Investors

IDG Ventures
Charles River Ventures

Board

Alex Rosen
George Zachary
Mark Goldstein
Seth Goldstein
Dave Gentzel

Our Investors

IDG

IDG Ventures SF is an early-stage venture capital firm investing in New Media and IT companies in the US. The fund is part of IDG Ventures, a global network of technology venture funds with over $2 billion under management and 10 offices across Asia and North America.

The fund works closely with International Data Group (IDG), the world’s largest IT media company. By combining the IDG platform - an unparalleled combination of global publishing, market research (IDC), and conferences and exhibition resources - with years of hands-on experience in early-stage company building, IDG Ventures helps its portfolio companies understand their markets better and penetrate them faster than their competition.

Leading technology companies that IDG has invested in include Netscape, Excite, Infoseek, Epiphany, F5 Networks, BabyCenter, Service Metrics, and Spinner.com in North America and Vinagames, Ctrip and Baidu in Asia.

CRV

Founded in 1970, Charles River Ventures is one of the nation’s oldest and most successful early-stage venture capital firms with approximately $2.1 billion under management. CRV is dedicated to helping exceptional entrepreneurs turn their ideas into the next category leaders in high growth technology and media sectors. Over the past 10 years, CRV funds have been ranked among the industry’s top performers. CRV has offices in Boston, MA and Menlo Park, CA. For more information, visit www.crv.com.

Our Board

Alex Rosen

Alex Rosen is a Managing Director with IDG Ventures SF. He combines 13 years of venture capital experience with a deep understanding of technology products, making him a valuable advisor to new media and information technology companies. Previously, he was a General Partner at Sprout Group, focusing on software and internet services areas. Alex has been a board member or observer at mySimon (acquired by CNET), Quintus (IPO, acquired by Avaya), Fogdog (IPO, acquired by GSI Commerce), Sapient Health Network (acquired by WebMD), and Rhythms (IPO, acquired by AT&T). Alex started his venture capital career as an associate with General Atlantic Partners, served as an advisor to Vector Capital, and was an angel investor in several private companies including SideStep (acquired by Kayak). He holds BS degrees in electrical engineering and economics from MIT and an MBA from Stanford University.

George Zachary

George Zachary joined Charles River Ventures in 2004. He brings more than 17 years of operating and investing experience in computing and consumer technology. George’s focus is on building great services and software technology companies. George led CRV’s investments in SocialMedia.com, Twitter, Geni, Yammer, Millennial Media, One Season, and Metaplace. George also co-led CRV’s investment in Scribd.

Previously, he was a general partner at Mohr Davidow Ventures (MDV). His directorships included: Accrue Software (Nasdaq:ACRU), Andale, Critical Path (Nasdaq:CPTH), Ovation Entertainment, Sandcastle (acquired by Adobe, Nasdaq:ADBE), Securify (acquired by Kroll-O’Gara, Nasdaq: KROG), Shutterfly (Nasdaq:SFLY) Supertracks (acquired by Centerspan) and Telebot (acquired by Z-Tel, Nasdaq: ZTEL).

Previously, George led the Nintendo 64 development business at Silicon Graphics, managed sales and marketing for virtual reality pioneer VPL Research, and served as a product marketeer at CATS Software. He is a board advisor to Stanford University’s SSE Ventures, which seed fund on-campus student startups. He is also an advisor to X PRIZE. George earned a joint BS from MIT and MIT Sloan School of Business. George also leads the Stanford CRV Research Council.

Mark Goldstein

Mark, a recognized expert in consumer marketing systems, is the CEO of Home Account Inc. (www.home-account.com), an early stage consumer financial service offering next-generation ‘mortgage finder’ to Americans seeking to buy or re-fi a home. Mark is also founder and Chairman of Loyalty Lab Inc (www.loyaltylab.com), the nation’s leading loyalty platform to top consumer brands including Nike, Sears and Virgin America. A six-time serial entrepreneur, earlier he co-founded BlueLight.com (now owned by Kmart/Sears) and served as its President and CEO. During his tenure at BlueLight, he launched its successful e-commerce shopping site, built its private label internet service to almost seven million members and installed 3,600 kiosks in Kmart stores.

Prior, Mark served as VP of Shopping at Inktomi (now a part of Yahoo), a software company that acquired Impulse! Buy Network, a web merchandising specialist that he founded in 1997 as its CEO. Mark also founded NetAngels, a web profiling firm (now a part of Microsoft), and before that he founded online consumer investment service firm Reality Online (now part of Reuters) where he served as President for over seven years. Mark has served as Entrepreneur-in-Residence at both New Enterprise Associates and SOFTBANK Venture Capital. He is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania where he attended the Wharton School and today serves on the Penn Library Board of Overseers.

Mark is a current or former Board of Advisor or Director at Salesforce.com (CRM), Bluefly, Stylehive, Rapleaf, NapaStyle, Hawkeye Brewing Technologies, TradePoint Solutions (now DemandTec) and CommerceHub and is active in a number of environmental causes.

Seth Goldstein

Seth Goldstein is the co-founder and Chairman of SocialMedia Networks.  Seth has extensive leadership experience, advising advertisers on the evolving opportunities in social media, while encouraging developer creation of lasting and interactive applications for online consumers.

An experienced entrepreneur, Seth has created a number of successful Internet businesses, including one of the first Internet advertising companies, SiteSpecific, in 1995. Seth was Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Flatiron Partners from 1998 to 2000. In 2002, he co-founded Majestic Research, a next generation Wall Street research firm that provides leading hedge funds with proprietary data insights. Majestic Research was founded on the premise that vigilant analysis of online behavior would lead to better investment research. In 2005, he created Root Markets, the first financial exchange marketplace for Internet mortgage leads.

Seth is also an angel advisor to a number of Web services companies including Aggregate Knowledge, Lijit and Downfly. He was the first investor in Web 2.0 pioneer del.icio.us (now part of Yahoo!).

In addition to Seth’s entrepreneurial efforts, he is also an active member on the speaking circuit, considered the de facto expert on social media. Providing insight for both advertisers and developers, Seth is often asked for his thoughts on best practices, emerging trends and the future of the social media landscape. He contributed his expertise to articles in the Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek, offering the inside scoop on monetizing social media, connecting advertisers with developers and the importance of social network applications as part of multi-channel advertising campaigns.

Dave Gentzel

Dave Gentzel is co-founder and vice president of product development of SocialMedia Networks. Building compelling Web applications for over 10 years, Dave is the resident expert on what makes a successful social media application. Dave developed the extremely popular Facebook applications FoodFight and HappyHour, which have each attracted over three million users. Dave oversees and guides the strategic and creative product development at SocialMedia Networks.

In 2006, Dave’s creation of the widget Trakzor for MySpace, which enables users to monitor visitors to their profile pages, attracted 3.5 millions users and 40 million pageviews per month. Dave was immediately brought on board at SocialMedia Networks when the Facebook platform opened to developers, and continues to educate developers on how to make the most successful applications for advertisers.

True to his entrepreneurial spirit, Dave has been actively building online business ventures since the age of 15. In 1998, he launched the Trintium Gaming Network, a Web hosting and advertising agency serving video game and entertainment Web sites, which delivered over 100 million hits to fans worldwide.

Dave graduated summa cum laude from at Virginia Tech with a B.S. in business information technology.