Our Team

Our team has some of the best technology minds from industry and academia devoted to making the Web intelligent through the power of categorization. We come from Amazon.com, Yahoo!, eBay, Inktomi, Bell Labs, IBM, Stanford University, Berkeley, University of Wisconsin, University of Texas and the Indian Institute of Technology.

Bios 2.0

Venky Harinarayan and Anand Rajaraman, Co-Founders

Anand and Venky have been involved in academia, research and venture funding since the start of the Internet becoming a part of our daily lives.

Top Five Cool Cred:

1. Creators and co-founders of Junglee, the first shopping search engine which was acquired by Amazon.com in 1998 for $250 million. At Amazon.com, they created the search and marketplace business, a key part of Amazon today, accounting for 30% of gross merchandise sales
2. Founders of Cambrian Ventures that has invested in Internet companies such as Efficient Frontier, Kaltix (acquired by Google), Neoteris (acquired by Juniper), Transformic (acquired by Google), TheFind, and Aster Data
3. Researchers and publishers of a seminal paper on Data Cubes that was recognized with the best paper award in 1996 and a “Test-of-Time” award in 2006 by ACM SIGMOD
4. Inventors of numerous technologies used in everyday Internet transactions including Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk, virtual databases, and comparison shopping
5. Graduates of Stanford University and Indian Institute of Technology

Srinivasan “Sesh” Seshadri, Chief Technology Officer

Sesh is our resident search technology expert with more than 10 years in research and industry.

Top Three Cool Cred:

1. Chief Technology Officer for Yahoo’s India development center based in Bangalore
2. Founder of Strand Genomics, a biotechnology company (yes, we attract the eclectic kind) and research jock at Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies
3. Graduate of Indian Institute of Technology and the University of Wisconsin

STS Prasad, Vice President, Service Management

STS is our operations guy and has more than 15 years of experience in entrepreneurial, management and technical positions.

Top Three Cool Cred:

1. Member of the Junglee-Amazon team
2. Co-founder and CTO of Aventeon in the enterprise mobile software space; and a contributor at Sybase and HCL
3. Graduate of Indian Institute of Technology and the University of Wisconsin

Michelle Yee Sangster, Vice President, Business Development

Michelle is our business development rock star with over 18 years in the Internet and publishing spheres in the United States and overseas.

Top Three Cool Cred:

1. Alumni of Yahoo! and Overture where she managed business development and search and content monetization
2. Key player on the Junglee team and also spent time at Pointcast, WishClick, Cellectivity in the UK and Encyclopedia Brittanica
3. Graduate of UCLA and the Harvard Graduate School of Business (Finally, a business head in our techie world, halleluiah!)

Sri Subramaniam, Vice President, Engineering

Sri runs our Development team, and brings in more than 17 years of experience in Large-scale software architecture, Engg management and Search technology.

Top Three Cool Cred:

1. Director, Search at eBay. Led the development of 3 generations of Search and Categorization technology
2. Several years of leadership roles in Silicon Valley startups related to e-commerce, 3D, digital media
3. Graduate of Indian Institute of Technology and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Ravi N. Raj, Vice President, Products & GM, Owned & Operated Sites

Ravi runs our Product team, and has more than 16 years of experience in product development and business operations.

Top Three Cool Cred:

1. Sr. Director, Product Management at Yahoo! Worked for 5 years at Yahoo! in search, social media and marketplace verticals
2. Managed product teams at AltaVista, Elance and SGI, and holds patents in sponsored search and e-commerce
3. Graduate of Indian Institute of Technology and UC, Irvine

Our Board of Directors

Venky and Anand are joined by the following on our board.

Theresia Gouw Ranzetta, Accel

Theresia has been with Accel Partners since 1999. She focuses primarily on software and internet investments with specific interest in security, Vertical Media/Search and online media and advertising. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of ForeScout, Glam Media, Interlace Systems, Imperva, Jasper Design Automation, Kosmix, Trulia and Wetpaint. She is also responsible for Accel's investments in CRS Retail Systems (EPIC), LetsTalk, PeopleSupport (PSPT), Webroot and Zimbra; and was part of the team responsible for investing in Walmart.com (WMT).

Theresia has worked in the computer and communications industries since the late-1980's as an entrepreneur, consultant and venture investor. Prior to joining Accel Partners, she was founding Vice President of Business Development & Sales at Release Software, a venture-backed company which developed products to enable digital rights management and payment technologies for the software industry. Theresia was a key member of the senior management team and was instrumental in growing the company from $0 to $15M in revenue in two years. Before that, Theresia worked as a management consultant at Bain & Company and a product manager at Silicon Graphics.

Theresia holds an Sc.B. in Engineering from Brown University, magna cum laude and an M.B.A. from Stanford University.

Ravi Mhatre, Lightspeed Venture Partners

Ravi is a founding partner of Lightspeed Venture Partners, and primarily focuses on Internet and software investments. He has eleven years of venture capital experience and six years of operating experience. Before joining Weiss, Peck & Greer Venture Partners in 1999, Ravi was with Bessemer Venture Partners, and invested in NetGenesis Software [NTGX], Verio [VRIO], VIA-Networks [VNWI], Webspective Software (acquired by Inktomi) and InCert Software (acquired by Geodesic).

Previously, Ravi ran market development efforts for the engineering workstation division of Silicon Graphics, and also worked at Lehman Brothers and Booz Allen Hamilton. He holds a BS in Electrical Engineering, an AB in Economics, and an MBA from Stanford University.

Jonathan Miller

Jonathan is the former Chairman and CEO of AOL. At AOL, Jonathan was primarily responsible for shifting AOL’s Internet business from the walled garden approach to giving everyone access to free features and content, a move widely hailed as a success in the industry. During his tenure, he increased the profitability of the AOL franchise and generated over $9 billion in free cash.

Prior to AOL, Jonathan was CEO and president of USA Information and Services, now InterActiveCorp, where he managed the company’s e-commerce properties including CitySearch, Expedia, Match.com and Ticketmaster. Jonathan also served as CEO and president of USA Broadcasting; managing director of Nickelodeon International; chief executive at Paramount; and vice president of programming and NBA entertainment at the National Basketball Association.

Additional Investors to Accel and Lightspeed

Jeffrey P. Bezos, Amazon.com

President, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board

Bill Miller, Legg Mason

Chairman and Chief Investment Officer