Team

Al Bsharah
Co-Founder, CEO

Degree: Electrical Engineering

Geekness:

• Started writing code on an Apple ][+ at 10 years old.
• Player of 2-Man Beach Volleyball, SCUBA Diver.
• Has two dogs and a wife that keep him sane.

Career Focus:

• Has taken him down a business, management, and executive path.
• Software as a Service (SaaS), Managed Services, and 24x7 Operations.

Accomplishments:

• Managed a $24M network infrastructure upgrade to a major healthcare provider.
• Directed the launch of a Private Cloud solution that included Virtual Private Server (VPS), Virtual Applications, Web and Database hosting.
• Designed and built a first-in-class Network Operations Center (NOC) web portal in 2001 that aggregated 5 back-end monitoring tools and gave customers visibility into all activity within their network.
• Has grown an on-line community to 1-million page-views per month and got the site publicity on multiple magazine covers.

History:

• Started and ran his own eCommerce company in 2003. Made a lot of mistakes, learned from (most of) them!
• 2nd employee and equity owner in a startup that was eventually acquired in 2008.
• Founder Institute Graduate, Spring 2011.

Bryan Hall
Co-Founder, CTO

Degree: Cognitive Science

Geekness:

• Started programming on a TRS-80 Model III at 10 years old.
• Enjoys trailrunning…sometimes barefoot.
• New sailor with visions of far away places.
• Once held his breath for 4 minutes and 12 seconds.

Career Focus:

• Coding, coding…and yeah, more coding.
• Building highly reliable systems.

Accomplishments:

• Wrote code for both mobile phones and hard drives that has shipped in over 100-million devices world wide.
• Built the first certified Bluetooth stack for Windows and mobile in 2002, which was later acquired by Broadcom in 2004.
• Made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs.

History:

• Co-founded and ran his own engineering services company in 2002, transitioned into a Bluetooth wireless products company in 2005. Made a lot of mistakes, learned from (most of) them!
• Software Lead at Symwave developing a USB3 to SATA II bridge chip that shipped in Western Digital hard drives. Symwave was acquired by SMSC in 2010.
• Founder Institute Graduate, Spring 2011.

Dave Churchville
Sr. Developer
(and much more)

Degree: Computer Science, Princeton

Geekness:

• Started programming at age 11 on a Timex-Sinclair 1000.
• Blues harmonica player for past 20 years.
• Thinks in code. Any code.
• Customer Development Guru.
• Solid Business Acumen.

History:

• First startup at age 13 selling productivity software for Apple ][.
• Director of Engineering for XMology.
• Director of Software Engineering for CardioNet, (now public).
• Founder of ExtremePlanner, MyClientSpot, and UserMood.

Johnathan Goodwin
Developer

Degree: Computer Engineering

Geekness:

• Passion of writing code discovered at age 19.
• Passion for entrepreneurship discovered at age 22.
• Lover of life-hacks and gaining knowledge for the sake of knowledge.
• Avid fitness enthusiast.
• About to join the 1000-Pound-Club.

History:

• Web developer for American Council on Exercise.
• Software developer for U of Alabama.
• Software developer for BAE Systems.

Advisors

Chris Corriveau, StockTwits CTO

If there’s a social network or communications channel out there, Chris has probably used it (a lot). A 15-year tech veteran, he’s built his own web and eCommerce company, and now runs the amazing tech behind StockTwits (6 million unique users, 800 million requests /mo). You’ll find him at a startup event, riding his bike, or hangin’ with his dog in San Diego.

Eric Otterson, Cooley SVP Business Development

A veteran of 3 VC-backed companies and 17 years in technology, he’s now vital to Cooley‘s massive growth and presence in San Diego. A champion of the entrepreneur and capital connector, he’s focused on growing the San Diego startup and angel/venture community. You’d be hard pressed not to bump into him at an event, and might catch him skiing, hiking, or mixing up some tunes!
 

Steve Macbeth, Microsoft Partner Engineering Manager

Responsible for making sure everything that shows up on Bing is relevant, high quality, and fast. Also built the infrastructure that enabled hundred of engineers to experiement and innovate on core relevance at scale. Manages a team at Microsoft focused on strategy and incubation projects leveraging advanced technology in personal cloud, structured data, personalization, recommendations, machine learning & agents. In other words? Big data + machine learning guru!