: LionShare Media develops a media distribution platform-as-a-service to harness the power of converging and emerging technologies.
Doug Barry
Co-Founder, COO and CFO of PORTL Hologram
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About MSMCi, PopJax, PORTL Hologram: PORTL Hologram offers at-home hologram machines.
David Nussbaum
Founder and CEO of PORTL Hologram
David Nussbaum is the Founder and CEO at PORTL Inc.
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About PORTL Hologram: PORTL Hologram offers at-home hologram machines.
Jonathan Gray
CEO and Co-Founder of Encore Music Technologies
Jonathan Gray, founder and CEO of Cask, is an entrepreneur and software engineer with a background in startups, open source, and all things data. Prior to founding Cask, Jonathan was a software engineer at Facebook where he drove HBase engineering efforts, including Facebook Messages and several other large-scale projects, from inception to production. An open source evangelist, Jonathan was responsible for helping build the Facebook engineering brand through developer outreach and refocusing the open source strategy of the company. Prior to Facebook, Jonathan founded Streamy.com, where he became an early adopter of Hadoop and HBase and is now a core contributor and active committer in the community. Jonathan holds a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Business Administration from Carnegie Mellon University.
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About Encore Music Technologies, Orcada, The Apache Software Foundation: Encore is an interactive live music mobile-based platform aiming to help artists monetize their connections with fans.
Ilya Pozin
Co-Founder (acquired) of Pluto TV
Ilya Pozin is an entrepreneur, writer and investor. He is the founder of Pluto TV, Open Me (acquired), and Coplex. He is a columnist for Forbes and Inc. In 2012, Inc. Magazine recognized Ilya as a ’30 Under 30′ Entrepreneur. In 2013, LinkedIn selected Ilya as one of 100 Top Influencers, along with the likes of Richard Branson, Barack Obama, Tony Robbins and Mark Cuban. An early immigrant from Russia, Ilya founded his first company Coplex (formerly Ciplex) when he was 17-years-old. Coplex is a multi-million dollar interactive agency that has been behind the build of thousands of websites and applications, as well as management of millions of dollars of marketing and media buys. After stepping down from the CEO role at Coplex, Ilya founded Open Me, a consumer-focused social greeting and gifting company. After partnering with Threadless and successfully raising capital for the business, the company quickly grew to millions of users. Open Me was acquired by Rowl in 2015. In 2013, Ilya co-founded Pluto TV, an OTT television platform that combines digital and traditional content into 100+ linear channels. Pluto TV raised $13M led by US Venture Partner, Sky, Universal Music Group, UTA, and other prominent investors. The service is available for free on connected TV devices, PC and Mac, mobile platforms (iOS and Android) as well as on the web at http://pluto.tv Ilya resides in Los Angeles where he works, writes, invests, mentors and on occasion, attempts to golf. Follow Ilya on Twitter (@ilyaNeverSleeps) and LinkedIn.
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About Coplex, Forbes, Inc.com, Pluto TV: Pluto TV is the leading free streaming television service in America.
Tom Ryan
CEO & Co-Founder of Pluto TV
Tom Ryan is CEO and Co-Founder of Pluto TV, the leading free streaming television service in America that is also available in 22 countries across Europe and Latin America. Pluto TV carries and programs more than 250 live channels and thousands of on-demand movies and TV shows in partnership with hundreds of major TV networks, movie studios, publishers, and digital media companies. Each month over 36 million viewers tune in to watch premium news, TV shows, movies, sports, live events, cartoons, and trending digital series on mobile, web, and living room devices. Pluto TV is a top free app on Roku, Amazon Fire TV and Android mobile, and also powers built-in streaming television services on Vizio LG, and Samsung smart TVs. Earlier in his career, Tom served as CEO of Threadless (a popular crowdsourced design and e-commerce company), SVP of Digital Strategy at EMI Music as well as co-founder of Cductive (an early digital music retailer company that he merged with eMusic). He holds an AB from Dartmouth College and an MBA from INSEAD in France.
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About Pluto TV: Pluto TV is the leading free streaming television service in America.
Jonathan Steinberg
Founder and CEO of Cheddar
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About Altice USA, Cheddar, CNBC, DropBoxee, SocialGreat: Cheddar is a live video news network focused on covering products, technologies, and services.
Tony Chen
CEO and Founder of Channel Factory
Tony Chen is CEO and Founder of Channel Factory, a social video marketing platform that helps top brands and agencies expand their brand video viewership. Tony is a digital pioneer in the social video space, creating cutting edge solutions to make sure brand videos are safely watched, tracked and shared across multiple platforms by millions of people. Tony founded Channel Factory in 2013 and has quickly scaled the company by partnering with top agencies and Fortune 500 brands. In 2016 alone, Channel Factory spearheaded more than 5,000 campaigns, served over five billion video views and worked with more than three hundred Fortune 500 companies on their campaigns. Prior to Channel Factory, Tony founded Yellow Thunder Media in 2010 while attending Rice University where he double majored in Economics and Piano. Pioneering a scientific method to help videos go viral on YouTube, the company generated more than one billion views within three years for top brands such as Coca Cola, Sony Pictures, and McDonalds among many others. Tony is an avid angel investor with investments in e-commerce companies including, Fab Fit Fun and Trendy Butler, Jumpcut Studio and software start up, Outreach. He has been recognized by Forbes’ 30 Under 30 for his achievements in marketing and advertising.
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About Channel Factory: Channel Factory is the world leader in YouTube brand suitability, content alignment and ad performance.
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.
Suroosh Alvi
Co-Founder of Vice Media
Suroosh Alvi launched VICE with Shane Smith and Gavin McInnes in Montreal in 1994. Originally a punk magazine, VICE has expanded and diluted to include a network of online video channels, including VICE.com, TheCreatorsProject.com, Motherboard.tv and Fightland.com, Noisey.com and Thu.mp), a television production studio, a record label, an in-house creative services agency and a book publishing division. Today VICE produces over 60[quantify] original video series, covering news to travel to music to arts to fashion, and has a network of correspondents and bureaus.
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About Vice Media: Vice Media is a North American digital media and broadcasting company.
Mike Uyama
Co-Founder & Event Director of Games Done Quick
Mike Uyama is Co-Founder & Event Director at Games Done Quick.
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About Consultant, Games Done Quick: Games Done Quick is a charity video game marathon.
Sumit Gupta
Co-Founder & CEO of Boom.tv
Sumit Gupta is an Advisor at Boom Fantasy and Founder & CEO at Boom.tv. He is a 3x Entrepreneur (multiple exits), Angel Investor and Mentor. Founded 3 companies. Invested in 50+ startups including Discord, G2 eSports, BlockChain Capital, Blockstream, Blockcypher, Filecoin, Wag, Classpass, OpenDoor, HoneyBook, Managed-by-Q, Dishcraft Robotics. Mr. Gupta also runs Piazza eSports Ventures with pa articular focus on investments and incubating startups Infusing tech into eSports and Game Streaming. Investments include Discord, Vulcun/StreamLabs, BitKraft, G2 Esports. Startup Portfolio includes DrDisRespect stream team, Boom.tv, Rolocule Games, Boom Fantasy Previously, He served as a Founder & CEO of Bash Gaming, took the mobile gaming company to annual revenue of $75M, profitable and sold it to GSN for $170M. Previously as founder CEO of BitRhymes Apps, top 10 app developers in social space. Before that, I was part of founding team at Business Signatures that was sold to Entrust for $55M
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About afkVR, Boom.tv: BoomTV is an Esports entertainment platform that provides tools to automate score tracking, streaming, and generating event hubs.
Michael Tribolet
Co-Founder, Chairman, & CEO of YipTV, Inc.
Michael Tribolet is a result driven entrepreneur that has extensive experience in building and selling fast growth high-tech small business, enterprise networks and consumer based businesses. His competency includes administration, business development, customer care, marketing, operations, sales, strategy and overall management of companies. He has over 19 years experience building privately and publicly owned companies with cross border operations. During his engagements he has been instrumental in developing strategy and then managing the tactical milestones necessary to manage the company’s growth. He is skilled at achieving the goals he has set forth to the board of directors by insuring the integrity and reliability of reported operations because he delivers corporate objectives efficiently and on time. Michael Tribolet can always find ways to drive win/win deals during negotiations while achieving the economical terms needed to make companies financially successful.
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About YipTV, Inc.: OTT content service provider, Live TV, Live TV Streaming, Live Internet TV, Live Spanish TV, Live International TV, Free App for Live TV
Eran Hammer
Founder & CEO of Sideway, Inc.
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About Sideway, Inc.: Stories told through the lens of social media via our streaming app where every show is told within its own fictional social network.
Jason Sperske
Co-Founder & CTO of Zeality Inc.
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About Grammarly, Zeality Inc.: Zeality Inc. is the leading provider of innovative cloud solutions for delivering immersive media content across all connected devices.
Toby Zhang
Founder of Shop LIT Live
Toby leads the firms investments in consumer and emerging technologies. At CRCM, Toby co-founded CRCM Frontier Technology Fund, a joint early stage venture fund between CRCM and Youku focused on media, AR/VR, and A.I. Prior to CRCM, Toby was an venture investor at Edison Partners, a growth-stage VC focusing on interactive marketing, e-commerce, and financial technologies. Toby previously worked as a technical program manager in the Windows Division at Microsoft building Windows 8 and 8.1. He has also spent a number of years building and advising tech startups. He co-founded Tradeversity, an online textbook market platform backed by RPM Ventures. He also served as a consultant at the Wharton Small Business Development Center. Toby holds an MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and a Masters in Engineering from University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.
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About Shop LIT Live, Youku Global Media Fund: Shop LIT Live is a live streaming platform that connects brands and merchants to consumers through immersive shopping experiences.
Virginia Juliano
CEO & Founder of CobbleCord
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About CobbleCord: Free website & app that helps users cobble together the perfect combination of online streaming services and drop cable.
Mathu Rajan
Founder & CEO of Stream TV Networks
Mathu has a strong science background and was the co-inventor of a proprietary technology that was the basis for the company that he helped found. In developing technology into a business he obtained four patents that now are in products sold at various retailers nationwide in the United States. Mathu also has a background in finance and has been successful in the raising of substantial amounts on corporate financing. Mathu founded Stream TV Networks, Inc. with the aim of bringing new media experiences to consumers around the world. He uses his science background to push the expansion of the Ultra-D 3D technology. He has brought together skilled engineers in Europe, Silicon Valley, and Asia to create a technology team committed to introducing industry-changing solutions for media.
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About Stream TV Networks: Stream TV Networks, Inc. is a Philadelphia-based new media company.
Dave Swartz
Founder, President and CCO of Hang w/
Dave has served as MEDLʼs creative director since its inception. While at MEDL, Dave has overseen the development and design of hundreds of mobile applications for names as diverse as About.com, Encyclopedia Britannica, Medtronic, Taco Bell and Universal Picturesʼ Ted. Prior to MEDL, Dave served as the Creative Director of DGWB Advertising, named by Creativity Magazine as one of the top 20 Creative Agencies in the U.S. Dave has led strategic and creative marketing efforts for regional and national advertising accounts in a variety of industries such as publishing, banking, multi-unit retail, fast food, healthcare and technology.
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About Anonymous Philanthropy LLC, Hang w/, MEDL Mobile: Hang w/ empowers users to stream and broadcast live high-quality video to other phones using their standard wireless service.
Andrew Maltin
Founder & CEO of Hang w/
Andrew co-founded MEDL Mobile in March 2009. Prior to founding MEDL Mobile, Mr. Maltin served as the Chief Executive Officer of Momentum Gaming, Inc., where he led the company’s marketing, business development and technology efforts to build a world class online gaming infrastructure which both operated independently and licensed its technology to several of the world’s leading gaming sites. He has been featured in Entrepreneur, 944, Success, The Wall Street Journal and The LA Times. He is also the CEO of Hang w/ a company that he also co-founded in 2012.
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About Hang w/: Hang w/ empowers users to stream and broadcast live high-quality video to other phones using their standard wireless service.
Sam Shahidi
Co-Founder & Chief Creative Officer of Shots Studios
Sam Shahidi is the Chief Creative Officer and Co-Founder of Shots Studios, a Los Angeles-based entertainment company specializing in content production, talent management, and data analysis. Since beginning to focus on creating content, Shots Studios has made a splash in the industry for bridging the gap between traditional and digital media. Billboard named him an “Internationalist & Latin Power Players” in 2018 and included him in 2019 “Music’s New Generation: 25 Top Innovators” for his work in growing the dance & latin genre with new media and the success of Shots Studios artists such as Alesso, Anitta, Lele Pons & Rudy Mancuso.
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About Shots Studios: Shots Studios is a Los Angeles-based, data-driven entertainment company that produces online comedy and music videos.
John Shahidi
Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Shots Studios
John Shahidi is CEO and Co-Founder of Shots Studios, a global entertainment company at the center of a new age of media and content. Along with his brother, Sam, Shahidi’s leadership guided Shots’ transition from a successful selfie-sharing app to an original comedy and music production studio. In 2018, Billboard called Shahidi an “internationalist” for his role in dance music’s expansion. He was also recognized by Billboard as a part of “music’s new power generation” as an innovator for launching Venezuelan-American digital creator Lele Pons’ music career, introducing Brazilian superstar Anitta to new markets, and propelling Swedish producer Alesso to new heights.
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About Shots Studios: Shots Studios is a Los Angeles-based, data-driven entertainment company that produces online comedy and music videos.
Phineas Walton
CSO, Co-Founder & Engineer of Giggl
Phineas Walton is a co-founder of Giggl, redefining the way we collaborate and connect online through multiplayer browsing. Phineas started programming when he was 10 years old, and by the age of 15, he started working for The Nations, until pivoting and building his own companies.
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About Giggl, Hiven, The Nations: Watch and browse together with your friends and teams. Your new portal into the internet.
Steve Heffernan
Co-Founder & Head of Product of Mux
Steve Heffernan is the creator of Video.js, an open source web video player in use on over 1 million websites and with over 1 billion videos played per month. He’s currently leading product at Mux, building video performance monitoring and APIs for video streaming. Steve has been helping run the SF Video Tech Meetup and the Demuxed video engineering conference for the last five years.
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About Mux: Mux is a video platform designed to make video streaming and analytics possible for every development team.
Matt McClure
Co-Founder of Mux
Matt McClure is the Co-Founder of Mux.
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About Mux: Mux is a video platform designed to make video streaming and analytics possible for every development team.
Michael Williams
President & CEO / Co-Founder of Oomba
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About Glytch, Oomba: Oomba is a specialized digital media company bringing elegant organization to sports and games.
Atul Phadnis
Founder and CEO of Vitrina A.I.
As Chief Content Officer, Atul leads the company’s global content and editorial teams across Video, Music and Sports to develop global content strategies and expand on the company’s existing content and data offerings. Previously, Atul founded and was CEO of What’s-ON, the largest video data provider for India and the Middle East, which was acquired by Gracenote in 2014. In this role, he successfully raised funding from Sequoia Capital and Intel Capital and helped the company achieve market leader status in Electronic Program Guides (EPG) and TV search. Before launching What’s-ON, Atul served as Vice President for Television Audience Measurement (TAM) Media Research, a joint venture between Nielsen India and Kantar Media Research created to quantify TV viewership. Atul currently sits on the TV Ratings Technical Committee for the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) in India.
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About SRI International, Vitrina, Vitrina A.I.: Vitrina A.I. is a SaaS platform for the video content industry to facilitate and enable cross-border transactions.
Alagu Periyannan
Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer of BlueJeans Network
Alagu has over 20 years of research, product development, and strategy experience bringing innovative networking and video products to market. Prior to founding Blue Jeans Network, he held the position of Chief Technology Officer at Blue Coat Systems, a leader in network security and WAN optimization appliances. During his tenure at Blue Coat he held various senior R&D management positions and was part of the management team responsible for leading the company through its successful repositioning from CacheFlow, a maker of web and video caching appliances, to Blue Coat. He also led the team that was responsible for the company’s entry into the WAN optimization market. Prior to CacheFlow, Alagu was an early member of the management team at Entera, an Internet content delivery startup. He built an R&D team from the ground up to deliver streaming video caching products for the Content Delivery Network (CDN) market, culminating in a successful sale of the company to CacheFlow in 2000. Before joining Entera, Alagu spent eight years at Apple and held various research and product development roles in networking and video over networks in the Advanced Technology Group (ATG) and then as a founding member of the QuickTime Streaming Group. Alagu holds a Masters in Computer Science from North Carolina State University, Raleigh and a Bachelors in Electrical Engineering from the Birla Institute of Technology & Science (BITS), Pilani, India.
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About BlueJeans Network: BlueJeans offers interactive, multi-directional video communication services through a cloud-based platform.
Eugene Baah
Co-Founder & CEO of Resoltz
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About Resoltz: Video streaming fitness content tailored to your goals, schedule and personal preferences
Oleg Tumanov
Founder & CEO of ivi
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About Frontier Ventures, ivi: ivi is a video-on-demand platform that brings the traditional television experience online with a free video player.
Joon Beh
CEO | Co-Founder of Hallo
I’m an ambitious entrepreneur who believes in hard work, integrity, and big dreams. Innovation is my mindset, and I achieve whatever I set my mind to.
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About Hallo: Hallo is a real-time language learning platform for speaking.
Benjamin Dent
COO | Co-Founder of Hallo
I am fortunate to have been involved and continue to be involved with organizations that are driven to make the world a better place through technology, innovation, research and education. Whether it has been working with startups, being a researcher in academia and medicine, contributing to the growth of global technology organizations or being involved in the community, I appreciate every opportunity to learn something new and solve challenging problems that make a lasting positive impact.
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About Hallo, The Language Summit: Hallo is a real-time language learning platform for speaking.
Greg Castle
Managing Partner, Founder & CEO of Anorak Ventures
Greg is the Managing Partner of Anorak Ventures, a seed-stage venture capital firm focused on emerging technology. Based in Silicon Valley, the firm focuses on VR/AR, robotics, autonomous vehicles, blockchain, deep learning and artificial intelligence. Portfolio companies include Against Gravity, Catalog, Lightform and 6d.ai. Prior to Anorak, Greg was an active angel investor with 26 investments counting Flexport and two exits including Oculus, which was acquired by Facebook for $2bln. With strong ties to the VR/AR community, Greg focuses much of his time investing in, and mentoring startups in this sector. Previously, Greg led marketing for the popular game development company Scaleform (acq. 2011) and for Autodesk’s Game Technology Group.
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About Anorak Ventures: Investing at the earliest stages in transformational people and technology
Ari Roisman
Co-Founder & CEO of Wristcam
A Mechanical and Energy Engineer by training and passionate entrepreneur at heart, Ari has founded several profitable ventures in a variety of industries. Since founding in 2012, he served as CEO of Glide, the pioneering video messenger for smartphones and smartwatches that supports millions of users and billions of live video exchanges. In 2016, Ari teamed up with an early Apple Watch program manager to develop Wristcam, an ultra-compact Camera System made for Apple Watch. Ari holds a B.S. and M.S. in Engineering from Washington University in St. Louis, and was selected by MIT Technology Review as one of 35 global innovators under 35.
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About Wristcam, Wristcam: Computer Vision for Wearables
Matt Frischer
Co-Founder & CMO of Wristcam
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About Wristcam, Wristcam: Computer Vision for Wearables
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.
Michael Elhadad
R&D Director and Co-Founder of Dalet
Michael Elhadad works as R and D Director and Co-Founder at Dalet.
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About Dalet: Dalete is a leading media technology and service provider with over three decades of innovation.
Stephane Guez
CTO and Co-Founder of Dalet
Stephane Guez is the CTO and Co-Founder at Dalet.
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About Dalet: Dalete is a leading media technology and service provider with over three decades of innovation.
Brian Rifkin
Co-Founder and SVP Strategic Partnerships of JW Player
At JW Player Brian is focused on driving growth through strategic partnerships and leads the JW Player Demand team, working with publishers and brands to maximize advertising revenue. He has worked in the online space since 1997, and until 2007 served as president of A Simple Internet, a media services firm he founded in 2001 specializing in performance-based marketing. Previously, he was senior vice president of Business Development at About.com. He holds a BS in business administration from the University of Pittsburgh.
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About JW Player: JW Player is a video streaming and analytics platform that offers an HTML5 video player for web content, publishing, and running video ads.
Dave Otten
Founder & CEO of JW Player
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About JW Player: JW Player is a video streaming and analytics platform that offers an HTML5 video player for web content, publishing, and running video ads.
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.
Balaji Krishnan
Founder & Chief Executive Officer of DabKick
Balaji Krishnan is working as Founder & CEO at DabKick Inc. Balaji Krishnan is Founder of Snapstick Inc. Balaji developed Snapstick’s technology in order to solve the problems he personally experienced with current Internet TV offerings. He has been creating and developing the concepts and architecture behind Snapstick for the past two years. Balaji previously worked in the core technology groups at Sun, HP and Oracle for more than 10 years. At Oracle he worked on database server technologies, with a special focus on the database transaction engine. Before Oracle, he spent three years at Hewlett-Packard where he worked on the HP UX development team, with a focus on file systems, volume management and virtual memory. He also worked in the Virtual Partitions team at HP. Before HP, Balaji spent three years at Sun Microsystems with the Solaris development team. Balaji received a Computer Science engineering degree, with honors, in India.
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About DabKick: DabKick is a real-time social entertainment platform that combines live video experiences with patented media sharing technologies.
Daniel Barreto
Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Haystack News
Daniel Barreto is Co-Founder of Haystack TV, and serves as its Chief Executive Officer. Daniel Barreto serves as General Manager of Mobile Cloud Business Unit and Chief Customer Advocate of Wyse Technology (UK) Ltd. Daniel Barreto leads the Mobile Cloud Business Unit (MCBU), a distinct unit designed to research, develop, and market products and services that mobile user. He served as General Manager of Mobile Cloud Business Unit and Chief Customer Advocate of Wyse Technology L.L.C (also known as Wyse Technology, Inc.). Daniel Barreto served as Chief Software Architect for Wyse, where he was responsible for overall architecture and software innovation for Wyse Technology L.L.C. He joined Wyse in 2003 and has been responsible for growing Wyse’s software portfolio with new award winning products resulting in over 50 patent applications (23 as inventor or co-inventor). Prior to joining Wyse, Daniel Barreto was a Staff Engineer at IBM in the Systems and Storage Division. Daniel Barreto holds Master’s and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering and Management Science & Engineering from Stanford University and a bachelor’s degree from Purdue University.
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About Haystack News, Stanford University, StartX (Stanford-StartX Fund): Haystack News is an Ad-supported streaming news platform that offers relevant news, from local coverage to global current events.
Tony Mugavero
Co-Founder & CEO of Rad
Tony Mugavero is an experienced tech entrepreneur and executive with a media, business, blockchain, and computer engineering background. He is the Founder and CEO of Littlstar, a premium immersive network putting viewers at the center of experiences, and creator of the blockchain platform Ara. Ara is a distributed and decentralized system for all digital content and assets to be made available for sale on the blockchain.. Littlstar leverages this technology, and has the best content in the world from companies like NBCU, Warner Brothers, Universal Music, Showtime, Nat Geo, Discovery, PBS, Red Bull, Virgin, Disney, and more. He was a Co-founder and CTO at Galvanize, Inc., having co-founded and launched the 6-month gSchool engineering program, the co-working space, and Galvanize Venture Fund I focusing on early stage venture capital. In addition, he evaluated tech and media investments, raised money for Galvanize, and mentored startups on a daily basis. His work there won awards and countless features in the press. While at Galvanize his efforts took the company from $0 to $200k per month recurring revenue, sold out classes at Galvanize University with all graduates getting $60k per year jobs or better, and multiple investments in companies like Keen.io, Dabble, Pangea Organics, and more. Prior to building Galvanize, he was the Founder/CEO of MoovAtom, a simple API for providing cloud-based media encoding and delivery, which was successfully acquired in 2012. MoovAtom had clients like American Airlines, Pepsi, MEC Global, and TriNet. He was a Co-Founder of the music discovery app GigBeat, which was a Google MWC/IO Partner and AppCircus winner with over 1 Million users.
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About ARA Blocks, Rad: Rad is the Netflix of Blockchain, with NFTs, Crypto Rewards, and tokenized subscriptions.
Matthew Collado
Co-Founder, CCO Chief Content Officer of Rad
Co-Founder, CMO at Little Star Media, Inc.
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About ARA Blocks, Rad: Rad is the Netflix of Blockchain, with NFTs, Crypto Rewards, and tokenized subscriptions.
Richard Botto
Founder and CEO of Stage 32
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About Stage 32: Stage 32 is the world’s largest online platform connecting and educating the global entertainment industry.
Diane Strutner
CEO and Co-Founder of Datazoom
Diane P. Strutner is the CEO of Datazoom, which she co-founded in January 2017. A Silicon Valley native and accomplished international executive, Diane has demonstrated her leadership abilities and sales & business development acumen within the American and Spanish startup scenes. Before Datazoom, Diane was VP for Global Sales and Business Development at NicePeopleAtWork. Prior to that she held sales and business development positions at several internet and software startups in Spain. In addition to her activities with Datazoom, she is the Founder of BeOnAlert, a sexual harassment reporting platform created in response to the #TimesUp and #MeToo movements.
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About Datazoom: Datazoom’s Video Data platform captures, classifies and connects data created by preparing, delivering and streaming video in real-time.
Cheray Unman
Co Founder of CLOUDCAST
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About Blackhawk Partners, CHERAY, CLOUD HORSE, CLOUDCAST, Equestrian Luxury, Gütermann Family Office, Sotheby’s International Realty, Tanner Unman & Co, ULTIMATE Group, Venture Bank, Venture Luxury, WINE LUXE: Patented Edge or Fog computing p2p mesh network for live steaming media & commerce .
Ari Evans
Founder & CEO of Maestro Interactive Inc
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About Maestro Interactive Inc: Maestro provides a white label platform for enterprise live streamers to own, engage, and monetize their audiences.
Mark Floreani
CEO & Co-Founder of FloSports
Mark Floreani co-founded FloSports in 2006 with Martin Floreani and Madhu Venkatesan, filling a need in the market for high quality live broadcasts and original content by athletes, for athletes. An All-American track star at the University of Texas, Mark found early success filming athletes when he posted a video of the first American to break the hour barrier in the half-marathon. It went viral, kick-starting a journey that resulted in FloSports becoming a premier sports media company. Mark became CEO in 2018 and led the company to its most successful year to date in 2019. Fun fact: Mark co-founded Flo with just $20k and a van.
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About FloSports: FloSports is a media and events company that provides live streaming of premier events, original video programming, and weekly studio shows.
Klaus Badelt
Founder & CEO of Filmhub
Klaus Badelt is the Founder at Filmhub.
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About Copy-Kids, Filmhub, Wunderhorn Music: Filmhub is a the #1 distribution platform for Filmmakers and Streaming Channels.
Gerard J. Hall
Founder, President & CEO of SMT (SportsMEDIA Technology)
Gerard J. Hall is the founder, president and chief executive officer of SMT. SMT (SportsMEDIA Technology Corporation) is the pioneer in real-time graphics, tickers, clock-and-score, virtual insertions and social media integration for live televised sporting and entertainment events. Gerard’s career in sports television began in 1988 when, as a graduate student, he developed a wireless, real-time electronic scoring system for PGA events, replacing the standard walkie-talkie communication that was previously used to update leaderboards. He provided this interface from 1988 to 1991 for NBC Sports. Upon graduation from Harvard University in 1981, Gerard won the prestigious St. Andrew’s Scholarship to attend Scotland’s University of Edinburgh where he pursued a Master of Science in computer science. Gerard continued his graduate studies while teaching computer science at the University of Central Florida before leaving in 1986 to work with the Epson Computer Corporation. SportsMEDIA Technology Corporation was formally incorporated in June 1990 with an eye toward offering TV interface technology to other sports television broadcasters. Shortly thereafter, SportsMEDIA signed an exclusive four-year agreement with ESPN to provide interface TV graphics services for NASCAR/IndyCar, NFL, NHL, MLB, NCAA football and NCAA basketball. During the formative years of SportsMEDIA, Gerard was the architect of electronic scoring systems for the PGA Tour, IndyCar and the X Games.
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About SMT (SportsMEDIA Technology): SportsMEDIA Technology is a provider of graphics, statistics and video enhancement software for live television sports broadcast networks.
Matteo Petrelli
Co-Founder & CEO of Exeest
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About Exeest, Vicker: Exeest is a B2B digital market for premium Film, TV, and digital content that provides an integrated experience from discovery to delivery.
Anthony Costanzo
Co-Founder & Advisor of Exeest
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About Exeest: Exeest is a B2B digital market for premium Film, TV, and digital content that provides an integrated experience from discovery to delivery.
Cenk Uygur
CEO & Founder of The Young Turks
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About The Young Turks: The Young Turks provides an online news show covering politics, pop culture and lifestyle.
Marcus Brauchli
Co-Founder, Managing Partner of North Base Media
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About North Base Media: An operator-led investment firm focused on opportunities in digital media in emerging markets.
Michael Maponga
Founder, CEO of AfroLandTV
Founder of AfroLandTV. An online streaming TV platform for Pan African TV shows and movies. An actor/producer with two international box office films (Finding Mother 1 & 2), winner of the Entrepreneur Trailblazer Award by the Professional Association of Young Africans in Houston, Texas, and frequent Film Festival Panelist.
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About AfroLandTV: Online streaming TV platform for Pan African TV shows and movies.
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.
JB Lee
CPO & Co-Founder of AmazeVR
JB Lee is a Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer at AmazeVR.
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About AmazeVR: AmazeVR is a virtual concert platform for the highest quality VR content creation and mass distribution using the proprietary technologies.
Steve Lee
Co-CEO & Co-Founder of AmazeVR
Steve Lee is a Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer at AmazeVR.
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About AmazeVR: AmazeVR is a virtual concert platform for the highest quality VR content creation and mass distribution using the proprietary technologies.
Jeremy Nam
CTO & Co-Founder of AmazeVR
Jeremy D. Nam is the CTO and Co-Founder of Amaze VR.
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About AmazeVR: AmazeVR is a virtual concert platform for the highest quality VR content creation and mass distribution using the proprietary technologies.
E.J. Klein
CEO, Founder of MolQ Entertainment
E.J. Klein is CEO/Founder of MolQ Entertainment, Inc., an American Entertainment Company that provides streaming media and subscription video-on demand online. Ms. Klein is an experienced Chief Executive Officer and Entrepreneur, with a demonstrated history of founding content and tech companies. Earlier in her career, Ms. Klein worked as a senior sales and marketing executive in the cable and telecommunications industry. Ms. Klein held the senior executive positions of Vice President of National Affiliate Sales at Universal Music Group, Vice President of National Affiliate Sales at the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC), Vice President, Eastern Region, ABC/Disney, Senior Director, Affiliate Sales at Scripps Interactive Networks, and Director of Comcast -National Accounts at HSN, Home Shopping Network. In 2010, Ms. Klein founded Klein Media Works, a leading global content distribution consulting company. In 2016, Ms. Klein founded Cloud Force Digital Media, a tech company that builds, distributes and monetizes TV Connected Apps for global content and advertising clients. In 2018, Ms. Klein founded MolQ Entertainment, a global subscription OTT Streaming Application Platform, offering independent film and documentary content and 24/7 global news, music, sports and e-sports TV Networks. Ms. Klein graduated from Smith College in Northampton, MA with a Bachelor of Arts in Government and holds a Masters in Business Administration in Global Management and a Graduate Degree in Digital Marketing from the Wayne Huizenga School of Business and Entrepreneurship at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, FL. Ms. Klein is an Adjunct Professor in the School of Business and Science at Bay Path University in Longmeadow, MA.
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About MolQ Entertainment: MolQ Entertainment is an American entertainment company that provides streaming media and subscription video on demand on line.
Aditya Gudipati
Founder of Uhana
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About Uhana: Uhana harnesses the power of AI/ML and low latency big data pipelines to manage and optimize applications and mobile networks.
David Moricca
Founder & CEO of Socialive
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About Socialive: A powerful yet intuitive video platform that helps organizations create, broadcast and distribute high quality video content at scale.
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.
David Sanderson
Founder & CEO of Reelgood
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About Guidebox, Reelgood: Reelgood provides a complete guide to online streaming content.
Alexandra Serio
Chief Creative Officer & Co-Founder of Nameless Network
Alexandra Serio is a media entrepreneur, producer and cultural strategist straddling the lines between pop culture, technology and digital content. She is currently Chief Creative Officer & Co-Founder of Nameless, a video start-up that pairs the best videos on the Internet with realtime chat i.e. television for the next generation. She previously served as Director of Content Development at SFX where she helped launch the Beatport News product. Prior to that she helped launch Noisey, VICE’s music channel where she served as Global Activation Manager. Alex is a proud member and Kate Spade Scholarship recipient of NEW INC, New Museum’s art, technology and design incubator–the world’s first museum-lead incubator. In 2015 she was cited as a creative trailblazer in the media industry by Vanity Fair.
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About Nameless Network: Today’s entertainment company for tomorrow’s curious minds.
PJ Taei
Founder & CEO of Uscreen
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About Uscreen: The #1 video monetization platform for entrepreneurs to sell, market, & manage their content.
Adam McKay
Founder of Funny Or Die
Adam McKay (born April 17, 1968) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, comedian, and actor. McKay served as head writer for the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live for two seasons. He directed Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004), Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006), Step Brothers (2008), The Other Guys (2010), and Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues (2013). McKay has a creative partnership with actor Will Ferrell, with whom he co-wrote all except one of these films. The Big Short (2015) was the first film McKay directed without Ferrell in the cast. Venturing into more dramatic territory, he was nominated for several awards including the Academy Award for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay and two British Academy Film Awards, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay, with McKay and co-writer Charles Randolph winning Best Adapted Screenplay at each respective ceremony. McKay and Ferrell produced their comedy website Funny or Die through their company Gary Sanchez Productions.
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About Funny Or Die: Funny Or Die is a comedy video website that maintains quality user generated content by keeping only the videos with high ratings.
Chris Henchy
Founder of Funny Or Die
Chris Henchy runs Gary Sanchez Productions, a production company co-founded by comedians Will Ferrell and Adam McKay, which partnered with [Sequoia Capital](/financial-organization/sequoia-capital) to launch [FunnyOrDie.com](/organization/funnyordie). Henchy was involved in the creation of the website and is integral in its ongoing commitment to showcase the best comedy on the web. Henchy has been a writer and producer on such shows as “Entourage”, “Life with Bonnie” and “Spin City”. He also created ABC’s “I’m With Her” and most recently produced a comedy pilot for HBO entitled “East Bound and Down.†He has written the feature film “Land of the Lost” for Will Ferrell and Universal Pictures. In 2010, Henchy wrote and produced “The Other Guys” for Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg and Sony Pictures. Born in New York City, Henchy resides in Los Angeles and New York City, with his wife, actress Brooke Shields, and their two daughters.
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About Funny Or Die, Sequoia Capital: Funny Or Die is a comedy video website that maintains quality user generated content by keeping only the videos with high ratings.
Judd Apatow
Founder of Funny Or Die
Judd Apatow is an American producer, writer, director, actor, and comedian. He is the founder of Apatow Productions, through which he produced and developed the cult television series Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared and directed and produced The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005), Knocked Up (2007), Funny People (2009), This Is 40 (2012), and Trainwreck (2015). Apatow’s work has won numerous awards including a Primetime Emmy Award (for The Ben Stiller Show), a Hollywood Comedy Award, and an AFI Award for Bridesmaids (2011). His films have also been nominated for Grammy Awards, PGA Awards, Golden Globe Awards, and Academy Awards. In 2007, he was ranked No. 1 on Entertainment Weekly’s The 50 Smartest People in Hollywood. He is considered a pioneer of the modern film genre bromantic comedy.
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About Funny Or Die: Funny Or Die is a comedy video website that maintains quality user generated content by keeping only the videos with high ratings.
Will Ferrell
Founder of Funny Or Die
John William “Will” Ferrell is an American actor, comedian, producer, and writer. He first established himself in the mid-1990s as a cast member on the NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live, and has subsequently starred in comedy films such as Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004), Talladega Nights (2006), Step Brothers (2008), The Other Guys (2010) and Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues (2013), all but one of which he co-wrote with his comedy partner Adam McKay. The two also founded the comedy website Funny or Die in 2007. Other films roles include Elf, Old School (both 2003), Blades of Glory (2007), and the animated films Megamind (2010) and The Lego Movie (2014). Ferrell is considered a member of the “Frat Pack”, a generation of leading Hollywood comic actors who emerged in the late 1990s and the 2000s, including Jack Black, Ben Stiller, Steve Carell, Vince Vaughn, and brothers Owen and Luke Wilson. He received an Emmy Award nomination for his work on Saturday Night Live, and two Golden Globe Award nominations for The Producers (2005) and Stranger than Fiction (2006). He was also named the best comedian of 2015 in the British GQ Men of the Year awards. Ferrell received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on March 26, 2015.
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About Funny Or Die, Gary Sanchez Productions: Funny Or Die is a comedy video website that maintains quality user generated content by keeping only the videos with high ratings.
Zaid Elnasser
Co-Founder / Replay Engineer of Medal
Zaid Elnasser is a Co-Founder and Replay Engineer at Medal.
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About Medal: Medal is a developer of a short-form gaming video clips platform to share digital game clips and highlights with gamers.
Steven Cox
Founder & CEO of TakeLessons
Steven Cox is the Founder & CEO at TakeLessons.
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About TakeLessons: TakeLessons is an ed-tech company with a robust, engaging learning platform and community for lifelong learning.
Matthew Gunnin
CEO/Founder of Esports One
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About Esports One, Esportspedia: Esports One is the first real-time fantasy platform that makes watching esports competitive.
Wa’il Ashshowwaf
Founder & CEO of Reyets: Social Justice Network
Wa’il has an extensive professional career across a range of industries and geographies including roles at Pepsi, Walt Disney World, HSBC, and Rooam Inc., with experience both domestically and abroad. Having spent more than 15 years in financial services, Wa’il now oversees Unstuck Labs business operations, including product development for Reyets, and Fotomo. Leading marketing, partnerships, sales, finance, and business development strategy. Experience In addition to his primary role at Unstuck Labs, Wa’il serves as the Cofounder and Board Member for The Global Advisory Group, an international consulting firm that facilitates cross-border business alliances and transactions between companies in North America and the Middle East. In this role, he works closely with U.S. and international companies, including tech startups to provide strategic counsel on funding, marketing, negotiations, and business development. Prior to Unstuck Labs, Wa’il served as Vice President of International Commercial Banking at HSBC USA, one of the world’s largest banking and financial services organizations. In this position, he managed over $1 billion in assets and structured and executed private placements. In addition, he helped U.S.-based companies assess, formulate, and implement financial strategies and solutions to support operations, sales growth, compliance and facilitate expansion into international markets. Before that, he was the Regional Manager of Government and Institutional Banking at HSBC USA, with a primary focus on Embassies. During his tenure at HSBC, he built relationships with numerous government and business leaders worldwide and analyzed their organizations’ strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, and internal business processes. Expertise Wa’il is a Board Member at the American University KOGOD School of International Business and a US State Department Professional Fellow. He is a published columnist and guest speaker at panel discussions and conferences on topics related to hospitality, business, banking, fundraising, and more. He is passionate about environmental issues and has partnered on education and research projects with the National Environmental Education Foundation, Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, and World Wild Life Foundation. Education He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Marketing from California State University and a Master’s degree in Business Leadership from The McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University. He went on to receive Certifications in International Compliance from the University of Manchester and Business Strategy from Harvard Business School.
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About Reyets: Social Justice Network, Unstuck Labs: Reyets empowers safer community / police interactions through mobile enabled education, resource sharing, reporting and data analysis.
Berker Hazar
Co-Founder & Risk Advisor of Reyets: Social Justice Network
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About Reyets: Social Justice Network: Reyets empowers safer community / police interactions through mobile enabled education, resource sharing, reporting and data analysis.
Leo Resig
CEO & Co-Founder of Atmosphere
A graduate of Indiana University, Leo has spent time between Chicago and Los Angeles for 12 years until landing in Austin, TX in 2013. His background at a creative agency in an ad ops role gave Leo the monetization insight which led to launching his own digital publishing business, Chive Media Group in 2008 with his brother John Resig. theCHIVE.com continues to be a globally recognized and loved website, app and lifestyle brand. Leo spent 10 years as the CEO of Chive Media Group and continues to co-own the company with his brother. He is now the CEO and co-founder of a OTT TV entertainment platform, Atmosphere, which houses ambient TV channels including its flagship channel, CHIVE TV.
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About Atmosphere, Chive Charities, Chive Media Group, William Murray Golf: Atmosphere is a streaming TV platform for businesses, offering 21 original and partner TV channels.
Jeong Kim
Co-Founder & Chairman of Kiswe
Co-Founder & Chairman of Kiswe Mobile.
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About Kiswe: Kiswe is a video technology startup providing live media solutions to sports and entertainment content owners.
Metodi Filipov
Co-Founder of FITE
Seasoned operations manager – 20+ years developing technology solutions. Previously: VP Operations of Cemtrex; Product Manager of Raritan; VP Operations of ISS; Director of Product Development of Intelligent Digital Systems. Several patents and patent applications.Chair of the Computer Society of the IEEE Long Island Section.Education: Technical University of Sofia (MS in Computer Science).
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About Bianor, FITE: FITE is a direct-to-consumer digital live sports streaming service for sports and entertainment.
Kosta Jordanov
Co – Founder & CEO of FITE
Serial entrepreneur – built several software companies from scratch. Ran a professional services company in the mobile software space for customers such as IBM, Samsung, Procter & Gamble and Ogilvy. Previously: CTO of TTS; Software Engineer at IBM. Education: Technical University of Sofia (Computer Science); UNWE (Macroeconomics). Two exits, one IPO at BSE.
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About FITE: FITE is a direct-to-consumer digital live sports streaming service for sports and entertainment.
Stefan Lilov
VP Product & Co-Founder of FITE
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About FITE: FITE is a direct-to-consumer digital live sports streaming service for sports and entertainment.
Scott Paseltiner
Founder and Chairman of Phenix
Scott D. Paseltiner serves as Managing Member of VBI Chicago, LLC, a group of venture investors and Gladiator Trading Group, LLC, a securities, options and futures trading firm. Scott Paseltiner served as President of the Independent Floor Members Association. He served as a founding director of First Variable Rate Fund for Government Income. He also consults and mentors high level executives and business leaders. He served as a Member of the Chicago Board Options Exchange and served as a member of the Nominating Committee of the CBOE. He serves as the Chairman of PhenixP2P Inc. Scott Paseltiner has a long history in the financial markets both as a trader at the Chicago Board Options Exchange for over 16 years and as a serial entrepreneur of start-up tech and biotech companies for over two decades. Scott Paseltiner serves as a Director of Mission Critical Linux, Inc. He serves as a Director at Moerae Matrix, Inc. He serves on the board of Visibility Inc. and TechSearch, LLC. He served as a Director of Visibillity, Inc. Scott Paseltiner holds B.S. in Economics from Wharton School of Finance and law degree from George Washington University School of Law.
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About Phenix: Phenix is a real-time streaming tech platform that streams synchronous real-time video to broadcast-sized audiences.
Stefan Birrer
Founder and Chief Software Architect of Phenix
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About Phenix: Phenix is a real-time streaming tech platform that streams synchronous real-time video to broadcast-sized audiences.
Lauren Foundos
Founder and Chief Executive Officer of FORTË
Founder & CEO at FORTË
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About FORTË: FORTË has developed the fitness industry’s only premium live and on-demand, end-to-end digital solution branded and integrated for gyms.
Gary Gannaway
CEO, Founder & Principal Investor of Worldnow
Worldnow’s CEO Gary is responsible for the day-to-day-operations and leads the company’s product development, technology and revenue strategies. His mission and vision have lead the company to be the #1 CMS/Video/Mobile provider for media management, reaching 91% of US HH. Prior to founding Worldnow in 1998, he was the founder and CEO of Genesis Entertainment where he introduced the Barter concept to off Network Shows. Prior to selling Genesis Entertainment in 1994 to Ronald Perelman’s New World, Genesis Entertainment was the only company in television history to launch 100% of its pilot shows. In 1992, Gary was awarded Merrill Lynch and Ernst & Young’s Entertainment Entrepreneur of the year. Currently Gary sits on the board of the Department of Neurosurgery at John Hopkins University Medical Center. He funded and co-pioneered a new approach for the treatment of head traumas which has now become industry standard in Neuro Critical Care Wards across the country.
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About Worldnow: Worldnow is the only integrated multimedia & monetization platform that unifies WCM, VCM, OTT, Analytics, Advertsing, Mobile & Social.
Ben Keighran
CEO & Co-Founder of Caffeine
Ben Keighran is an Australian born technology entrepreneur and serial entrepreneur. He is the CEO and founder of Caffeine, a social broadcasting platform that delivers live, interactive content at the intersection of gaming, sports, and entertainment. Caffeine has raised $146 million to date from investors in 3 rounds led by 21st Century Fox, Andreesen Horowitz, and Greylock Partners. Ben began his career in 2006 when he relocated from Sydney to San Francisco and raised $6.5 million for his mobile social messaging application, Bluepulse. Bluepulse launched in December 2006 as a social messaging app, where Keighran worked on designing a standard for publishing content on mobile, including text messages and other types of communications. Keighran’s next venture was serving as the lead advisor for social search service Aardvark’s mobile strategy. Aardvark was eventually acquired by Google for $50 million in 2010. After Aardvark, Keighran went on to found app search and discovery platform Chomp in 2009 which raised a little over $2.5 million over two rounds. Chomp was one of the earliest startups to offer both app search and personalized app recommendations for the iPhone app. Keighran led the company in developing its unique app search formula and filing 11 patents based on these new app search technologies and user experience. Chomp’s iPhone app offered app search and personalized app recommendations as well, making the startup one of the earliest services to offer that mixed functionality. In 2012, Chomp was acquired by Apple for $50 million and the technology was used to help overhaul the iTunes and App Store search experience. After joining Apple, Keighran spent the next four years overseeing software design on the Apple TV. Keighran helped design the look and feel of the software featured in the 4th generation Apple TV. Finally, in 2016, Keighran left Apple to start his most recent company Caffeine.
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About Caffeine: Caffeine is a new kind of broadcast company focused on the creation and distribution of live, interactive content.
