Management

• Ethan Stock

  Founder & Chief Executive Officer

  Ethan co-founded Zvents in early 2005 with funding from NetService Ventures Group, where he has served as a partner since 2002. Ethan brings a diverse background in scholarship and technology to the pursuit of entrepreneurial ventures. In 1996, while in graduate school at UC Berkeley on an NSF fellowship, he founded Bamboo Systems, an early entrant in the CRM market. In 2000, he served as COO of eBusinessMedia, the B2B Internet arm of UK publisher United News & Media, where he oversaw the launch of multiple industry-focused internet content and commerce properties, including the first deployment of CommerceOne in Europe. A programmer since he was ten years old, Ethan worked as a systems engineer at EDS and was a principal consultant at strategy firm The McKenna Group in the late 1990s. He holds a B.A. in History from The Ohio State University.

  

  Ethan Stock

  Where you might find Ethan:

  • A world premier at the Berkeley Repertoire Theater

  • Art festival in Sausalito

  • Tuesday night Tango classes in Redwood City

• Paul Denton

  Chief Financial Officer

  Paul brings more than 20 years of leadership to Zvents from a wide variety of industries and management positions. As an executive with numerous start-up and emerging growth companies in Silicon Valley, Paul's expertise in financial management and business operations helped numerous companies successfully reach an acquisition or their next level of business. His background includes management positions at Booz Allen Hamilton and Exxon/Esso Petroleum Company and served as CFO at Determina and COO/CFO at Andale. He holds his MBA from Stanford University and a BS with Honors in Chemical Engineering from University of Birmingham, UK.

  

  Paul Denton

  Where you might find Paul:

  • Maples Pavilion cheering for Stanford basketball

  • Stamford Bridge in London – Go Chelsea!

  • At the Broadway Redwood City Theater catching a movie

• Gordon Rios

  Chief Technology Officer

  Gordon is a proven leader in search and search-related technologies. Over the past 15 years he has focused his efforts on devising machine learning systems for web search, document classification, and text mining. At Inktomi he developed the scoring engine for a user click-based ranking application that was deployed at HotBot and Snap, was a major contributor to the Directory Engine product which classified millions of web documents into over 14,000 categories, and was a founding member of Inktomi's Web Search Relevance Group. Gordon joined Yahoo! in the International Search team, where he worked on all aspects of search engine relevance developing production code running in all major international markets. Gordon holds an MBA in Finance and a master's degree in Engineering and Computer Science from U.C. Berkeley. He has a part-time appointment as a Research Fellow in Cork, Ireland and has co-founded two startups in the Netherlands around Big Data and new kinds of information services.

  

  Gordon Rios

  Where you might find Gordon:

  • La Camargue, Summer, Arena of Arles

  • Christmas Day Charles Dickens Walk, Trafalgar Square, London

  • St. Patrick's Day Parade, Cork, Ireland

• Andy Jagoe

  Vice President of Product & Engineering

  Andy is an entrepreneur who has spent the last fifteen years building software products and consumer services in the Internet and mobile spaces. Prior to joining Zvents, Andy was CEO and founder of 3Jam, a group text messaging and cloud voice service funded by NEA and Norwest Venture Partners and used by millions of users worldwide. Prior to 3Jam Andy was a partner at Netservice Ventures Group where he focused on next generation product strategy development for NTT and Sony Mobile Products and incubated and invested in innovative new mobile media businesses. 3jam was incubated at Netservice Ventures, where Andy remains a partner.

  Andy's previous experience includes CEO and founder of Intranet Communications, a MyYahoo-style Internet portal platform, and product management at Palm in the wireless software group. He is also the author of Mobile Location Services with Prentice Hall and has been awarded a patent on group text messaging. Andy holds an MBA and a BA from the University of California, Berkeley.

  

  Andy Jagoe

  Where you might find Andy:

  • At a Thievery Corporation show

  • Having dinner at Bistro Jeanty in Yountville

  • Checking out local events in foreign lands

• Kirt Thomson

  Vice President of Business Development & Distribution

  Kirt, an entrepreneur at heart, understands it takes focused execution, discipline and prioritization to get a new business off the ground. He flat out gets deals done while making all sides feel they've won. With 20+ years of high tech leadership, he built and managed successful sales and business development teams at market leading software companies like Oracle and Netscape. At Niku, he helped define a new software category while running the Vertical Markets Organization and growing the company from start-up to a $200m IPO. Most recently Kirt served as the VP of Sales for Encover, a leader in channel services solutions. He also worked in corporate strategy for Disney while completing his MBA in Entrepreneurship and Marketing at UCLA. He holds a B.A. in Human Biology from Stanford University where he serves on the Buck/Cardinal Board of Directors.

  

  Kirt Thomson

  Where you might find Kirt:

  • U2 concert at the Oracle Arena

  • Stanford football games

  • AT&T Pebble Beach Pro Am golf tournament

• Derek Hanson

  Vice President Sales

  Derek brings more than 18 years experience in media sales to the Zvents team, with specific expertise in content monetization, local search and strategic planning. Fast and forward thinking, Derek's insight into the sales process, knowledge of the sales environment and tenacity have been well regarded assets to companies including Time Warner and Comcast - where he filled Vice President and General Manager roles. He has built sales organizations from the ground up and created unique environments within the corporate media culture, where individuals with talent and initiative were developed at every level. He holds a BS in Marketing from California State University-Northridge.

  

  Derek Hanson

  Where you might find Derek:

  • Fight night at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas

  • A Lakers game at Staples Center

  • Enjoying the Crème Brulee at Basilic in Newport Beach

• Board of Directors

  • Laura Brege
    Laura Brege, General Partner at Red Rock Ventures and current EVP & Chief Business Officer at Onyx Pharmaceuticals. She also held senior financial positions at COR Therapeutics, Flextronics, and The Cooper Companies.
  • Richard Harroch
    Richard Harroch, Managing Director and Global Head of M&A at VantagePoint Venture Partners, has been involved in negotiating and structuring numerous Internet-related partnerships, distribution, e-commerce, online advertising and investment transactions. He founded LawCommerce.com (sold to LexisNexis) and co-founded AllBusiness.com (sold to Dun & Bradstreet), and is a noted author of several legal and business books.
  • John Gardner
    John Gardner, Partner at Nokia Growth Partners, has led and managed investments in companies across the information technology spectrum. He was one of the founding partners at BlueRun Ventures before joining Nokia Growth Partners, and has extensive experience advising and working with start-up and emerging businesses.
  • Paul Levine
    Paul Levine, President of New Media at Current, has over a dozen years of consumer internet and online media experience including executive roles at AdBrite, Yahoo, and E*TRADE. Under Paul's leadership, Yahoo! Local grew to reach over 20 million US unique users and became widely recognized as the industry's leading local search and content destination.
  • Bill Harding
    Bill Harding joined VantagePoint in 2007, bringing with him more than 22 years of experience in venture capital. Prior to VantagePoint, he was a Managing Director at Morgan Stanley & Co. and President of Morgan Stanley Venture Partners. Before Morgan Stanley, Bill was a General Partner of several venture capital partnerships affiliated with J. H. Whitney & Co.
  • Claudio Pinkus
    Claudio Pinkus is a successful serial entrepreneur having founded or led three Internet companies in his career. He is the former Executive Chairman, Chief Strategy Officer of Multiply.com which was acquired by South African Media company Naspers Ltd. He was the President and Chief Strategy Officer of AskJeeves which was acquired by IAC (NASDAQ: IACI). He also founded a leading software localization company that was acquired by Bowne, now RR Donnelly (NASDAQ: RRD).
  • Ethan Stock
    Ethan Stock, Founder and CEO of Zvents.