Advisory Board

The Advisory Board is a group of people that provide the company guidance and advice. We are proud and honored to have built a very strong advisory board, which serves the company well.

G.M. O’Connell

G.M. O’Connell co-founded Modem Media, the first online marketing agency, in 1987. By the early 1990’s it was doing work for Fortune 500 clients across many interactive media including online, interactive telephone, interactive fax, interactive television, and PC based multimedia. As Chairman and CEO, G.M. guided Modem through rapid organic and acquisition based growth as the Internet began to dominate the interactive marketing landscape. Modem conducted a successful IPO in 1999. During his tenure as CEO, from 1996 to 2001, the company’s revenues grew from $10 million to $135 million. In 2001 G.M. replaced himself as CEO, but stayed on as Chairman through 2006, when the company was acquired by Digitas, Inc. G.M. has served on the board and/or advised leading startup companies such as CentrPort, Echomail, Intercasting, Chumby, Compass Healthcare and Lemonade Inc. G.M. served for many years as an executive committee member and Treasurer of the Direct Marketing Association. He has delivered speeches around the world and shown up on all the major cable financial news channels. G.M. holds a BA from Middlebury College.

Jeff Richards

Currently at Granite Global Ventures (www.ggvc.com) as a Partner in the Menlo Park office. GGV is an expansion-stage venture capital firm with $1B under management and a very successful track record in the US and China. Representative investments include Alibaba (HKSE: 1688.HK), AAC Acoustic (HKSE: 2018.HK), athenahealth (NASDAQ: ATHN), and SuccessFactors (NASDAQ: SFSF). Just prior to Granite Global Ventures Jeff served as Vice President, Digital Content Services at VeriSign. Before Verisign Jeff served as President and CEO of R4 Global Solutions (www.R4GS.com), a technology services provider in the RFID space, acquired by VeriSign in May 2005 for $15 million. From 1997 to 2002, Jeff was Co-Founder and an executive at QuantumShift, a technology and services business in the telecommunications space. During his tenure at QuantumShift, the company grew to over $25MM in annual sales and attracted venture financing from the Mayfield Fund, Texas Pacific Group, Thomas Weisel Partners, and others. From 1995 to 1997, Jeff was a management consultant with PricewaterhouseCoopers. During his tenure with PwC, Jeff led strategy and corporate restructuring engagements in the U.S. and Asia for clients such as Bank of America, Intel and Callaway Golf. Jeff is an Advisory Board member of Standard Renewable Energy (www.standardrenewables.com), Pacific Partners LP (a venture capital firm), and an advisor to RPM Ventures (a venture capital firm). Jeff graduated from Dartmouth College in 1994 and lives in Pleasanton, CA with his family.

Ken Venturi

Ken is the SVP & Chief Creative Officer of National Cinemedia, which is the nation’s largest in-theatre advertising network. National Cinemedia has over 15,000 screens across 1,100 theatres in 47 dates and reach 600 million plus moviegoers annually. As Chief Creative Officer, Ken oversees all on screen production, creation, and quality and is the creative visionary behind NCM’s groundbreaking pre-feature program, “FirstLook”. As SVP of Media and Interactive, Ken also heads the Interactive Division for NCM, pioneering its online business unit into breakthrough online media and content. This new line of business includes the development and launch of an entertainment centricwebsite and mobile platform and spans applications of viral marketing, social networking, an innovative rich media ad network, an online merchant commerce.

Learn More About StashCast

• Leadership Team
• Advisory Board
• Investors

Robert Beran

Robert is currently CEO and President of Nextlink Wireless, a Carl Icahn company. Nextlink is the largest holder of fixed wireless spectrum in the United States. Over Robert’s 20+ years of experience in the communications, information, and entertainment services industries he has served as CEO of Bell Atlantic Internet Group, CEO of eVidient, as well as other executive level positions. Robert’s general business experience and contacts in the industry will lend great value to the StashCast advisory board.

James Gatto

Jim is head of the Intellectual Property group of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, which has one of the largest IP practices in the country. Mr. Gatto advises a range of clients from start-ups through Fortune 50 companies, but with a particular emphasis on Internet and Software start-ups. Mr. Gatto has been in the intellectual property field since 1984, when he started as a Patent Examiner. Over the years he has had leading roles in a number of national and local patent-related legal and industry organizations. Since 2000, he has been a member of the Board of Trustees and Secretary of the Software Patent Institute; He previously served as Chair of the Patent, Trademark & Copyright Section of the Young Lawyers Division of the ABA; President of the Patent Lawyers Club of Washington; and a member of the Board of Governors of the Patent and Trademark Office Society. In addition to his practice, Mr. Gatto teaches Legal Aspects of Biotechnology in Johns Hopkins MBA program. Over the years, Mr. Gatto has been recognized by his peers as a top lawyer in his field—he is ranked as “AV” from Martindale Hubbell Law Directory, the highest rating given to participating attorneys, and was voted one of the top IP/IT attorneys in Virginia in the December 2000 Virginia Business Journal Survey. For several years, Mr. Gatto has been ranked by Chambers USA as one of America’s Leading Intellectual Property Lawyers in Northern Virginia and is named a 2006 Virginia Super Lawyer by Law & Politics and Richmond Magazine.

Mark Vranesh

Mark is currently serving as the CFO of the Zynga Network, a privately held venture funded social gaming network. Mark’s business experience started as a CPA at Ernst & Young. After managing a team at Ernst & Young for a number of years he joined SupportSoft as VP of Finance and was instrumental in enabling the company raise capital from private equity and institutional sources, as well as work with tier one investment bankers to take the company through a very successful IPO. Mark’s work on the advisory board will focus mainly on assisting the company with financial structure, capital fund raising, and operational best practices.

Dan Koster

Dan is currently serving as Vice President of Worldwide Systems Engineering at SupportSoft. While at SupportSoft Dan delivered massive scale, carrier class consumer facing applications at some of the largest service providers in the world – Comcast, Time Warner Cable, BellSouth, and others. Dan serves as a trusted technical advisor to the company.