Directors

Pete Budlong

Co-Founder and VP of Business Development, Soundflavor

Pete was the first employee of a pioneer in the online classifieds space - Classifieds2000, which was acquired by Excite@Home in 1998. Pete developed and managed the company's distribution network, which at the time of the acquisition was the largest of its kind with over 14 of the top 25 most visited sites on the Internet. Pete also created and managed Excite's personals business, which had a larger reach than both Yahoo Personals and Match.com at its height when he left Excite@Home in 1999. During his career, Pete has worked in sales and marketing at companies including Hewlett-Packard, Anthem Electronics and Recognition Systems. Pete received a BSEE with honors from the University of the Pacific.

Donald P. Hutchison

Don was a defining principal at Netcom Communications and @Home Network, whose work helped make commercial Internet access, services and applications available to widespread consumer and business audiences. As SVP and GM, he built @Home's business-focused @Work division into a leading provider of internetworking services, with over 5,000 new business accounts. As Netcom's SVP for Sales & Marketing, Don drove the company's rise to prominence as a leading Internet service provider to consumers and businesses, growing revenue from $2M to over $120M between 1994 and 1996. With the company founder and CFO, he successfully marketed the company's December, 1994 public offering, making Netcom the first 'pure-play' Internet venture to go public. Don served as Chairman and CEO of Work.com, a business information and services portal that rapidly garnered over one million unique users, $10 million in annual revenue, and a Media Metrix Top 10 B2B ranking before being sold. Don has led investments in, advised, and served on the boards of other internet ventures, including Critical Path (IPO), Exodus (IPO), Raindance Communications (IPO) and Zengine (IPO). Today, Don is an investor and advisor to a number of net-enabled application, service and technology ventures.

Steven Skrzyniarz

Co-Founder and CEO, Soundflavor

Steve is a technologist and entrepreneur, with a passion for supporting independent musicians. He is a nine-year veteran of Microsoft, shipping over 50 products as both software developer and senior product manager. Steve provided pivotal leadership in transforming Microsoft's Visual C++ development suite into a highly-profitable, industry-leading product. As Group Program Manager of the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN), he spearheaded successful initiatives to evangelize key technologies including ActiveX, DirectX, and Internet Explorer. Steve was active in the Seattle-area scene of the late 80's and early 90's. He operated three independent record labels, handling A&R, production, packaging, marketing, distribution, and tour support for his bands. As a distributor of indie music in the early 90's, Steve authored a do-it-yourself guide to help artists to release their own records, which formed the basis of the now-legendary Mechanics Guide To Putting Out Records. In 1999, he founded a multi-year research project with the goal of using technology to help music fans quickly find great music, from the universe of music available, based on their personal tastes. This research formed the basis of Soundflavor's current products.

Dr. L. Curtis Widdoes, Jr.

Dr. Widdoes is widely recognized as a pioneer of the EDA industry. He has founded three successful EDA companies. In 1981, he founded Valid Logic Systems and started the CAE industry. In 1987, he founded Logic Modeling Systems, which was later acquired by Synopsys. In 1996, he co-founded 0-In Design Automation, which pioneered assertion-based verification for the design of integrated circuits. In 2004, 0-In was acquired by Mentor Graphics Corporation, where Dr. Widdoes now serves as Chief Engineering Scientist. Dr. Widdoes holds a B.S. in engineering and applied science from the California Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford University. He holds twelve U.S. patents in EDA and is an IEEE W. Wallace McDowell Award recipient.

Advisors

Côme Laguë

Managing Partner, Nueva Ventures

Côme co-founded Nueva Ventures, a venture fund focused on capital efficient ventures in the communications, Internet and software sectors. Prior to Nueva, Côme was a serial entrepreneur and angel investor involved in several start-ups. He was the founder and CEO of CDR International, which provided telephony services into emerging markets in Africa using voice over IP technology. Côme was also interim CFO at OQO, a San Francisco based computer start-up that launched the world's smallest mobile computer. Prior to CDR and OQO, Côme was CFO of Vendiva, a start-up that provided experiential web based services using an ASP model and adaptive learning techniques. He was the co-founder and COO of Adesemi Communications, a company that launched wireless telecommunications networks in Africa including the first Second National Operator license in Ghana. Côme earned a Bachelor of Engineering degree in electrical/computer engineering from McGill University and a MBA from the Harvard Business School.

Alexander Lloyd

Venture Partner, Rustic Canyon

Alex joined Rustic Canyon, a venture capital firm, as a Venture Partner in 2003. Before joining Rustic Canyon, he was founding partner of Accelerator Venture Partners, and made investments in a broad range of technology startups including Cloudmark, N8 Systems, Soundflavor, Vykor, and Zappos.com. He is a Board observer for Loop Net, Merchant Circle, MobilePlay, and Practice Technologies Inc. Prior to founding Accelerator Venture Partners, Alexander was the Business Development Manager in Microsoft's Silicon Valley office responsible for relationships with the West Coast venture capital community. Alex has worked as a Product Manager in SGI's workstation division and held marketing positions at Activision and Apple Computer. He began his career at Goldman Sachs, where he spent three years as a financial analyst.

Dave Pell

Managing Partner, Arba Seed Investment Group

In 1995, Dave Pell co-founded Arba, investing in many seed stage internet companies in interactive advertising, gaming, social networks, internet travel, search, and personal publishing. Dave is the award winning writer of two blogs: davenetics and electablog, and founded Rollyo, the leading provider "roll your own search engine" technology. He is a graduate of UC Berkeley and the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Bob Zipp

Managing Partner, Amicus Capital

Bob has worked with scores of entrepreneurs to develop business plans, secure venture funding, complete business development arrangements, and to achieve liquidity through acquisition or IPO. In 1998, Bob co-founded Amicus Capital, a seed-stage venture capital fund in San Francisco. Prior to Amicus, Bob represented early-stage technology companies as a director at Venture Law Group and a partner at Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison, both leading Silicon Valley law firms. Bob has a BA from Texas A&M University and a JD from Duke University.