Board Of Directors
Jim Lanzone
CEO
Jim has spent the past 13 years in the Internet industry, starting as co-founder of a startup called eTour and most recently serving as CEO of search engine Ask.com. In between he had adventures with such colorful characters as Mahir "I Kiss You" Cagri and a butler named Jeeves. After leaving Ask in 2008, Jim took a position as Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Redpoint Ventures, the investors behind companies like MySpace, Tivo and Netflix, and got the bug to start a company again. He called a few of his former Ask compadres, added some new ones, and got to work building Clicker.
Jim grew up in San Carlos, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley. He likes to brag that he went to the same high school as Barry Bonds and Tom Brady, and by all accounts it appears to be true. Jim holds a BA from UCLA and a JD/MBA from Emory University.
Bill Gurley
Benchmark Capital
Bill Gurley joined Benchmark Capital in 1999 after spending two years as a partner with Hummer Winblad Venture Partners.
For the past fifteen years, Bill has authored the Above the Crowd blog which focuses on the evolution and economics of high technology businesses.
Current Investments: Clicker, Fanbase, Linden Lab/SecondLife, LiveOps, Move Networks, Nanosolar, OpenTable, Red 5 Studios, Ruba, Tropos Networks, VUDU, and Zillow.com.
Previous Investments: Avamar Technologies, Business.com, Employease, JAMDAT, Nordstrom.com, Shopping.com, and The Knot.
Other Affiliations: Advisory board of the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas.
Education: MBA from the University of Texas, 1993; and a BS in computer science from the University of Florida, 1989. Chartered Financial Analyst.
Geoff Yang
Redpoint Ventures
Geoff Yang is a Founding Partner of Redpoint Ventures. Prior to founding Redpoint, Geoff was a general partner with IVP, a firm he joined in 1987.
Yang emphasizes investments in consumer media and infrastructure. His media and advertising investments include Ask Jeeves, Excite, MySpace, and TiVo. His networking investments include BigBand, Calix, Foundry Networks, Juniper Networks, MMC Networks, and Wellfleet.
In addition, Geoff was founding director or previously led investments in Agile Networks, Applied Digital Access, Centillion, Collabra, Crescendo, Golfweb, JotSpot, Netcore Systems, Netlink, Promatory, Rapid City, Shasta Networks and Whitetree.
Yang is currently on the Advisory Council for the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and previously served on the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) as well as a Director of the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) and President of the Western Association of Venture Capitalists (WAVC).
Yang holds a B.S.E. in Engineering and Management Systems from Princeton University and an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Blake Krikorian
Blake Krikorian most recently served as the co-founder, Chairman and CEO of Sling Media Inc., makers of the Emmy® award winning Slingbox™. Sling was acquired by EchoStar Holding Corporation (NASDAQ: SATS) in October, 2007. He currently sits on the Board of Industry Leaders for the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) and the board of CDN start-up BitGravity, Inc.
Krikorian started his career at General Magic in the early 1990’s where he assisted industry-leading telecom and consumer electronics companies such as NTT, Sony, Mitsubishi Electric, Sanyo, OKI and Matsushita/Panasonic in creating and defining new products and partnerships. In 1994, Krikorian co-founded the Philips Mobile Computing Group, which was funded by Philips Electronics. As group product manager, he built and co-led the team that defined, created, delivered, and marketed the award-winning Velo 1 Windows CE Handheld PC and its associated product line. In 1997, Krikorian left Philips to serve as senior vice president at Metis Associates, an information technology consulting firm and incubator of core technology companies. He led the creation of Metis’ first incubated company, Mainbrace Corporation, which developed and licensed digital media, mobile communication and computing software/hardware technologies to system OEMs, service providers, and semiconductor vendors. Krikorian served as the company’s President for the first two years of its operation. Mainbrace was acquired by BSQUARE (NASDAQ: BSQR) in 2000.
Krikorian is a recipient of the Lifetime Technology Leadership award by Broadcasting & Cable. He earned his Bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from UCLA, where he also lettered for four years on the men’s water polo team.
J.D. Heilprin
J.D. Heilprin is no stranger to finding new ways to help people use the Internet for entertainment. As the co-founder of RioPort, Inc., Heilprin together with partner MTV Networks helped create the first service to offer legal music downloads from the major record labels. Over the last fifteen years, he has worked with world-class media, technology and entertainment companies (including Deustch Advertising, MTV Networks, Hewlett-Packard, Fox Cable Networks, Apple Computer, DIRECTV and Movielink) to develop strategies surrounding digital entertainment and media convergence. He also advised Spain’s Centro Medico Teknon, one of Europe’s most advanced medical facilities, on integrating interactive, broadband applications and digital media into the modern healthcare environment. Most recently, J.D. founded ModernFeed, which was acquired by and incorporated into Clicker. He has a BA from UCLA and law degree from Hastings School of Law in San Francisco.