- SocialMedia's talent is comprised of people with backgrounds in online advertising, social media and technology industries. The team is bound by a passion to invent new ways of making advertising more effective within social media.
Seth Goldstein, Co-Founder & CEO - Seth drives the SocialMedia Advertising Vision, is keeper of our values and ensures the team executes to our goals.
Dave Gentzel, Co-Founder & VP Products - Dave invents products that capitalize on social media
Sourabh Niyogi, Co-Founder & VP Engineering - Sourabh thinks about what's possible and leads our technology team to make it real.
Mike Fury, VP Sales - Mike leads our advertising sales team, communicating our value proposition to leading advertisers and agencies.
Eddie Smith, VP Marketing & Business Development - Eddie defines our positioning and creates communication programs into our advertisers and developers
Ken Thom, VP Operations - Ken is a Swiss army knife that maintains finances, ensures our HR needs are met, and ensures we have a comfortable work environment.
Seth Goldstein, Co-Founder & CEO - Seth Goldstein is the co-founder and CEO of SocialMedia Networks. In his role as CEO, Seth drives the strategic direction of the company, overseeing the development of technologies and services to keep SocialMedia Networks at the forefront of social media and advertising. Seth has extensive leadership experience, advising advertisers on the evolving opportunities in social media, while encouraging developer creation of lasting and interactive applications for online consumers.
- An experienced entrepreneur, Seth has created a number of successful Internet businesses, including one of the first Internet advertising companies, SiteSpecific, in 1995. Seth was Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Flatiron Partners from 1998 to 2000. In 2002, he co-founded Majestic Research, a next generation Wall Street research firm that provides leading hedge funds with proprietary data insights. Majestic Research was founded on the premise that vigilant analysis of online behavior would lead to better investment research. In 2005, he created Root Markets, the first financial exchange marketplace for Internet mortgage leads.
- Seth is also an angel advisor to a number of Web services companies including Aggregate Knowledge, Lijit and Downfly. He was the first investor in Web 2.0 pioneer del.icio.us (now part of Yahoo!).
- In addition to Seth's entrepreneurial efforts, he is also an active member on the speaking circuit, considered the de facto expert on social media. Providing insight for both advertisers and developers, Seth is often asked for his thoughts on best practices, emerging trends and the future of the social media landscape. He contributed his expertise to articles in the Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek, offering the inside scoop on monetizing social media, connecting advertisers with developers and the importance of social network applications as part of multi-channel advertising campaigns.
Dave Gentzel, Co-Founder and Vice President of Product Development - Dave Gentzel is co-founder and vice president of product development of SocialMedia Networks. Building compelling Web applications for over 10 years, Dave is the resident expert on what makes a successful social media application. Dave developed the extremely popular Facebook applications FoodFight and HappyHour, which have each attracted over three million users. Dave oversees and guides the strategic and creative product development at SocialMedia Networks.
- In 2006, Dave's creation of the widget Trakzor for MySpace, which enables users to monitor visitors to their profile pages, attracted 3.5 millions users and 40 million pageviews per month. Dave was immediately brought on board at SocialMedia Networks when the Facebook platform opened to developers, and continues to educate developers on how to make the most successful applications for advertisers.
- True to his entrepreneurial spirit, Dave has been actively building online business ventures since the age of 15. In 1998, he launched the Trintium Gaming Network, a Web hosting and advertising agency serving video game and entertainment Web sites, which delivered over 100 million hits to fans worldwide.
- Dave graduated summa cum laude from at Virginia Tech with a B.S. in business information technology.
Sourabh Niyogi, Co-Founder and Vice President of Engineering - Under Sourabh Niyogi's leadership, SocialMedia Networks has built one of the largest independent social advertising networks where developers can monetize their social applications on Facebook, Bebo and OpenSocial-based social networks. As co-founder and vice president of engineering, his enthusiastic creativity has produced a number of key products for SocialMedia Networks, including the cornerstone application for developers, Appsaholic.
Previously, Sourabh was a researcher at MIT in cognitive science, computational linguistics and machine vision. He also worked as a consultant with a number of leading advertising technology companies in the late 90s, including NetGravity.
Sourabh studied computer science at MIT, graduating with a master's degree in electrical engineering while pursuing his PhD in computational linguistics.
Mike Fury, Vice President of Sales - As SocialMedia Networks' vice president of sales, Mike Fury contributes extensive experience in high level management, strategic sales planning and business operations management. Mike is responsible for the day-to-day operations of SocialMedia Networks sales, including revenue generation efforts, relationship building and training/development of the sales team.
- Most recently, Mike held the titles of sales director at AOL and regional vice president for Advertising.com. At AOL, Mike doubled the sales revenue and generated 60 million dollars in advertising sales for 2007. Mike was responsible for developing and managing sales teams while leveraging performance through account strategy, negotiations and development of external client/agency relationships.
- Mike’s leadership at Advertising.com helped the company become a Fortune 2000 business, landing key Fortune 50-100 retailers and financial service accounts. Recruiting new talent and strengthening the regional sales team, Mike exceeded revenue goals annually.
- A graduate of the University of Colorado, Denver, Mike received his B.S. in business management.
Eddie Smith, Vice President of Marketing and Business Development- Eddie Smith is the vice president of marketing and business development at SocialMedia Networks. Eddie is responsible for creating the strategy, tactics and programs geared to position SocialMedia Networks as the leading online social advertising platform. He is an experienced business development professional who has successfully built businesses within the online advertising industry. Eddie plans, organizes and manages the marketing functions required to achieve growth, profitability and visibility while maintaining brand message continuity worldwide.
- Prior to his work at SocialMedia Networks, Eddie was the vice president of digital marketing at WebTrends, which acquired his previous company, ClickShift. He has significant expertise marketing and selling into Internet Retailer Top 100 advertisers along with the world’s largest digital advertising agencies. He's worked with online and offline acquisition channels including paid search, display advertising, email marketing, direct mail and other offline mediums.
- Eddie’s prior professional engagements include NextTag, USADATA, DoubleClick and Reuters Marketing Information. Shortly after graduating from college, he also founded Communications Concepts, a media consulting firm providing media research and market analyses to agencies and advertisers. He holds a B.A. in advertising and master’s degree in marketing communications from Florida State University.
Ken Thom, Vice President of Operations - Ken Thom is vice president of operations at SocialMedia Networks. Ken is responsible for the ongoing establishment and execution of all key business functions for growth as the largest leading advertising platform for social networks. Ken’s specialties include product and people operations, accounting, finance contracts and key legal and business relationships.
- Ken has over 15 years of experience working with leading technology companies and Internet startups. He has held a number of product management and operations roles at renowned Silicon Valley companies such as Apple, where he helped launch Firewire.
- Most recently, Ken acted as chief product officer at Unboggle, a web-based service set to launch in April ’08. Ken offered a consulting role focused on product and marketing areas, primarily helping the company with product feature definition, development and release. He assisted with market research and the product launch plan to gain visibility with potential end users, investors and hi-tech influencers.
- Ken was also the co-founder and vice president of products of Vazu Inc., a free, ad-based service for mobile phones enabling the transfer of text, images and music from the web or desktop with one click.
- Graduating Magna Cum Laude with a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland, Ken went on to receive his Masters in the field from Stanford University.
