Management Team
Brian Souza founded GetListed in November 2006, bringing over a decade of experience in building, developing, and scaling early-stage companies. Prior to founding GetListed, Souza was the founder and President of Paragon Holdings, LLC. Souza is also the author of a book entitled Become Who You Were Born to Be: We All Have a Gift... Have You Discovered Yours? (Random House). Prior to his high-tech sabbatical, Souza was the Director of Strategic Sales & Corporate Alliances for Akamai Technologies where he led an organization that was responsible for one-third of the company's $163-million revenue. Before joining Akamai in 1999, Souza held various sales and sales management positions for NetGravity and Netscape Communications. Souza earned a B.S. Degree in International Business from San Diego State University.
Sean Kane is recognized as one of the leading experts in the field of User Experience and Design. Prior to joining GetListed as co-founder, Kane was the Director of User Interface Engineering at Netflix, where he led the development of Netflix's award-winning web user interface which was rated #1 in customer satisfaction by independent researchers six consecutive times. Prior to joining Netflix in 2002, Sean led the UI engineering team for Bigvine, a Kleiner-Perkins e-business startup, which was recognized in Forbes 2000 "Best of the Web", Inc. Magazine, and in Newsweek's "Top 103 Web Sites." Previously, Kane developed leading-edge web interfaces at internet search pioneer AltaVista, and developed web applications for AllBusiness.com. He earned a B.S. in Computer Information Systems from California State University, Chico.
Matt Gahr has successfully built and managed high-performance sales and operations teams within the recruiting and employment-services industries throughout his career. Prior to joining GetListed, Matt was a Regional VP for Gevity, a publicly-traded HR Services provider. Before that, Matt spent eight years with Randstad, a global staffing firm, where he ultimately became VP of the Southern California/Arizona Region. Matt earned a B.S. Degree in Business from the University of New Hampshire and an MBA from The Rady School of Management, UC San Diego.
Board of Directors
Bill Strauss is the chief executive officer for Provide Commerce, Inc., which operates ProFlowers — the company that revolutionized the way Americans send and receive flowers when it shipped its first bouquet for Valentine's Day of 1998. Mr. Strauss has been with the company since its inception in the spring 1998. He lead the company's initial public offering in December 2003 and its sale to Liberty Media for $477 million less than 2 years later in February 2006. Prior to joining Provide Commerce, Mr. Strauss was part of the senior management team at ChipSoft, Inc., the makers of TurboTax, which was acquired by Intuit, Inc. in 1993. In the early 1990s, Mr. Strauss was vice president of operations for Hanover Direct, a large catalog company. Mr. Strauss is active in many local business organizations and charitable endeavors including UCSD Connect and the San Diego Chapter of YPO. Mr. Strauss holds a B.A. in Accounting from Syracuse University.
Brian Souza founded GetListed in November 2006, bringing over a decade of experience in building, developing, and scaling early-stage companies. Prior to founding GetListed, Souza was the founder and President of Paragon Holdings, LLC. Souza is also the author of a book entitled Become Who You Were Born to Be: We All Have a Gift... Have You Discovered Yours? (Random House). Prior to his high-tech sabbatical, Souza was the Director of Strategic Sales & Corporate Alliances for Akamai Technologies where he led an organization that was responsible for one-third of the company's $163-million revenue. Before joining Akamai in 1999, Souza held various sales and sales management positions for NetGravity and Netscape Communications. Souza earned a B.S. Degree in International Business from San Diego State University.
Advisory Board
As director of the eBay Research Labs, Mr. Billingsley is responsible for driving innovation at one of the most innovative companies in the world. eBay Research Labs is composed of bright minds from a broad array of disciplines including information retrieval, computational linguistics, complex systems, grid management systems, design, anthropology, system performance, capacity planning, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. Led by Mr. Billingsley, the scientists and engineers working in eBay Research Labs are exploring what e-commerce will look like 5-10 years from now and defining the trends and technologies that will shape its future.
As Senior Vice President at Ning, Mr. Parikh leads the product development, engineering, and operations teams that are creating Ning's rapidly growing social networking platform. He helps define and is responsible for executing on Ning's product and platform roadmap. Prior to joining Ning, Mr. Parikh was the Vice President of Engineering at Akamai Technologies. As Vice President, Mr. Parikh led the product engineering teams responsible for Akamai's Digital Asset and Dynamic Site Solutions. These solutions are the core services leveraged by the majority of Akamai's customers. Mr. Parikh led the development and launch of numerous new Akamai products over his 8.5 year career at Akamai.
Dr. Pliner has over 30 years experience in computer software and systems technology, general management, and business development. Dr. Pliner has founded, financed, and built three successful high technology businesses. Dr. Pliner co-founded Verity Inc., serving as Chairman, President, and CEO. He also co-founded Sytek Inc. serving as its Chairman and CEO. Currently, Dr. Pliner is a consulting entrepreneur serving on the boards or advisory boards of several high technology companies. His primary interests are in networking, security and enterprise software technologies.