VigLink

Key Team

Oliver Roup - Co-Founder and CEO

Oliver brings over 15 years of software experience to the company. Prior to VigLink, he was a Director at Microsoft in charge of product for various media properties including XBOX Live Video Marketplace, Zune Marketplace and MSN Entertainment. Oliver was also an early employee at Internet Radio pioneer Echo Networks and has worked for Paul Allen at Vulcan, for iPlayer at the BBC and for the Founders Fund. Oliver has issued and pending patents covering micro-transactions, media and metadata. He received his Bachelors and Masters in Computer Science from MIT and his MBA from the Harvard Business School.

Rodrigo Leroux - Co-Founder and Architect

Rodrigo comes to VigLink from Flixster where he was Data Architect and responsible for ensuring a smooth scale-out as it grew to become the world's largest online movie community. He has also been an architect and key early employee at Atlas Mobile (acquired by InfoSpace), Edusoft (acquired by Houghton Mifflin) and Engage. Rodrigo has received the prestigious My Dad Rocks award for eight consecutive years and holds Bachelors and Masters degrees in Computer Science from MIT.

Christian Romming - Lead Software Engineer

Before coming to VigLink, Christian worked on semantic search technology and data mining at Trovix, which was acquired by Monster in 2008. He has also developed image processing algorithms at Avago Technologies. Christian received his M.Eng. from Warwick University, UK, and his M.S. in theoretical computer science from Stanford University.

Rick Fletcher - Front End Lead

You might remember Rick's handcrafted HTML, CSS & JavaScript from such companies as Rupture (a social network for gamers; acquired by Electronic Arts), SNOCAP (services for musicians; acquired by imeem) and Napster (the cool one).

Rick prefers OS X over Windows, spaces over tabs, and dogs over cats (sorry, Ash).

Board Investors

Josh Kopelman - First Round Capital

Josh Kopelman is a venture capitalist and Managing Partner at First Round Capital.

Previously, Kopelman founded Half.com, which was acquired by eBay in 2000. He remained with eBay for three years, running the Half.com business unit and growing eBay's Media marketplace to almost half a billion dollars in annual sales.

In late 2003 Kopelman helped found TurnTide, an anti-spam company that created the world's first anti-spam router. TurnTide was acquired by Symantec just six months later.

Rich Miner - Google Ventures

Rich Miner is a Managing Partner of Google Ventures. He has spent the past 25 years growing businesses with innovative communications and interface-intensive applications. Rich joined Google through the acquisition of Android, a mobile platforms company that he co-founded. During his first three years at Google, he helped lead the development of the Android platform and ecosystem. Prior to Android, Rich was a Vice President at Orange, where he led R&D activities in North America and also started and was a principle in Orange Ventures. He came to Orange through the acquisition of another company that he co-founded, Wildfire, which made a voice-based personal assistant. He met his Wildfire co-founder when he helped incubate Avid Technology in his university lab. Rich is based in Boston, Massachusetts and received his doctorate in Computer Science from the University of Massachusetts at Lowell.

Niel Robertson - Instigator

VigLink began as a conversation with Niel Robertson and since that time he has been a peerless supporter, advisor and board member.

Niel is currently working on his next big thing. Previously he has been CTO of Newmerix, CTO in Residence at Mobius Venture Capital and a Venture Partner with Fidelity Ventures in Boston. Prior to his work in venture capital, Mr Robertson co-founded Service Metrics, and pioneered the Application Performance Management (APM) space. Service Metrics was acquired by Exodus Communications in 1999 and Niel continued to serve as VP of Research.

Selected Angel Investors

Reid Hoffman

Reid Hoffman is an entrepreneur and serial investor, most recently serving as the CEO of LinkedIn. He stepped down from the CEO position a second time in June 2009.

Prior to LinkedIn, Reid was Executive Vice President of PayPal. During his tenure at PayPal, Hoffman was instrumental to the acquisition by eBay and was responsible for partnerships with Intuit, Visa, MasterCard and Wells Fargo. Reid also has held management roles in large technology companies, including Fujitsu Software Corporation and Apple. Currently, in addition to LinkedIn, Reid serves on the Board of Directors for SixApart and Mozilla Corporation.

Deep Nishar

Deep Nishar is responsible for setting and executing the global product strategy at LinkedIn. He went to LinkedIn from Google, where he helped shape the company's strategy in Asia-Pacific. Deep was also responsible for building Google's global mobile business. Deep holds an MBA from Harvard Business School where he graduated with highest honors as a Baker Scholar, a MSEE from University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and a B. Tech with Honors from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. Deep holds 3 patents and was awarded the Google Founders Award, an accolade given to employees who have made extraordinary contributions to the company for his work on the Google Ads System Automation.

Hadi Partovi

A graduate of Harvard University, Hadi established himself as an Internet leader during the browser wars: he was Group Program Manager for Internet Explorer. After the release of IE 5.0, Hadi co-founded Tellme Networks and spearheaded the company's shift from consumer services to enterprise call-center automation and delivering directory and customer-care services for AT&T, FedEx, E*TRADE, and more. Tellme Networks was later acquired by Microsoft. Hadi was subsequently General Manager of MSN.com, where he delivered 30% annual growth and incubated Start.com (now Live.com).

After MSN, Hadi joined his twin brother Ali Partovi to co-found iLike, which was acquired by MySpace. Hadi is currently SVP of Technology at MySpace.

Hadi has been an investor or strategic advisor to numerous startups including Facebook, DropBox, BlueKai, Edusoft (acquired by Houghton Mifflin), and 2Web Technologies (now Google Spreadsheets).

Ali Partovi

Prior to iLike, Ali established himself as an entrepreneur by co-founding LinkExchange, which was acquired by Microsoft for $265 million in 1998. Ali also co-founded "DrinkExchange," a monthly social event that spread from San Francisco to Washington, London, Tokyo, and Sydney. After leaving Microsoft, Ali co-wrote a feature film and started a band, both of which failed.

In 2002 Ali led the effort to save GarageBand.com from being shut down and has been with the company since. In 2006 Ali recruited his twin brother Hadi to help start iLike, and today they run iLike (which owns GarageBand) together. Ali is an avid music lover and wannabe guitarist.

Carlos Cashman

Carlos has worked with numerous successful start-ups as an executive, founder, investor, and advisor in the US and abroad for the last 16 years. He is currently an active angel investor and involved with several charities related to promotion of global peace and education. Carlos serves on the Board of Directors of SecretBuilders.com, an immersive online educational world for children, as well as Asset Performance Technologies, an advanced data and analytics provider for heavy industrial equipment he co-founded in 2003. In 2005 he co-founded CourseAdvisor, a leading Search Engine Marketing firm in the post-secondary education industry which was sold two years later to the Washington Post. CourseAdvisor was designated one of the fastest growing companies in New England and voted one of Boston's Best Places to Work in 2007. The first company Carlos founded, Opus360, went public on the NASDAQ in 2000 and was sold in 2001 to Artemis International. Carlos attended MIT on full scholarship.

Micah Adler

An academic turned serial technology entrepreneur, Micah Adler combines leading industry insight with complex technical knowledge as the CEO and founder of Fluent Mobile.

Prior to this role, Micah was CEO, president, and co-founder of Adverplex, a search engine marketing (SEM) optimization company. His research in algorithms, probabilistic analysis and combinatorial optimization helped the company develop innovative technology to drive profitability for multi-million dollar SEM campaigns. Micah was also the co-founder, president and board member of CourseAdvisor, which was acquired by the Washington Post Corporation in 2007. He has served on the boards of directors for more than 10 Boston-area startup companies.

An internationally recognized expert in numerous areas crucial to the search, aggregation, and delivery of online and mobile content, Micah was also a tenured professor of Computer Science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He has authored more than 50 widely-cited publications; holds multiple patents; and has served on numerous academic review committees, program committees and editorial boards. He began his career at Oracle Corporation. He received his B.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his Ph.D. in theoretical computer science from the University of California, Berkeley.