Pelago was founded in early 2006 with a DNA of innovation, customer obsession, bias for action and, of course, a relentless commitment to having fun. We're incredibly proud of the all-superstar team we've assembled to date, and together, we're pushing the boundaries in every facet of our business to develop truly creative consumer-facing products.
 | Jeff HoldenCEO and Co-FounderPrior to co-founding Pelago, Jeff spent almost 8 1/2 years (1997-2006) at Amazon.com. Most recently, Jeff was the Senior Vice President responsible for Amazon's consumer websites, worldwide. In this role, he oversaw the end-to-end customer experience (search, navigation, personalization, social computing, ordering, merchandising, automated email) as well as Amazon's online traffic initiatives (the Amazon Associates program, search engine optimization and search engine advertising) and the experimental platform that enabled Amazon to conduct quantitative experiments with regard to consumer behavior and measure incremental value of new initiatives. Before moving into the website-focused role, Jeff was the Director of Supply Chain Optimization Systems at Amazon (for approximately 4 years). In this position, Jeff led the design and development of Amazon's unique and powerful forecasting, inventory planning, order fulfillment optimization and transactional purchasing systems. Jeff championed the idea that fulfillment planning could be sufficiently real-time that the order pipeline could be connected directly to the fulfillment planning engine to generate optimal plans from which shipping promises are made to the customer during the check-out process. The system realizing this vision was launched in 2001 and continues to power the Amazon site today. Prior to Amazon, Jeff spent five years (1992-1997) at D. E. Shaw & Co., L.P. in New York. Jeff joined the firm as a software engineer; his first assignment was to help Jeff Bezos build and launch the Third Market strategy, one of Shaw's early sell-side strategies. After Bezos left to found Amazon.com, Jeff remained at Shaw as the Vice President responsible for the firm's front office software infrastructure. Prior to joining D. E. Shaw & Co., Jeff earned his BS and MS in computer science from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. |
 | Darren Erik Vengroff, Ph.D.CTO and Co-FounderDarren has spent his career building world-class computer systems in a variety of domains. Most recently he was a principal engineer at Amazon.com with responsibilities in personalization, automated email targeting, time-series analysis, content platform architecture, attribute-based navigation, search, and build and deployment systems. Prior to Amazon.com, Darren spent six years at Goldman Sachs. As a vice president, he was responsible for trading and risk management systems that priced billions of dollars of derivative products for the fixed income, currency, and commodity businesses. See "On Top of the World: Goldman Sachs and the Culture of Risk," a cover story in The Economist that discusses the role these businesses played in distinguishing Goldman from its competitors. Earlier in his career, Darren built the first microprocessor simulator capable of booting and running a commercial operating system under load. Prior to that, micro-architectural simulation was typically done on user code only, or on static instruction stream traces. Darren holds an Sc.M. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from Brown University, where he studied I/O-efficient algorithms with Jeff Vitter, and a B.S.E. in Computer Science with Highest Honors from Princeton University. |
Phones home in on gee-whiz capabilities - USATODAY.com Annotated
Upstaging Apple?: UpStage is a thin, $149 (with two-year contract) wireless phone/MP3 player from Samsung and Sprint.
Peek at one side, and you'll see a typical phone keypad and a 1.4-inch LCD screen. Peek at the other side, and you'll think it's an MP3 player with a 2.1-inch screen. A "flip" button toggles between the two.
alarm:clock: Quattro Wireless Gains Funding For Mobile Ads Marketplace Annotated
Quattro Wireless Gains Funding For Mobile Ads Marketplace
To some extent Quattro Wireless will compete with other online ad exchanges like AdMob. However, the Waltham, MA-based startup has gone a step further by developing software that will do the conversion for publishers of their Web content to fit into the confines of the mobile phone.
Quattro Wireless - GetMobile Annotated
 |
Under the GetMobile umbrella, Quattro Wireless brings a diverse network of publishers and a deep inventory of Advertisers together to leverage the reach of the mobile web in a powerful and transparent mobile-only marketplace.
Formed in 2006 and based in
, Quattro Wireless is led by Andrew Miller and Eswar Priyadarshan, who serve as Quattro Wireless’ CEO and CTO, respectively. Both are former members of the leadership team for mobile media management company m-Qube and led that organization through its successful acquisition by VeriSign in 2006. Quattro Wireless is funded by Highland Capital Partners. Bob Davis and Jon Auerbach of Highland Capital Partners presently serve on the Quattro Wireless Board of Directors.
ColoradoBiz Magazine Annotated
Tech Startup of the Month: FEED Tribes Inc.
 Rod Stambaugh |
FEED Tribes Inc.
Where: Boulder
Founded: 2006
www.feedtribes.com
INITIAL LIGHT BULB:
Early last year, Rod Stambaugh decided it was time to leverage his 17 years in the payment industry into a startup that turns mobile phones into credit cards.
"The original premise was to enable the mobile phone to make a payment at point-of- sale," he said. "That was the initial genesis of the company."
Stambaugh, now CEO of the
eonBusiness Funds Groundbreaking Mobile Payment and Marketing Company 'FEED' Annotated
eonBusiness Funds Groundbreaking Mobile Payment and Marketing Company 'FEED' |
Forget Credit Cards and Coupons, Use Your Mobile Phone to Pay Your Way -
and Get Discounts and Rewards for It
DENVER, July 17 /PRNewswire/ --
eonBusiness(http://www.eonbusiness.com), a strategic e-commerce investment
firm, today announced its participation in helping to fund a new mobile
payment company named FEED (http://www.feedit.com). FEED is a mobile
payment and marketing platform that lets consumers pay for goods and
services at the register and online using a secure coding system
transmitted via cellphones. The company currently has more than 200
merchants accepting FEED payments in the Boulder, Colorado market, where it
plans to aggressively begin introducing the platform this month.
"Its innovations and marketplace applications like FEED's that
eonBusiness looks to support, as the undeniable evolution towards
e-commerce continues," said Dave Carlson, CEO of eonBusiness. "Companies
like FEED are seizing practical opportunities to connect with e-savvy
consumers and retailers to the benefit of both. FEED caught our attention
because it is the only mobile payment solution available that combines
secure payment applications with the ability for merchants to market
directly to the consumer. The implications of a platform like this are
far-reaching, from the obvious banking and retailing impact, to marketing
and advertising and beyond."
Consumers at all levels can easily establish and use a FEED account,
providing both convenience and security without the use of a credit-card.
Merchants who accept FEED payments also get a break, as FEED transactions
are less costly than credit card processing and the merchant can
communicate, offer promotions and market directly to the consumer through
their cellphones.
"With cellphones becoming vital communications and information centers
that you take along in your pocket, it makes sense to have your personal
commerce available through them as well," added Rod Stambaugh, FEED's
founder. "FEED was born out of the simple concept of matching mobility with
commerce, and we're thrilled to have the funding from eonBusiness and other
supporters to aggressively begin our consumer outreach in Boulder later
this month."
With a total of $3.25 million from early series funding, FEED can boast
support from eonBusiness, The Lacuna Venture Fund LLLP and other investors
that will support the company as it aggressively expands. Additional
financial details were not disclosed.
"Having eonBusiness both financially and strategically involved will be
very valuable to FEED," continued Stambaugh. "They bring a wealth of online
marketing and e-commerce expertise to the table, including connections with
online retailers that FEED needs to reach to broaden our offering on the
web."
Thanks to the current round of funding from eonBusiness, lead investor
Lacuna and others, FEED can move full speed ahead with their aggressive
growth strategy, planning to expand to national availability in 2008.
About eonBusiness
Founded in 1997, eonBusiness is an e-commerce investment firm
recognized for assisting entrepreneurs in launching, developing and growing
innovative web-based e-commerce businesses. Infusing their own e-market
expertise and early-stage venture capital into strategically-selected
enterprises, eonBusiness advances, supports and operates several successful
Internet service and e-commerce businesses including AllAboardToys.com,
HomePoint.com, BuyerGuardian.com and several others. More information on
the company and its portfolio is available at http://www.eonbusiness.com.
About FEED
FEED is a mobile payment and marketing company that lets consumers pay
for goods and services at the register and online with their cellphones.
FEED simplifies the payment process, providing total transaction security.
FEED saves merchants money vs. credit card transaction fees while providing
consumers with unprecedented value via real-time text offers. Based in
Boulder, Colorado, FEED operates with any of the 200 million mobile phones
in the United States. http://www.feedit.com
