Schneidersf
I'm a software entrepreneur with 10 years of experience at early-stage technology companies. First as a software engineer, then as VP Technology, VP Marketing and most recently as a CEO, I've worked with outstanding technology teams in areas including web-based email, RSS aggregation, digital music, multimedia chip design, Virtual Reality, and audio DSP software.
Oddpost (acquired by Yahoo)
CEO / 2002 - 2004
Oddpost was an award winning web application that seamlessly combined email, RSS aggregation and blogging and offered an amazing desktop-quality user experience inside a regular web browser. Yahoo acquired Oddpost to bring its technology to over 100 million Yahoo Mail users.
· Joined the two Oddpost founders to help create the next generation of web-based email and rich client web application technology.
· Wrote business plan, secured first customers (including Oracle Corp), created distribution channels and grew consumer subscription and OEM licensing revenues.
· Launched the company at DEMO 2003, including an on-stage presentation to an audience of leading technologists, CEOs and business press. The launch generated PR exposure in over 150 newspapers worldwide.
· Grew company from 2 to 12 people over 18 months (during general economic downturn).
· Raised $2 mil VC funding from Venture Strategy Partners and Draper Associates.
· Negotiated sale of company to Yahoo.
Uplister
CEO / 2000 - 2002
Uplister was a highly popular online music discovery and recommendation system. Based on the belief that music is primarily a “taste business”, Uplister built an online publishing system for music fans and celebrities to create playlists and narratives about their favorite music. A core community of “tastemakers” emerged, writing about their daily lives and the personal soundtracks that accompanied them. These writings and playlists were followed by hundreds of thousands of music fans as a way to discover new music.
· Co-founded company and raised $6 million VC investment from August Capital.
· Overcame hiring challenges of .com boom to form a management team with executives and senior managers from EMI Music, Virgin Records, Porter Novelli and The Cartoon Network.
· Launched online playlist sharing and digital music subscription service and attracted over 500,000 users based on grass roots marketing. The service generated average user sessions (30 minutes) and loyalty rates (40%) that were 3-4 times higher than competing music services.
· Secured high-profile PR coverage including CNN, the Wall Street Journal, LA Times, USA Today, Billboard Magazine and Time Magazine.
· Negotiated industry first distribution agreements for digital music subscriptions with 10 leading independent record labels (including TVT Records, Matador Records and Beggars Banquet).
· Signed up over 50 celebrity contributors , including well known writers and musicians like Nick Hornby, Radiohead, Joey Ramone, Ice-T, Nelly Furtado, Tricky and Paul Oakenfold.
Aureal Semiconductor (acquired by Creative Labs)
VP Technology / 1996 – 1998 / Senior VP Marketing / 1998 - 2000
Aureal’s audio chips significantly raised the bar for sound quality on PCs. Using 3D audio technology acquired from Crystal River, Aureal challenged the dominant, but aging Soundblaster standard with a new interactive surround sound standard called A3D. Aureal’s A3D chips and sound cards became standard equipment in millions of PCs from Dell to Compaq and Sony. Driving A3D's adoption was its selection as the audio engine of choice by a series of highly popular video games. After rising to the #2 position in its market in just 18 months, Aureal was acquired by Creative Labs.
· Joined Aureal (Ticker: AURL) through their acquisition of Crystal River Engineering and served on their executive staff during growth from 30 to 140 employees. Aureal was acquired by competitor Creative Labs in early 2000.
· Created the A3D audio standard and got leading game developers to adopt it in over 100 video games, including a string of #1 hits: Jedi Knight from Lucas Arts, Quake III from id Software/Activision, Unreal from Epic Games and Half-Life from Valve. Worked with Microsoft who used A3D as the blueprint for DirectSound3D in Windows 95.
· Helped define “Vortex”, a line of advanced PCI audio chips and soundcards that brought HiFi-quality A3D sound to PCs. Implemented national and international Vortex product launches and supported sales growth to $12 million per quarter. Vortex based soundcards like the Diamond Monster Sound won dozens of editor’s choice awards and product shootouts.
· Closed multi-million dollar A3D licensing deals with ATI, Cirrus Logic, Diamond Multimedia, Oak Technology, Rockwell Semiconductor and S3, and helped close Vortex chip sales with Compaq, Dell, HP, Micron, NEC and Sony.
· Created Aureal’s marketing department from scratch, including Marcom, PR, developer support and application development teams.
· Represented Aureal as the primary spokesperson to technology analysts and media, as a speaker at gaming and technology conferences, and as a lead witness in a patent defense trial.
Crystal River Engineering (acquired by Aureal Semiconductor)
Software Engineer / 1993 –1996
Crystal River Engineering (CRE) was one of the pioneers of Virtual Reality, a breakthrough technology that gained worldwide attention in the early 1990s. CRE’s contribution to Virtual Reality was a new type of digital audio technology that allowed users inside a virtual 3D environment to hear sounds the way we hear them in real life. This technology, called Audio Reality, could process sounds in real-time to make them appear above, behind or anywhere around a person, zooming past them, being muffled by walls or echoing around corners. The result was so life-like and accurate that it enabled blind people to navigate virtual 3D environments using only their ears. CRE was acquired by Aureal to bring this technology from the world of million-dollar NASA simulators into everyday multimedia PCs.
· Joined CRE founder Scott Foster to help advance the development of the NASA-commissioned “Convolvotron”, the world's first real-time binaural audio rendering system. The Convolvotron’s massively parallel DSP engine was capable of digitally processing sounds in the exact way humans perceive them in the real world, including modeling of sound waves as they travel through walls, the atmosphere and the outer ear structure.
· Co-developed 3D audio API and real-time geometry processing engine (C/C++, Windows/UNIX) that allowed 3D simulation developers to synchronize interactive audio events with 3D graphics rendering engines.
· Co-developed client/server software (C/C++, Windows/UNIX) to integrate 3D audio rendering into over a hundred high-end Virtual Reality and Visual Simulation systems, including NASA and Air Force training simulators, Disneyland VR rides and digital art installations at the New York MOMA.
· Took on marketing tasks to expand CRE technology and products into various vertical markets including pro audio, game consoles, government contracts and amusement parks, helping the company grow to 14 people and $3 million in annual sales.
· Helped formulate a plan to cost reduce the CRE technology from $20,000 digital audio servers into $10 DSP chips, which led to acquisition proposals from several multimedia companies.
STANFORD UNIVERSITY, Stanford, CA
· Masters Degree Candidate Computer Science, 1993
· BS Degree in Computer Science, 1993
OTHER
· Swiss citizen, Green Card holder
· Member of Tau Beta Pi National Engineering Honors Society
· Interests: family, car racing, tennis, skiing, alternative energy and backpacking
