EXECUTIVE TEAM
Kasian Franks, Chief Visionary Officer, Chairman and Founder
Kasian Franks (LinkedIn) previously worked as a software engineer, genomic researcher and product developer specializing in pattern matching algorithms and tools for companies and organizations, including: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Genentech, Motorola, Tivo and Sun Microsystems. He was also founder and CEO of SeeqPod, a search engine technology company which garnered 50 million unique visitors and 250 million monthly searches.
He worked at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Life Sciences Division, as a Genomic Research Scientist from 2002-2005. At the LBNL, along with Raf Podowski and Connie Myers, he developed the technology behind SeeqPod. Franks began to study biomimetics along with pattern matching in data and nature. This led to five patents in the area of search and discovery.
He later founded SeeqPod Inc., a music search, discovery and pattern matching company in and won the 2008 R&D 100 award for biomimetic search engines.
Michael Poutre, President and CEO
Mike joined the Company in August of 2011 (LinkedIn). Since then, he has been leveraging his considerable experience in operations, particularly in relation to public companies. Mike is a 20 year veteran of the securities industry. His experience ranges from working at some of the largest wire house firms in the world, to having owned his own broker-dealer. In addition, he co-founded and operated the first open-end, actively-managed Israeli stock mutual fund in the United States. Under his leadership as President and Chief Compliance Officer, The Blue and White Fund had considerable success, soundly beating all its benchmarks, while proactively protecting the investments of all shareholders.
Mike also has many years of experience in the capital markets as a portfolio manager, and has been cited or featured in numerous premier financial publications, including Forbes, Business Week, The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times. Mike is currently an MBA candidate at California Lutheran University and sits on the advisory board of the Center for Economic Research & Forecasting at the university.
Kevin Conner, Chief Financial Officer
Kevin Conner is a licensed Certified Public Accountant in the States of New York and Connecticut and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Since 1991, he has served as the Managing Director of Conner & Associates, PC and its affiliated Corporate Finance Advisory Firm, Conner LLP. He is General Partner in Westrock Partners, a private investment firm that holds a portfolio of public and private companies. He is also the Chief Financial Officer of GlyEco, Inc. (GLYE), a green chemistry company.
Mr. Conner is currently and has been a member of the board of directors and management teams of several private and public companies, wherein he has raised significant capital. Mr. Conner holds an MS in Taxation from Philadelphia University and a BS in Business Administration/Accounting from West Chester University of Pennsylvania.
Eric Rice, Chief Revenue Officer
Prior to joining Mimvi, Eric Rice (LinkedIn) co-founded and ran Lone Wolf Inc. (Smash Networks), which was acquired by Mimvi through a public merger. His leadership and business development abilities have led him to success in industries ranging from financial services and investor relations to gaming and software.
Mr. Rice is best known for his ability to see opportunities where others do not and executing a plan to realize them. He has a tremendous knack for developing partnerships and designing win/win situations between organizations and individuals while generating buzz around new ideas. His reputation for building businesses has allowed him the privilege of hosting his own television show, appearing as a guest on multiple news broadcasts and nationwide radio shows as well as being featured in publications such as The Investor Business Daily, Mashable and The Daily Journal.
His passion lies in founding and growing companies in emerging markets. Eric is considered one of the most tenacious and positive people around by all those he is associated. His innovations have allowed him the ability to work with notable entrepreneurs ranging from the cast of Shark Tank to professional athletes to some of Wall Street’s top investors and currently with Entrepreneur Magazine.
Russ Kohn, Chief Technical Officer
Russ is a strategic thinker and manager specializing in web services integration, mobile applications, data management solutions, and search & discovery technology. (LinkedIn)
Over 20 years experience in all facets of the IT industry in many domains, with extensive exposure to Entertainment, Health Care, Pharma, Sports, New Media and Mobile disciplines. Recent focus on mobile application search and discovery, recommendation engine algorithms, and the future of advertising.
Russ is conversant in databases, web services, mobile applications, API strategy and execution, FileMaker, Postgres, Oracle, Sybase, DB2, mySQL php, python, javascript, html, CSS, and CDISC standards.
Jeff King, Executive Vice President & General Manager
Prior to joining Mimvi, King (LinkedIn) was US Head of Digital Entertainment for 19 Entertainment - the creators and producers of American Idol and representation agency for clients including David Beckham, Carrie Underwood, Annie Lennox, Daughtry, Andy Murray, and many others...and the television properties of American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance. Prior to working at 19 Entertainment, he was Vice President & General Manager at Fox Broadcasting, Inc. and Fox Interactive Media where he oversaw all aspects of the digital empire for Fox Broadcasting's line-up of prime-time shows.
Mr. King has a proven record of success in developing high profile digital initiatives and delivering success. Highly organized with ability to manage small to large teams and client’s needs with solid communication skills and proven problem solving abilities, he is skilled at conveying a common vision across technical, creative and marketing divisions for outstanding results.
MIMVi Press Conference at NASDAQ MarketSite - 11/27/2012
BOARD OF ADVISORS
Joe Abrams
Mr. Abrams (LinkedIn) specializes in working with small technology companies to build shareholder value in the public markets. As a direct result of his efforts, he has completed merger and acquisition transactions in excess of $1 billion and small cap market equity raises in excess of $200 million. Abrams co-founded Intermix in 1998, the predecessor company to MySpace, which was sold to News Corp. in 2005 for $580 million. In 1983, Abrams co-founded The Software Toolworks, Inc., a publicly held developer, publisher, and distributor of educational and entertainment software, which was sold to Pearson, Plc. in 1994 for $462 million.
Satish Gupta
Co-founder of SenSen Networks in 2005. Previously Satish was the CEO and founding President of Cradle Technologies, a venture funded leader in the emerging generation of Soft-Silicon semiconductor companies. Satish was the Corporate Vice President of Strategic Marketing at Cirrus Logic. He has also served as the Vice President of Strategic Marketing and Advanced Development for Media Vision, establishing it as a multi- media pioneer and taking it public in 1993. Satish was at IBM from 1968 through 1991. He is currently on the board of UMEVOICE, a privately funded voice recognition solutions venture. He Satish graduated from MIT in 1968, with a masters in electrical engineering. He was the gold medalist in his Bachelor's degree of Electrical Engineering from the Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani, one of the top universities in India. He completed his second Masters in Engineering and Economic Systems from Stanford University in 1976.
Goetz Weber
Goetz Weber ( Linked In ) heads partnerships at Samsung. He also served as COO of doubleTwist, Inc. Prior to doubleTwist, Goetz was the co-founder and CEO of inDplay.com . a b2b multiplatform video content marketplace, angel funded by Eric Schmidt, William Hearst III and Shai Agassi. inDplay was sold to Ascent Media in February 2008. Prior to inDplay, Goetz held senior positions in strategic business development, product development, and innovation management at SAP AG in Germany and at SAP Labs in Palo Alto. He has worked on a number of leading SAP initiatives, including business strategy for the SAP-Microsoft collaboration, and several new composite application product launches spanning the financial services and manufacturing industries. He holds a Ph.D.ein Theoretical Physics, an MBA, and has authored physics publications and patents.
Daiwa Quantum Capital
Daiwa Quantum Capital, led by the former CEO of Sony Nobuyuki Idei, seeks growth capital opportunities in Asia with a particular emphasis on applying Japanese resources to its investments. The General Partner was founded by Daiwa Securities SMBC Principal Investments, a unit of Daiwa Securities SMBC and Quantum Leaps Corporation. See: http://www.dqcap.com.
By way of background, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (“SMBC”) is a leading Japanese financial services firm with more than JPY 100 trillion (approx. $1 trillion) in assets. Quantum Leaps, founded by Nobuyuki Idei (ex-Group CEO of Sony Corp), is a business incubation and strategy consulting firm. It is also a leading venue for exchanging ideas among CEOs of Asian and Western companies. The investment team of the Fund includes senior professionals from the Asia-team of DPI and Quantum Leaps.
Since 2001, DPI has invested more than JPY 800 billion (approx. $8 billion) in private equity and real estate in Japan and worldwide.
Mina Bissell
Mina Bissell has been recognized for her lifetime contributions to the fields of breast cancer research, the enhanced role of extracellular matrix (ECM) and the nucleus environment to gene expression in normal and malignant tissues. These works have ushered and changed some central paradigms that have strengthened the importance of context in the development of cancer. She has received numerous recognitions.
-NY Times "Old Ideas Spur New Approaches in Cancer Fight"
-The Mina J. Bissell Award
-American Cancer Society’s Medal of Honor
-INSERM Annual International Award
-American Philosophical Society
-Pezcoller Foundation-AACR International Award for Cancer Research
-Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology Excellence in Science
Andre de Souza
André de Souza is a Corporate and Business Development professional who has led many successes at startup, growth and enterprise levels. Mr. de Souza has a diverse background in strategic alliance building, innovative solution development, and has excelled at delivering POC/ Design/ OEM/ Channel wins, with a special focus on innovative early stage companies.
Mr. de Souza co-founded Corundum Consultancy, an Irish-based firm providing advisory and business acceleration services to high potential startup companies and spin-outs from leading universities. In this role he served as a catalyst to attain rapid corporate development and introduction to strategically chosen Silicon Valley based funding and technology partners, and he helped launch a company aimed at delivering personalized, destination-specific content to mobile phones.
Formerly Director of Global Strategic Alliances for BEA Systems, he managed corporate development with top-tier strategic partners as well as joint R&D, engineering, sales development and marketing efforts influencing over $600 million in partner revenue per annum. Prior experience includes executive management at Tarantella (Sun Microsystems) and Cambridge Technology Partners, where he led the company’s first Venture investment in a partner company. André led business development activities and served as Entrepreneur in Residence for a boutique entrepreneurial bank, where he co-founded three companies. He also co-founded Hurst Technologies, an IT firm in the energy sector, where he served as COO and grew the company from a two-man entity to over 40 engineers and $5 million in four years.
André holds a Master of Science in Biomedical Engineering and a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering. A certified Professional Engineer, he has also held an NASD Series 7 Securities License.
