Medio™ - Mobile Search and Advertising Leader

Bill Bryant

Co-founder and Advisory Chair

William K. (Bill) Bryant has had early and instrumental involvement in over twenty leading software and Internet companies, serving variously as a founder, senior executive, investor and board member. Before he recently joined Mobile Operandi as CEO, Bryant was a partner with Atlas Venture, a large international venture capital firm with $2.5 billion under management, where he originated an investment in Isilon Systems (http://www.isilon.com). Prior to Atlas, Bryant was a co-founder of Qpass, where he served as CEO and later Chairman. He also co-founded and served as president of Netbot, Inc., which built the first comparison shopping agent for the Internet, Jango.

In the early 1990s, Bryant was the founding Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Marketing at Visio Corporation (now part of Microsoft Corporation). He was an early investor and board member in seven companies that were acquired or went public, including Loudeye, AEI Music (DMX/Liberty Media), Viafone (Extended Systems), Teamplate (Captaris), Exstatic Software (Xchange Applications), Throw (Excite) and Singing Fish (Thomson). In addition, Bryant consulted extensively for Microsoft Corporation, RealNetworks, Getty Images, and Corbis. Earlier in his career, he held VP Marketing and GM roles for Micrografx, Software Publishing and Traveling Software.

Bryant is currently on the Board of three software companies, ACL, Intrinsyc and Jabber. He serves on the Advisory Boards of Qpass, Singlestep, Network Clarity, Web Relevance, Cascadia Capital, vCustomer, Medio Systems, iXmatch and Communitect.

John R. Ellis

Ellis has over 25 years of experience in startups and research, in entrepreneurial, managerial and technical roles.

Most recently, Ellis was SVP of Engineering and Operations for AltaVista, and helped turn around the web search pioneer, leading to a successful $140M acquisition by Overture and then Yahoo. He hired industry technical leaders and led the team in greatly improving AltaVista's search products, once again innovating in web search, and gaining parity with industry-leading Google.

Prior to AltaVista, Ellis was an Entrepreneur in Residence at New Enterprise Associates, helping to launch a storage startup. In 1996, he co-founded Post Communications, the first e-mail marketing company based on relationship marketing. As VP of Technology, he helped grow Post to 150 employees, 70 clients, and 3 terabytes of managed customer data, enabling an acquisition by Netcentives for $380 million. At Open Market, he led a team building a first-generation content-push product for Time Warner.

Ellis spent over 15 years at Xerox PARC, Digital Equipment's Systems Research Center, and Yale University, researching compilation for VLIWs, programming environments, distributed computing, garbage collection and wireless PDAs, and receiving two patents in programming-language implementation. He received a BSE from Princeton University and a PhD from Yale University, and his thesis won the 1985 Association for Computing Machinery Best Dissertation Award and was published by MIT Press.

Ming Lei

Ming was one of the four founders of Baidu, the largest Chinese search engine and the seventh-largest web site in the world, where he was in responsible for Baidu's core technology. As the chief architect, Ming designed the Baidu search engine system and led the core engineering team. Ming led the Blitzen Project in 2002, after which Baidu's overall search quality exceeded that of Google Chinese, and maintained Baidu’s market leadership in China. Ming also coordinated various departments within Baidu to revise their advertising strategy, and contributed to tenfold year-over-year customer growth and Baidu’s profitability.

While he was at Stanford, Ming interned with Ignition Partners to evaluate deals and plot a Chinese investment strategy. Ming was also part of a team that designed and launched a major search engine's mobile search strategy in 2004. Ming is an MBA candidate at Stanford, and holds an M.S. and B.S. with honors in Computer Science from Peking University. In high school, Ming earned the Silver Medal in China National Physics Contest, besting 10 million student participants. He also served as Vice President of the Association of Chinese Students and Scholars at Stanford, and the President of the Student Union at EECS School in Peking University.

Paul Ryan

Ryan is CEO of Perform Local, Inc., an early-stage startup in local advertising. Previously, he was the Chief Technology Officer of Overture Services, Inc., the pioneer in pay-for-performance Internet advertising. While at Overture, Ryan built the largest pay-for-performance search engine on the web, leading the technology team and having overall responsibility for the core technologies and business processes that supported the company's business.

Prior to joining Overture, Ryan was CIO for Delray Farms, LLC, a Chicago-based retail startup, where he built the systems and business process infrastructure for a $250 million retail concept. Before Delray Farms, Ryan spent nearly four years at Deloitte & Touche, LLC as a management consultant, and more than four years as a software engineer, project manager, and lead systems designer for Digital Equipment Corporation. Ryan received a B.S.E. from Princeton University, an MS in Computer Science from Johns Hopkins University, and an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Thomas Ellsworth

Prior to becoming COO of GoTV Networks, Ellsworth served as EVP of Marketing and Corporate Development at JAMDAT Mobile Inc. from 2001 to 2005, where he was part of the management team that saw the company complete its highly successful IPO in September of 2004. Prior to JAMDAT, he was Vice President of Incubator Development and Senior Director of Business Development in the wireless division of Sprint. In that role, Ellsworth oversaw the Sprint incubator joint venture that led to the formation of wireless companies including JAMDAT Mobile and Boingo. While at Sprint, Ellsworth also launched the 1st CDMA market in the US and developed the "Free and Clear" rate plans—a pioneering change in the wireless industry.

Earlier in his career, he held sales, marketing and strategy roles at California Amplifier, Inc., L.A. Cellular (acquired by AT&T), and IBM. Ellsworth received his Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration—Marketing from California State University, Northridge, and an MBA from Pepperdine University.

Eric Hertz

Hertz brings 28 years of experience in the telecommunications industry, including local exchange, long distance, and wireless services. He has spent the past two decades in mobile telecommunications, building and growing wireless networks across the Americas.

He most recently served as Chief Operating Officer for Western Wireless, a provider of voice and data services to 19 states, acquired by Alltel, Inc., in late 2005. As a Regional President at AT&T Fixed Wireless, Hertz helped launch new broadband wireless services, providing advanced voice and data technologies to home and business customers. Earlier in his career, Hertz worked with BellSouth Mobile in both North and South America, in roles including Regional Chief Operating Officer for BellSouth International in Central America, and President of the BellSouth wireless business in Ecuador. He also worked with McCaw Cellular during the early days of the wireless industry, and with AT&T, Inc.

Hertz received his Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and his MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He currently serves on the Board of Directors for NTELOS, Inc., a landline and wireless telecommunications provider based in Virginia.