Daniel, our fearless leader, President and CEO, is an industry-leading digital media entrepreneur. He founded Mediabolic in 1999 and served as CEO until its sale to Macrovision (now Rovi) in 2007. Mediabolic's software now powers millions of next generation digital consumer electronics devices. Additionally, he founded MaxInfo, the first collaborative Web media design software for the Internet (and acquired by NetManage), as well as EoExchange, a multimedia search engine for the Web. Over the last 20 years, Daniel has worked as an entrepreneur advocate, and has invested and teamed with colleagues to launch numerous Silicon Valley companies.
Daniel spent the earlier part of his career in senior management positions at Borland International and Symantec Corporation, where he was responsible for product management, business development and worldwide evangelism. He is a passionate and outgoing speaker on technology trends and issues. His dog, Riso, is our office mascot, troublemaker and vacuum cleaner.
Brad is our Chief Technology Officer and perennial winner of Pogoplug’s Best Hair Award. His locks will continue to grow as long as his two daughters, Maddy and Lily, refuse to let him cut it. Brad Dietrich co-founded Mediabolic with Daniel Putterman in 1999. As CTO, Brad was responsible for the architecture and design of the Mediabolic systems and for developing the vision of embedded software as the power behind an ecosystem of digital connected entertainment devices. Prior to founding Mediabolic, Brad was president and chief executive officer of Deftech, where he was instrumental in developing solutions to integrate legacy proprietary systems with networked web management applications, and network enabling existing PC products, for clients including Spyglass and Mattel.
Brad graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a Bachelors of Science degree in both Electrical and Computer Engineering and in Computer Science. He is a published author and contributor to several open source efforts.
When he’s not braving the dust and sun on the Playa at Burning Man, Smitty is our all-knowing CFO. Smitty joined Cloud Engines from Mediabolic, where he served as Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer helping engineer Mediabolic’s sale to Macrovision (now Rovi) in 2007. Greg previously served as chief financial officer for several companies, including WhiteLight Systems, Inc., Petopia.com and Escalade Corporation, which were sold to public companies. In the 1990s he was based in the Republic of Singapore where he was the Asia Pacific Director of Finance and Operations for Synopsys, Inc. and was responsible for the company's operations in nine countries.
Greg holds a Master of Business Administration degree from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College and a Bachelor of Science degree in Accounting and Finance from the University of Vermont. Smitty is also our resident rock star, singing and playing guitar with his band.
When Jed is not busy acting as Pogoplug's Chief Product Officer he’s out pounding the trails: Jed is a seasoned ultra-marathon runner, most recently completing a 50 mile race and preparing for a 100 miler. Prior to Pogoplug he was founder and chief executive officer of Snapcentric, a software company focused on real-time application security and acquired by VeriSign in 2005. After the acquisition, Jed led VeriSign's Fraud Detection product group. Jed previously founded Allerez Corporation, acquired by Mercury Interactive Corporation in 2002, and also spent many years as a successful consultant for large companies including Sun Microsystems, SGI and Aspect Communications.
Jed began his career with Oracle corporation after graduating from the University of California at Berkeley. For a year he made the 20+ hour commute between San Francisco and Tel Aviv while establishing our satellite office on the other side of the world, but is now making the short ferry commute between San Francisco and Marin, where he lives happily with his wife and 3 children.
Andrea has spent her entire professional career negotiating and closing large technology and patent transactions in the semiconductor, hardware, networking, software and digital media areas. Prior to joining Cloud Engines, Andrea co-founded Virtual Law Partners (VLP), the first large scale virtual law firm, and helped grow VLP to forty-five attorneys. Prior to VLP, Andrea co-founded and ran all sales, business development and legal initiatives at Mediabolic, where she sourced and closed deals with semiconductor, manufacturing, codec, content and consumer electronics partners in the United States, Europe, Japan, China and Taiwan, resulting in the deployment of Mediabolic software in millions of consumer electronics products across the globe. Andrea began her legal career at Venture Law Group after completing an AB cum laude in Philosophy at Harvard and a JD and MS in Computer Science at Stanford. The following statements about Andrea may or may not be true:
Lisa Contoyannis has spent her 10-year career at the forefront of e-commerce at several high-growth startups. Lisa joined Cloud Engines from TrialPay, the leading transactional advertising platform, where she was an early employee. Lisa joined TrialPay in 2007 as the Director of Marketing and rose to head the marketing and PR department. Prior to TrialPay, Lisa was employee number three at Tenebril (maker of award-winning GhostSurf), where she helped secure $10 million in funding from Sierra Ventures; Tenebril sold to Process Software in 2006. Lisa began her career as a freelance journalist in New York while pursuing her Master’s at NYU.
Lisa has a Master's in journalism from NYU, graduated cum laude with a B.A. in English Literature from Tufts University and spent her junior year as a fully matriculated student at Oxford University, Worcester College. She is a diehard Boston sports fan despite being raised in Williamsburg, Virginia (Yes, Colonial Williamsburg; no, she did not dress in costume).