About Us

Leadership|Board of Directors|Investors|Advisors

Leadership

Daniel Zamudio, Founder and CEO

Daniel Zamudio has a track record of driving profitable growth in senior management roles at both startups and leading technology companies in the U.S. and Europe. Prior to Playboox, Dan was Chief Operating Officer and General Manager for infoUSA's Yesmail division, a leading e-marketing technology and services company, where he was promoted to executive operations leadership following goal-surpassing success as SVP of Sales and Marketing. As COO/GM, he led the turnaround of Yesmail to record profit, revenues and was instrumental in the acquisition of a key industry competitor, which positioned Yesmail as one of the top three companies in a fiercely competitive market. He began his career at Xerox and became one of the company's youngest and best performing sales managers and trainers consistently ranking in the top 5% of his peers. After business school, Dan moved to Europe to join the Dataquest division of Gartner, where based out of Paris, France, he became the number one rep worldwide in his second year. His entrepreneurial experience includes launching Symantec in southern Europe based out of Barcelona, Spain. He later was recruited to turnaround a struggling 100+ person division of Ziff-Davis France, where as GM/Publisher he achieved profitability one year ahead of schedule while leading the group to record ad revenue and circulation. He holds an MBA from U.C. Berkeley's Haas School of Business and a B.S. from San Jose State University. Originally from Colombia and raised in the inner city, Dan is passionate about helping minority youth and young professionals achieve their full potential and is actively involved helping increase diversity at the Haas School of Business.

Board of Directors

Sharon Graves - Director

Sharon has more than 15 years of experience in the investment and finance industry. She previously served as a Principal at the boutique merchant-banking firm Metier Capital Group where she helped architect private and public equity investments for Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and GEICO Insurance, as well as develop capital and business strategies for global financial services firms, entertainment industry clients, and smaller companies. She also worked as an Analyst in the Investment Banking Division of Goldman, Sachs & Co. Sharon currently also serves as a director of Printroom.com, Inc. Sharon received a B.S. with distinction in Industrial Engineering from Stanford University.

Ralph Clark - Director

Ralph is currently Chief Operating Officer for GuardianEdge. He was previously Vice President of Finance for Adaptec and was Chief Financial Officer for Snap Appliance before Adaptec acquired the company. Before that, Ralph was the founder and CEO of Blue Makoi, a next-generation email marketing system. Ralph's career also includes tenures at IBM, as well as at Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch, where he was an investment banker. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics from the University of the Pacific, and an MBA with second-year honors from Harvard Business School.

Investors

Ascend Venture Group

Ascend Venture Group is a private investment management firm headquartered in New York City. Ascend combines highly sophisticated financial expertise with unique access to investment opportunities to create attractive risk/reward portfolios and partnerships for its investors. The Firm targets investment opportunities in the applied technology and for-profit education industries. Ascend currently manages more than $150 million.Working with uncompromising, ambitious, talented entrepreneurs who have no fear of the challenge involved in attempting to quickly scale an enterprise, Ascend is focused on rapid value creation. www.ascendventures.com.

Advisors

Ronnie Lott

Ronnie Lott's football career spanned 14 seasons (1981-1995) in the NFL. Ronnie was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2000 and the College Football Hall of Fame in 2002. In 1999, Ronnie, along with former teammate Harris Barton, co-founded HRJ Capital, a private equity investment manager. HRJ Capital began with a $40 million fund of funds investing exclusively in the venture capital sector, but has evolved into a diversified global private equity investment platform with a series of funds focused on top performing venture capital, leveraged buy-out, distressed asset, real estate and hedge fund managers. HRJ Capital currently has 50 employees with offices in Silicon Valley, Chicago, and New York and manages approximately $1.8 billion in assets. In addition to his professional business activities, Ronnie is active in a number of charitable and community organizations. In 1989, Ronnie founded All Stars Helping Kids, a non-profit organization that pools the resources of world class athletes, corporations, and individuals to promote a safe, healthy and rigorous learning environment for disadvantaged children in low-income communities. Ronnie is a graduate of the University of Southern California, where he received a Bachelor's Degree in Public Administration.

Issac Vaughn

Issac is a Managing Director at SC Investments Consulting, LLC. He is a former partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, where he co-led a group that worked with technology, education, internet and life sciences companies through all stages of their growth, and venture capitalists and investment bankers. Issac specializes in the areas of corporate and securities law, including general corporate representations, venture capital financings, public offerings and mergers and acquisitions. California Law Business named Issac as one of the top 20 lawyers under the age of 40. Issac has a J.D. degree from the University of Michigan. He received his B.S. in Economics from Santa Clara University where he was a first team all-conference quarterback.

Aaron Ross

Aaron is the CEO of the management consultancy, Pebblestorm. He was previously an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Alloy Ventures, a venture capital firm with over $1 billion under management. Before that, as the original Director, Corporate Sales at Salesforce.com, he created from scratch the revolutionary Cold Calling 2.0 inside sales team that sourced more than $100 million in recurring revenue. He was also Senior Director, Corporate Development at Salesforce.com where he was responsible for the acquisitions and investments team, helping acquire and launch the AppExchange Mobile and Salesforce for Google AdWords products. He has a B.S. in Environmental Civil Engineering from Stanford University.

Jay Tyler

Jay is the consummate sales leader. He has 25 years of consistently leading worldwide sales organizations with hundreds of salespeople to record breaking performance. He has been EVP of Sales at Gartner, Digital Think, and Clarify and held senior-level executive positions at Xerox. He grew revenues at Clarify from $188 million to $290 million in a one-year span leading to the company's eventual acquisition by Nortel Networks for $2.1 billion and was responsible for leading a $400 million business-unit at Xerox. He currently runs a successful sales process re-engineering consultancy advising C-level executives at clients like Symantec, Gartner and Akamai. Jay was formerly a Venture Partner at Walden Capital.

Michael Griego

Michael is President of MXL Partners, a leading sales management consultancy focused on helping sales organizations leverage their people, processes and technology to realize their full potential. Michael has over 25 years of high-technology sales and management experience at companies ranging from IBM, StorageTek/XLDatacomp, and Dataquest/Gartner Group. He has served as vice president of sales and marketing roles for Zona Research and Active Decisions; recently as executive vice president at Workshare. He's authored Strategic Sales Execution - the Next Generation Process for Effective Sales and Sales Management, an effectiveness-training program for sales people and executive management. A popular sales trainer, instructor/lecturer, motivational and keynote speaker at CEO Summits and leading Bay Area business schools, Michael has been an advisor, coach and consultant for numerous executives and trained hundreds of teams and salespeople. He has a BA degree from Occidental College and an MBA from Stanford University.

Tony Seba

Tony Seba is the author of "Winner Takes All - 9 Fundamental Rules of High Tech Strategy". He is a lecturer at Stanford University where he teaches high tech strategy and entrepreneurship and is a marketing consultant with leading technology companies, including Google. He was founder and CEO of PrintNation.com, where he raised more than $31 million in funding from well-known venture funds, hired a complete management team, 100+ employees, and managed the development of strategic partnerships with some of the world's top companies. Prior to PrintNation, Tony worked in business development and strategic planning at Cisco Systems and RSA Data Security. He holds an M.B.A. from Stanford University Graduate School of Business and a B.S. in Computer Science and Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.