Team
We’ve started multiple companies from scratch, working in a wide swath of corporate and creative environments, from boardrooms of the Fortune 100 to gaming companies like Konami to entertainment behemoths like Disney, Warner Brothers and the BBC.
We’d rather work with A+ players in a more intimate setting where you have the freedom to do what you love without the stifling management overhead.
Mateen Aini - Chief Executive Officer
Jeff Arbour - Chief Marketing Officer
Chris LoPresto - Head of Engineering
Sean Everett - Head of Product
Mike Vargo - Senior Engineer
Scotty Weeks - Senior Engineer
Tragnark - Creative Life Form
Angela Fagg - Designer
Board
Zaw Thet - Chairman
Mateen Aini - Chief Executive Officer
Ken Lamb
Advisors
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Team
Mateen Aini - Chief Executive Officer
This Badger from the cheese state has over 10 years experience in management, sales, marketing and international business development for emerging media and new technology companies. Mateen is also a founding advisor for Palindrome Advisors and sits on the board of After School All-Stars NYC.
He has been responsible for establishing marketplaces, achieving company wide revenue, launching new products, acquiring customers, expanding business with current customers, improving sales productivity and reducing overhead.
Mateen actively participates in formulating company strategy and helping companies with execution. He is a team player with the ability to motivate others and inspire creative thinking.
As COO & Co-Founder of Songwhale; Mateen worked across the product, affiliate, marketing, operations, sales, planning and business development teams to grow the business. He also opened Songwhale’s international offices in Jakarta, Indonesia and Beijing, China.
At 4INFO as Director of Business Development Mateen helped shape the distribution side of the business. In the early days 4INFO pioneered the mobile media marketplace. Mateen helped establish the distribution model and successfully launched several multimedia entities back 2006.
Jeff Arbour - Chief Marketing Officer
Jeff in an entreprenuer and sits on several advisory boards for digital companies, including Quixey, Fast Society, Screen Push, SoNYC Media and 4info, and is an LP in the venture fund ENIAC. Jeff is also a founding advisor for Palindrome Advisors, a not-for-profit organization that links other non-profits with executive-level leaders who give back through a number of programs.
As Senior Vice President of North America, Jeff Arbour was a key driver behind The Hyperfactory’s growth in North America. First hired at The Hyperfactory in 2006 as the first USA employee, Jeff has defined domestic and global mobile strategies and executions for some of the world’s most prestigious brands, leading to the eventual acquisition of The Hyperfactory by Meredith Corporation in 2010.
Over the years, Jeff has worked with key clients such as Toyota, Ab InBev, BlackBerry, L’Oréal, Coca-Cola, Intel, Microsoft and Kraft, who have won numerous awards recognized by the Mobile Marketing Association, AdTech and the Webbys, among others. In addition, he is often invited to be a guest speaker at various international conferences.
In 2008, Jeff was named #1 in DM News’ Top 30 Under 30, Direct and Interactive Marketers Under 30, as well as one of the Top 100 Most Influential Marketers of 2008 and 2009 by Invesp Consulting.
Chris LoPresto - Head of Engineering
Chris grew up as an oldest child in Delaware, the oldest state, and is first and foremost a software developer. He has extensive experience directing companies’ software culture and leading teams that deliver working software. Over the years Chris has worked in varied industries including biotech, architecture & engineering, national defense, finance, government agencies, manufacturing, publishing, and real estate.
Some project highlights in Chris’s career include designing an analytic template engine for the digital publishing systems of a key player in wireless reading circa 2010, creating software analyzing the topology of electronic circuitry of the Patriot Missile System to yield an interactive maintenance manual, and building dynamic websites in the pre-Web 2.0 era.
Chris holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science as well as a Bachelor of Music degree in Jazz Performance (piano). He has performed rock music all over the US and in notable venues such as Carnegie Hall, The Fillmore, and an Olympic arena in Beijing.
Chris understands that it is impossible to build good software if you don’t know how.
Sean Everett - Head of Product
Classically trained as a boring Mathemetician and Actuary, Sean felt more at home disrupting things like his high school Spanish class. His work paid off, for he was named the prestigious title of Class Clown, circa 1999.
Since then, he’s consulted to the Boards of Fortune 10 companies, built companies, iPhone apps and used the word “swag” more than anyone born and raised in Iowa ever should.
Plyfe is his third startup, after raising Angel investment for a high-frequency algorithmic trading firm, BlueStone Investments, he founded in 2007, and a creative agency named Evolyte he founded in 2009, where he built apps and apps and apps. He also has his MBA from the University of Chicago Booth, but that’s not important.
Sean believes in elegant simplicity, knee-buckling laughter, and invisible software. His parents are the two most important people in his life.
Mike Vargo - Senior Engineer
Mike has been developing software in Ruby, Java, SQL, C++, and C for over 20 years. Telecommunications, Internet, and Media are his specialties.
He has worked as an individual contributor, managed a team, and started companies. He looks for projects that create value to society and allow him to work with creative and talented individuals.
His greatest satisfaction comes from working with a team that produces a quality product.
Scotty Weeks - Senior Engineer
Scotty grew up working on fishing boats in Alaska. Despite that and a few polar bear knife-fights, he survived mostly intact and set off to Seattle where he landed in the middle of the dot com boom (and bust). Starting off as a designer, then falling in nerdy, nerdy love with all things code-related he dove head first into computer science.
Always one with itchy feet he ran off to Australia, where he settled in Sydney, starting a touch screen software company (Snepo Pty Ltd) several years before the words ‘multi-touch’ had ever been heard in polite conversation.
Back in New York after five years in the antipodes, Scotty has been variously starting companies (some of which are a bit racy for this bio), and helping others to build amazing online experiences — launching Gucci’s ecommerce site and Indaba Music’s social network for musicians among many others, he even spent some time in the agency world as a technology director (surely you can forgive him, he’s already forgiven himself).
Scotty is quite proud of his personal record for not being stabbed to death in foreign countries.
Tragnark - Creative Life Form
Tragnark is an intergalactic bard from the 5th and half dimension. Having collided into a human fetus after traveling through an event horizon he grows on this planet and finds this sequence of his life cycle fascinating.
Through his interactions with the human race he has had experience working in animation, web development, fashion design, industrial design, video game design and toy design.
He’s developed creative writing, concept work, design, and worlds for clients such as Nickelodeon, Disney Channel, Warner Brothers, Saks 5th Ave, Nordstroms, BBC, Mindstyle, Electronic Arts, Konami, Ankama, and about 40 other human companies around the world in the span of his career.
Tragnark has worked in every major facet and function of a creative team, from designer, artist, curator, to creative director.
At this point in his life cycle he realizes that learning is a progressively infinite helix, and there is no end to where that will lead. He prefers to be called a creative life form, soaking in knowledge from all points, space, and dimensions simultaneously. Doing this has done wonders in allowing him to retain a spontaneous and childish curiosity for all manifestations of atoms that surround him.
Angela Fagg - Designer
Angela now spends much of her time waiting for the F train while creating lyrical masterpieces such as “I mustache you a question, but I’ll shave it for later”.
Her background is like the unifying theory of physics, from atomic level depths of user interface design in Photoshop to vast lightyear expanses of front-end development in Coda. Either way, she knows how to make the web float like a butterfly and sting like a bee.
She graduated from one of the premiere interactive colleges in the nation, RIT in Rochester, NY, with a BFA in New Media Design & Imaging.
Her free time is spent either head down in epic fantasy novels (oh, hello Harry Potter) or raging out to dubsteb while knitting yarn-based beards. Seriously, have her send you a picture of the latter.
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Board
Zaw Thet - Chairman
Zaw Thet is a veteran entrepreneur who has been at the forefront of search, social networking, mobile, and advertising since the age of 19. In 2011, Zaw was selected as one of ten entrepreneurs to serve on the United Nations Foundation’s Global Entrepreneurs Council. Currently, Zaw is incubating two stealth projects as a co-founder and board member that cross between the mobile, social, gamification, loyalty, ecommerce, video, and advertising sectors.
Most recently the Founder and CEO of 4INFO, which he founded 2004, the AdHaven division of 4INFO has become the largest mobile advertising platform in the US under his leadership: working with thousands of top tier publishers, advertisers, online advertising partners and platforms, and reaching hundreds of millions of mobile users every month. Among his many accolades, Zaw was selected as one of Business Week’s “Mobile Barons” and he is quoted in the national press on a regular basis in publications such as the Wall Street Journal and New York Times. As a featured speaker, he has recently appeared at TechCrunch Disrupt, Dialog, Summit Series, EO Alchemy, Guardian Activate, SxSW, ad:tech, the MMA, and the 4A’s.
He is also dedicated to philanthropy and the nonprofit sector: Zaw is the Chairman and Founder of Palindrome Advisors, a nonprofit he launched in March 2011 whose mission is to change how leaders give back, which has over 100 elite business leaders that have taken Palindrome Pledge and are matched with nonprofit boards. He is also is on the national board of After School All Stars, founded by Gov. Schwarzenegger, the largest nonprofit serving underprivileged 6-8th graders across the country. He is also an honorary board member of the San Francisco SPCA. Zaw studied Political and Computer Science at Stanford, where he was a President’s Scholar. He also received his MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he was a Soros Fellow, and is still the youngest graduate in the school’s history.
Ken Lamb
For over twenty-five years, as a lawyer, investment banker, Board member and investor, Ken has advised publicly traded companies, established privately held businesses and emerging growth companies in connection with a wide variety of matters, including initial and follow on public offerings, UK and US domestic and cross-border mergers and acquisitions, private equity, UK and US capital market transactions, venture capital and joint ventures.
He has served as outside corporate counsel to companies such as m8 Capital, Amazon, Cadence Design Systems, Doughty Hanson, General Catalyst Partners, The Gores Group, Heineken, Intel Corporation, Investcorp, Marlin Equity Partners, Marvell Technology Group, Pace plc, PeopleSoft, Playfish Ltd and Siemens Enterprise Communications.
Ken joined Gibson Dunn in 1985 and became a partner in 1992. He was based in three offices (Los Angeles from 1985-1995, San Francisco from 1995-2000 and London from 2003 until retiring from the firm at the end of 2011). While with Gibson Dunn, he was repeatedly ranked by Chambers, UK Legal Experts and The Legal 500 for his expertise, including in the categories of Corporate/M&A: High End Capability, Corporate Finance: High End Capability, Private Equity: Buyouts and Capital Markets.
He was an investment banker from 2001-2003, serving as a Managing Director and head of US Technology M&A and West Coast M&A at CIBC World Markets. He is currently on the Boards of Mindshapes (www.mindshapes.com) and plyfe (www.plyfe.me). He is on the Advisory Board of Sgrouples, Inc. (www.sgrouples.com) and was also on the Advisory Board of Playfish Ltd. from inception until its sale in 2009 to Electronic Arts.
He also serves as the Board observer for Initial Capital L.P. with respect to eeGeo (www.eegeo.com) and SuperCell (www.supercell.net). Ken received a Bachelor of Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1982 and a J.D. from Boston College Law School in 1985, where his academic achievements earned him a place on the Boston College Law Review.
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Advisors
Sami Labadibi
Sami Lababidi is an Entrepreneur in Residence at Index Ventures where he focuses on internet/consumer facing and cloud based ventures. Sami is also the Chief Technology Officer at Mindshapes, a new London based startup focused on fun, educational applications. Prior to Mindshapes, Sami was co-founder and CTO of Playfish, a leader in social games backed by Index Ventures which was acquired by Electronic Arts (NASDAQ:ERTS) in 2009. Earlier in his career Sami was co-founder and CTO of Macrospace which merged with Sorrent in 2004 to become Glu Mobile - a global publisher in mobile games (NASDAQ:GLUU). Previously, Sami held key roles at Digital Mobility and Lehman Brothers.
Sami holds a Master’s of Science in Computer Sciences from Imperial College London.
