Rodrigo Sales, Co-Founder, Chief Executive Officer, and Chairman of the Board
Rodrigo Sales is responsible for taking Vendio from a concept to a profitable enterprise. He is widely regarded as one of the leading authorities on online marketplaces and eCommerce. Rodrigo has been featured and quoted in several prominent publications including The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and Forbes. Entrepreneur Magazine named Vendio one of the "Hottest Businesses in 2003".

Rodrigo's professional background is in strategic analysis and supplier management with investment bank Credit Suisse First Boston (CSFB) Technology Group and Quantum Corporation, a leading provider of data protection and network storage systems. As a Research Associate at CSFB, Rodrigo prepared comprehensive reports on key players in the telecom equipment segment. As a Commodity Manager at Quantum, Rodrigo performed strategic analysis of the hard disk market, and managed an international portfolio of suppliers that provided Quantum with over $800 million worth of material each year.

Rodrigo received his BBA from the University of San Diego and earned his MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Vic Cekvenich, Chief Technology Officer
Vic Cekvenich joined Vendio in 2007 and brings with him 20 years of co-founder, technical and management experience. He is responsible for extending the technology and cost advantage for Vendio as well as leading tech teams on three continents. Additionally, Vic is a published author of the first book on "Struts Best Practices", created a winning social networking product by CERN, and awarded with "Trainer of the Year" as voted by JDJ (Java Developer's Journal).

Prior to joining Vendio, Vic led technical teams at organizations such as Omnicom, Computer Science Corporation, NASA and PointCast, with an efficient cost and productivity track record. He has extensive experience in VL-DB transactional performance under www load. Vic has a CS from CUNY Queens College.

Mike Effle, EVP, Sales Management
Mike Effle joined Vendio in 1999 as one of the first 10 employees. He initially directed business development and strategy efforts and quickly gained more responsibility over his seven years at Vendio. Mike is now responsible for Vendio's Sales Management business, overseeing product development, customer support, business development, sales, and marketing.

Prior to Vendio, Mike spent five years serving his country as an officer in the United States Air Force where he was responsible for developing and producing classified defensive systems for the F-16 that still defend our pilots today. He also held various roles at MCI, Boston Consulting Group, and Raytheon.

Mike graduated Summa Cum Laude from Georgetown University with a BS in Finance and Management and a minor in Government. He also has an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Michael Levit, EVP Marketing and Business Development
Michael is an experienced leader adding 14+ years of brand building, partnership development, and executive management to the Vendio and Dealio team. He oversees customer acquisition, communications, brand management, research, and business development.

Michael is an expert at scaling Internet businesses in both the consumer and small/ medium business (SMB) markets. Most recently he ran the business side of Hearme and Paltalk, the largest video and voice chat communities on the Internet with over 4 million unique monthly visitors. Prior to that Michael established Broadband and affiliate marketing teams at AOL, co-founded Kmart’s online venture Bluelight.com where he ran business development, and founded and helped lead Accenture’s Internet Center of Excellence. Michael holds a Bachelors Degree in Mechanical Engineering and Bachelors and Masters Degrees in Business Economics from U.C. Santa Barbara and Oxford University.

Phil Steffora, Vice President, Technical Operations
Phil Steffora joined Vendio in 2006 and brings over 20 years of information technology and management experience that ensures a scalable, robust and reliable architecture for Vendio's customers. As an expert in scaling emerging technology from incubation through enterprise growth, Phil has held key operations positions with many global technology companies including Digital Equipment Corporation, AltaVista, Metromedia Fiber Network, and America Online. He was co-founder of MIBH Inc., which was later acquired by Metromedia Fiber Network.

Most recently, Phil served as CIO and VP of technical operations for Andale before joining Vendio. Throughout his career, Phil has proven his ability to design, deploy and scale mission-critical network operations to support both the enterprise and the consumer. His teams have been recognized with ISO-9001 certifications for operational excellence.

Timothy Vago, Director of Finance
Timothy Vago joined Vendio as its Controller in 2005 and now serves as Director of Finance, in charge of the company's financial management. Prior to joining Vendio, Tim led the finance team as Controller at Veltec Sports, a distributor of premium bicycle components and accessories, and his previous position was Director of Finance for Automated Power Exchange (APX), a privately held technology company engaged in providing online scheduling and settlement services to businesses in the energy industry. Tim also held positions at Edison Mission Energy and The Sumitomo Bank, Ltd. following his postgraduate studies.

Tim is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) holder, earned his Bachelor of Sciences in Economics with honors from San Jose State University, and completed his MBA from Thunderbird, The Garvin School of International Management.

Ravi Garikipati, Senior Vice President, Managing Director India Operations
Ravi Garikipati has been with Vendio's Andale service since mid-2000 and has served as Vice President & General Manager of Andale's India operations. Ravi's prior responsibilities have included managing the growth and development of Andale's India operations in addition to his position as Head of Engineering at Andale. His duties included oversight of Andale's product development, quality assurance and release activities for its e-commerce products and services. Ravi has over 18 years experience in building teams to deliver high quality products and services in database, middleware and enterprise application areas.

Prior to Vendio, Ravi was an Architect at Arzoo, where he lead architecture design and development of a large P2P commerce platform. Ravi also held various senior engineering management positions at Oracle, IBM and Covansys, where he gained extensive experience in building scalable enterprise application architectures and services. During his time at Oracle, he was part of Oracle Global Alliances, responsible for building and managing a highly specialized technical service practice to evangelize Oracle Technology adoption amongst global SIs and ISVs.

Ravi received Masters degrees in Software Engineering and in Management from Birla Institute of Technology and Science in Pilani, India.

Radu Togui, General Manager, Vendio Romania
Radu Togui joined Vendio in 2000 as one of the first employees of Vendio Romania. In his years with Vendio, he has been instrumental in helping to develop the Vendio's award-winning Sales Management products and services, rising from senior developer to product manager and general manager. Radu is now responsible for leading the Vendio Romania team as it grows and expands its capabilities as a world-class development organization.

Prior to Vendio, Radu worked as a researcher for Romania's Ministry of the Economy and as a project manager with an independent French software company.

Radu received his Masters in Computer Science from "Politehnica" University of Bucharest, Romania, whose prominent engineering alumni have helped to build some of the most well-regarded commercial and scientific organizations in the world.

The Board of Directors

Rick Stubblefield - Founder & Managing Director, Lighthouse Capital Partners
Rick has over 17 years experience in structured venture capital investing. He is a co-founder of Lighthouse Capital Partners where he manages the day-to-day operations of the firm, directs West Coast investment activities, oversees investment decision making and other operational activities for the Funds. While at Lighthouse Rick has led the firm in over 100 investments including Mimosa, RiverBed, Omneon Video Networks, BlueLane, Transera, Tzero, Broadvision, Ariba, Marimba, Portal Software, RedBack Networks, Foundry Networks, Shasta Networks, MMC Networks, nVidia, Symyx Technologies, and Force 10 Networks. Rick serves on the Board of Vendio, and Axis Personal Trainers.

Prior to co-founding Lighthouse in June 1994, Rick was a Senior Vice President with Comdisco Ventures where he co-directed and co-managed West Coast investment activities since 1988. While at Comdisco he led the firm's investments in Synopsys, Spectrum Holobyte, Illustra, Visio, Aspect Development, Edify, and Tularik.

Rick holds a BS from the University of California at Davis and an MBA from Golden Gate University.

Bruce Shewmaker - Managing Director, MVC Capital
Mr. Shewmaker is a senior investment professional with over 30 years of private equity and investment banking experience. Prior to becoming a Managing Director of the Fund in November 2003, Mr. Shewmaker served as a member of the board of the Fund from March 2003 and served out his one year term. Mr. Shewmaker was a co-founder of Merrill Lynch Venture Capital Inc. where he initiated several private equity investment partnerships, including three business development companies. During his ten year career at Merrill Lynch, he participated in sourcing, negotiating and monitoring over 40 private equity transactions including leveraged buyouts and venture capital investments, of which seven companies completed initial public offerings. More recently, Mr. Shewmaker served as President and CEO of The US Russia Investment Fund, with committed capital of $440 million, where he managed a staff of 60 people, including eight private equity professionals, in seven offices across the Russian Federation. As a Managing Director of E*OFFERING Corp., he helped this investment banking firm participate in underwriting more than 50 initial public offerings of domestic companies and was responsible for organizing a global investment banking network. While Mr. Shewmaker has spent the majority of his career with registered investment companies or investment management divisions of NYSE listed firms (divisions of The Chase Manhattan Bank and Time Inc.), in the late 1990's Mr. Shewmaker co-founded Crossbow Ventures, a regionally focused private equity partnership located in Florida.

Bruce earned his undergraduate degree in Finance from The Ohio State University and has passed the Series 7 and 63 NASD qualifying examinations.

Reid Hoffman - Chairman and President, Products at LinkedIn
Prior to heading Products, Reid led LinkedIn through its first fours years of rapid growth as the company's founding CEO. Prior to LinkedIn, Reid was Executive Vice President of PayPal. At PayPal, Reid was in charge of all business relationships: business development, corporate development, international, government relations, and banking/payments infrastructure. During his tenure at PayPal, Reid 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 several companies including Mozilla Corporation, SixApart, and Kiva.org.

Reid graduated with distinction from Stanford University with a B.S. in Cognitive Science and from Oxford University with a Master's degree in philosophy.

Keith Rabois - Vice President, Strategy and Business Development at Slide
Previously, Keith worked as Vice President of Business Development and Advertising Sales at LinkedIn where he was responsible for developing strategic partnerships as well as generating new revenue for the business. Earlier in his career, Keith served as Executive Vice President of Business Development and Policy for PayPal. Prior to his foray into Silicon Valley, Keith practiced law at Sullivan & Cromwell, clerked for the Hon. Edith H. Jones, and engaged in politics, serving as political director for former Vice President Quayle and associate counsel for a US Senate committee.

Keith graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University with a B.A. in political science and received a J.D. with honors from Harvard Law School.