Executive Team
Jai Rawat
Chief Executive Officer
Jai is a successful serial entrepreneur and an investor, advisor and mentor to several startups. Jai has over 24 years of industry experience and has a track record and deep passion for creating exceptional online consumer products.
Jai’s first startup Obongo was the pioneer in single sign-on and online wallet technologies. It was adopted by several leading banks and created a reach of over 40 million users. Obongo was acquired by AOL where Jai served as the director of product marketing working on several key initiatives with a reach of over 35 million users.
He was also a founder of Mojo Networks, executive/consulting VP at The Find, Trackle, myTriggers, BuySight and several other companies.
Jai holds a B.Tech in Computer Science from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur and an MS in Computer Science from Iowa State University. He has won several awards and recognitions including being recognized as one of the top 10 South Asian business and technology leaders. He is a charter member of TiE Silicon Valley, Co-chair of TiE Internet SIG chair and holds 16 patents.
Samir Palnitkar
President
Samir is a serial entrepreneur with over 25 years of industry experience. Samir’s passion is startups and new ideas. He is a founder of four successful startups which include I2P (acquired by Lattice), Obongo (acquired by America Online), Ingot Systems (acquired by Synopsys) and Mojo Networks (category leader in wireless security). Samir is also an active early stage investor and advisor. His expertise includes social media, strategy, productization/execution, and business process setup.
Samir holds a B.Tech in Electrical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, an MS in Electrical from University of Washington, Seattle and an MBA in International Business from San Jose State University. Samir is the author of two highly acclaimed books and holds 5 US patents.
Investors
We are backed by some of the top venture and angel investors including Valhalla Partners, Dr. Ashish Gupta, Inspovation Ventures, Vish Mishra, Raman Khanna and executives from Google, Apple and other top technology companies.
Advisors
We are fortunate to have these advisors who bring a depth of experience and breadth of knowledge.
Engle Saez
President and Chief eCommerce Officer at Ashford.com; Exec. VP and CMO, FundersClub Inc.; SVP Marketing, Starbucks Coffee Company; SVP and CMO, Eddie Bauer Inc.; CMO, Blue Nile
Engle Saez is President and Chief eCommerce Officer at Ashford.com , leading global online retailer of luxury watches and fine jewelry. Prior to joining Ashford.com, Engle spent 25 years growing consumer brands in the multi-channel retail space, operating in executive management roles for some of the world’s most recognized brands, including: Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at FundersClub, Inc.; SVP of Marketing and Category Management at Starbucks Coffee Company; President, Sperry Top-Sider; SVP and Chief Marketing Officer, Eddie Bauer, Inc.; President, Esprit Footwear and Accessories; Chief Marketing Officer, Blue Nile; Director of Marketing, Timberland Footwear Company; SVP, G.H. Bass & Company, Inc.
Engle also founded two startups: AtlanticRancher, a men’s rugged outdoor apparel company and Zovo, a women’s intimate apparel brand. Engle studied architecture at Taliesen, The Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture and holds a degree of Bachelor of Arts equivalent in Architecture.
Gokul Rajaram
Director of Ads, Facebook
Gokul Rajaram is the Director of Ads at Facebook. In this role, he drives the product roadmap and execution for Facebook’s advertising products. Before Facebook, Gokul was Co-Founder and CEO of Chai Labs, a semantic technology startup he grew to profitability and a multi-million dollar annual revenue run-rate before its acquisition by Facebook.
Gokul is also considered as the ‘father of AdSense’ for his pioneering work on the AdSense product during his tenure at Google. Gokul has an MBA from MIT Sloan, a MS in CS from UT Austin, and a B. Tech in Computer Science from IIT Kanpur where he received the President’s Gold Medal for being Class Valedictorian.
Mike Linton
Chief Marketing Officer, Farmers
Mike Linton is the Chief Marketing Officer for Farmers Insurance Group of Companies. Mr. Linton is also member of the Board of Directors of Peet’s Coffee & Tea, a coffee roaster and retailer, as well as Capella Education Company, a public E-learning company.
Mike was the Chief Marketing Officer at eBay, an online auction company, from December 2006 to March 2009. Prior to this, Mr. Linton was Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer for Best Buy Companies from January 1999 through August 2006.
Mike holds a B.S.B.A. in Marketing Research from Bowling Green State University, and a M.B.A. from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University.
Michael Osborne
Co-founder and Director, Handshakez Inc.; Chief Revenue Officer, Bazaarvoice Inc.
Michael Osborne is a serial entrepreneur and C-level executive focused on leadership and scaling teams. Michael serves as an advisor and board member to a number of startups, and most recently helped found and launch Handshakez, an engagement platform for B2B sales people and account management.
Previous to starting Handshakez Michael served as Chief Revenue Officer of Bazaarvoice (Nasdaq: BV) for over six years, from their first year of business through their IPO in February of 2012. Over his years at Bazaarvoice Michael grew the revenue run rate of the company from sub $1m to over $130m and expanded operations into Europe and Asia. Previous to Bazaarvoice Michael was Director of Client Services at Coremetrics for four years, helping to scale and grow the install base while managing top-of-class retention rates.
Earlier in Michael’s career he spent three years at Trilogy Software in the partner management and pre-sales groups working with Financial Services organizations. Hailing from Carnegie Mellon with an Electrical and Computer Engineering degree, Michael’s expertise is in sales leadership, achieving growth goals, and building and motivating world-class teams of sales and service people coupled with a strong understanding of how online businesses operate.
Gaurav Suri
Head of Commerce Sales, Google
Gaurav has extensive entrepreneurial experience in building consumer-focused technology businesses, including start-ups as well as new businesses for established Internet leaders
Most recently Gaurav was Head of Commerce Sales, Emerging Businesses at Google Inc. after Google acquired Like.com where Gaurav was Executive Vice President for Sales & Business Development. Previously Gaurav was VP, New Business Development for NexTag, the leading comparison shopping search engine for Products & Services. Prior to that, Gaurav worked at AOL as Vice President AOL Products, Partner Platforms.
Gaurav received an MBA from Harvard Business School, and a B.S. in Economics with honors from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Mark Goldstein
CEO, Loyalty Lab
Mark Goldstein is serial entrepreneur with 23 years of experience and an online retail expert with proven success in building companies in the retail, loyalty management and financial industry. Prior to Zinrelo (formerly ShopSocially), Mark Goldstein has led several successful startups, CEO of Impulse Buy (acquired by Inktomi), CEO of Bluelight (acquired by Kmart), CEO of Home Account (acquired by Freedom Financials) and Chairman of Loyalty Lab (acquired by TiBCO).
Siva Kumar
CEO, TheFind
Siva Kumar is currently the CEO of TheFind, Inc. a shopping search engine. To-date, Siva Kumar has founded eight venture funded start-ups. He is also an adviser and investor in several startups focusing on the convergence of eCommerce and social networking.