Founders and Key Personnel
Co-founders Michael Dory, Adam Simon, and Scott Varland began researching and prototyping in the fields of game design, social networking, physical computing and human-computer interaction as graduate students at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), a department within The Tisch School of the Arts.

Scott Varland (Co-Founder / CEO)
has fifteen years of experience developing and deploying human-centric technology solutions for the corporate, non-profit, and artistic communities. Varland most recently served as Technology Director for GTCR Golder Rauner, a private equity firm with more than $8 Billion under management. Prior to that, as Systems Engineer for Communications Equity Associates, a global investment bank with expertise in the media, entertainment, and communications industries. Varland holds a BFA in Theatre from NYU and an MPS in Interactive Telecommunications from NYU.

Adam Simon (Co-Founder / Chief Creative Officer)
has been exploring the way users experience content for over a decade. His work has included directing live performances and television, designing games and theme park attractions, and creating new channels for media distribution and consumption. Adam’s worked as a digital content producer for CBS, a content strategist for creative agency Conductor, and a producer for the innovative game designers at area/code. Adam holds a BA in Theater from UCLA and a Masters in Interactive Telecommunications from NYU.

Mike Dory (Co-Founder / CTO)
has spent the last ten years studying the ways people communicate and working to make their conversations better. Mike has most recently worked to develop installations, sites, and games for Unified Field and the Institute of Play, and prior to that worked with high technology communications agency Text 100. His personal and collaborative projects have appeared in the New York Times, National Public Radio, Gothamist, BoingBoing, CNET, Gizmodo and MAKE Magazine. Mike holds a BA in Journalism & Media Studies from Rutgers University and an MPS in Interactive Telecommunications from NYU ITP, where he has also been an adjunct professor.

Adam Parrish (Chief Software Architect)
(SQL, PHP, Python, Perl, Java) is an artist and programmer, currently residing in Brooklyn. He has ten years of professional programming experience, with an emphasis on programming for the web. He holds degrees in computer science, linguistics and interactive telecommunications, and has recently served as an adjunct lecturer at both NYU and Hunter College, teaching courses in Python, PHP and Java.

Philippe P Pierre C.P.A (Director of Operations)
was previously Director of Finance and a member of the Board of Directors of Allied International Limited, a London based event and incentive management company with $100M in global sales. During his tenure, the company completed a $10M acquisition of its largest US based competitor. As part of the executive team, he looked after the finance function that spanned 27 destinations in 7 countries on 3 continents. Prior to that, he work worked for Deloitte in Chicago. Pierre holds a BS in Finance and Accounting (Honors) from DePaul University and is a licensed Certified Public Accountant in Illinois.

Directors and Advisors

Kent Goldman (First Round Capital)
Prior to joining First Round, Goldman was a member of the Corporate Development team at Yahoo, where he focused on M&A to support the company's user-facing properties. In 2007, he led the company's $350M acquisition of Zimbra. Earlier, Kent led business strategy efforts for Yahoo's Front Page, Communications and Community products which included Yahoo.com, My Yahoo and Yahoo Mail.

Bronson Lingamfelter (Rose Tech Ventures)
Since joining Rose Tech Ventures in 2008, he has played an active role in twelve new investments. Bronson currently sits on the board of three portfolio companies, Por ti, Familia, a Peruvian based health care company, Socialbomb a mobile platform for app developers, and Iconology, a vertically focused resource and marketplace for the comic book industry. Prior to joining Rose Tech Ventures, Bronson was a founding team member of four start up companies and received his MBA from Columbia Business School and BA from Brown University.

Clay Shirky (NYU)
Shirky divides his time between consulting, teaching, and writing on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies. His consulting practice is focused on the rise of decentralized technologies such as peer-to-peer, web services, and wireless networks that provide alternatives to the wired client/server infrastructure that characterizes the Web. Current clients include Nokia, GBN, the Library of Congress, the Highlands Forum, the Markle Foundation, and the BBC. In addition to his consulting work, Shirky is an adjunct professor in NYU's graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), where he teaches courses on the interrelated effects of social and technological network topology -- how our networks shape culture and vice-versa. His current course, Social Weather, examines the cues we use to understand group dynamics in online spaces and the possible ways of improving user interaction by redesigning our social software to better reflect the emergent properties of groups.

Investors

First Round Capital
has investments in over 70 companies and more than $75 Million under management. The fund is managed by Josh Kopelman, Chris Fralic, Rob Hayes and Howard Morgan. They look to partner with entrepreneurs to build innovative technology companies. They are seed-stage investors, often providing a company's first outside capital, and are not afraid of investing in pre-revenue companies. They understand the challenges of launching a new product, and look to take an active role in most of the companies they invest in.

David S. Rose
is an Inc. 500 CEO and serial entrepreneur, who has been described by Crain's New York Business as "the father of angel investing in New York", and by Red Herring Magazine as the "patriarch of Silicon Alley." David is well known in the technology community for his mentoring of high-potential entrepreneurs, and is a regular speaker at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, NYU and Pace business schools. As the founder and Chairman of New York Angels, one of the world's most active and professional angel investment groups, he has led first round investments in a wide range of exciting, high growth companies.