Board of Directors
William K. (Bill) Bryant has had early and instrumental involvement in over twenty leading software and Internet companies, as a founder, senior executive, investor and Board Member. After serving as founding Vice President of Sales & Marketing for Visio (now part of Microsoft Corporation) in the early 1990s, Bill went on to found Netbot (which built the first comparison shopping agent for the Internet, Jango, as well as the first metasearch engine, Metacrawler, prior to being acquired by Excite) as its President; Qpass (www.qpass.com, acquired by Amdocs) where he served as CEO and later Chairman; Medio Systems (www.mediosystems.com) where he continues to serve as a Strategic Advisor; and 3Guppies (formerly Mixxer, www.3guppies.com), a market leader with over 4M members in the consumer mobile entertainment and community sector. In these founding capacities, Bill drove definition of the core product and market strategy; raised >$125M in venture capital; recruited senior management teams; and built customer, partner and channel relationships in launching software products, Internet and mobile services.
Previously, Bill was an early investor or Board member in nine other companies that were later acquired or went public, including Loudeye (Nokia), AEI Music (DMX/Liberty Media), Viafone (Extended Systems), Teamplate (Captaris), Exstatic Software (Xchange Applications), Throw (Excite), Singing Fish (Thomson/AOL); NearMe (Hands On Mobile) and WebRelevance (Medio).
Bill received a BA in European History, an MBA, and his Ph.D. Candidacy in Business Strategy, all from the University of Washington. He holds a patent for an electronic commerce network.
Michelle is a Partner at Ignition, investing in consumer and enterprise software and services.
Michelle represents Ignition as director on the boards of Mpire, Visible Technologies, and SEOmoz. She was an observer on UIEvolution (sold to Square Enix, Japan).
Michelle was an investment banker at Olympic Capital Partners where she specialized in mid-market mergers and acquisitions. Michelle worked in management consulting for A.T. Kearney. As an associate in the Financial Institutions Group, Michelle focused on strategic and operational improvements for Fortune 100 clients. She also spent time working in Taipei with a group developing export strategy for the Chinese government.
Michelle earned her B.A. degree from Columbia, and an M.A. degree from Harvard University.
Rob Solomon is a venture partner with Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV), a leading growth equity investor focused on investing in premier technology companies. Most recently Rob was the CEO of travel search engine company SideStep, and he brings almost two decades of technology and operational expertise to the Mpire Board. While with SideStep, his efforts led to the merger of SideStep with Kayak.com in December 2007, creating the fifth largest Internet travel brand worldwide. Before SideStep, Rob spent six years at Yahoo where he was vice president and general manager of the Yahoo! Shopping Group (YHOO) and was instrumental in building one of the largest commerce destinations on the Internet. Earlier in his career Mr. Solomon worked in various roles at Electronic Arts and Cendant Corporation. He is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley.
Michael is a 25-year veteran of U.S. and international business finance who has worked successfully in start-up, rapid growth and turnaround environments. Most recently, he worked one year (2007-2008) for Zumobi, a mobile phone technology business, where he led the process to secure "Series B" financing, and oversaw the establishment of ad serving operations. Prior to Zumobi, Michael worked five years (2000-2006) with aQuantive, a NASDAQ-traded Internet advertising technology company. Under Michael's guidance as CFO, aQuantive became profitable and commanded a broad Wall Street following due to its fast-growing, high-margin business. The company grew from a net revenue base of approximately $30 million in 2000 to an estimated $400 million and a market cap in excess of $2 billion in 2006, his last year with the company. In 2007, Microsoft acquired aQuantive for approximately $6 billion, making it one of the largest online advertising purchases to date. Michael has also held CFO positions within international hotel chains, including Park Plaza International and Red Lion Hotels. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of online advertising network Mpire. He earned both his B.S. degree and M.B.A. from Stanford University, and was an officer on a guided missile destroyer in the U.S. Navy.
Board Observers
Emily Melton is a Director at Draper Fisher Jurvetson, having joined the firm in 2000. Emily’s primary areas of interest include technology-enabled services and consumer-oriented technologies. She currently serves on the boards of MyShape, NearbyNow, ProQuo, Redfin, and ShareThis. She is also responsible for DFJ’s investments in Meebo, Kudo, RichRelevance and Flux (acquired by MTVNetworks).
Emily holds a BA with honors and distinction in Political Philosophy and an MBA, both from Stanford University.
Rich is a founding partner of Ignition. He invests in telecommunications and wireless as well as end-user/consumer-facing companies. Rich is a director on the boards of mFoundry, Melodeo, Mpire, Seamobile, and lala. Rich is also a managing director of Qiming, Ignition's partner fund in China. He is an Ignition observer on the boards of Judy's Book, and Network Magic.
Prior to Ignition, Rich spent 12 years at Microsoft where he most recently served as Vice President of Marketing for MS Office and BackOffice. He was responsible for business branding, advertising and pricing for the MS Office and BackOffice family of products, contributing to a $2 billion revenue stream and driving Windows NT and Exchange to become #1 in Microsoft's unit sales. He oversaw the purchase and integration of over 20 different companies and technologies into the Microsoft enterprise software family.
Rich built and led the marketing teams for Windows, NT, Exchange, SQL Server, BackOffice and Internet server, and managed over 250 people. His team's efforts catapulted Windows from a $50 million to $500 million business in two years. He also developed key business partnerships with Lotus, Intel, 3Com, Compaq, Dell and others.
Rich is also the co-author (along with John Zagula) of the book, The Marketing Playbook.
Rich received his MBA and MS degree in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. He received his B.S., summa cum laude, in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from Princeton University.
For more information on Rich and his interests, see the Tong Family Blog; for his and others' reflections on business and marketing topics see the Marketing Playbook and on technology see Geekfishing.