About Us

Mpire is an online shopping site that provides shoppers with everything they need to find the best deals online. We also offer WidgetBucks, an ecommerce advertising network of shopping widgets for Web publishers, affiliates and bloggers. Leveraging our proprietary metasearch, pricing and relevancy technology, Mpire’s universal shopping experience offers the broadest selection of both new and used items, from the Web's best shopping sites such as eBay, Amazon, Overstock, Yahoo, Shopping.com, and Craigslist -- all on one site. WidgetBucks uses MerchSense, our proprietary contextual technology, to help publishers earn more money from their advertising space compared to what they earn through traditional ad networks. Founded in 2005, Mpire is backed by Ignition Partners and former eBay executive and Pay Pal angel investor Richard Rock. Founded in 2005, Mpire and WidgetBucks are backed by Ignition Partners and Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

Management Team

• Matt Hulett, Chairman & CEO
• Matt Hulett is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of WidgetBucks, the fastest growing online ad network today. He is a serial entrepreneur who has successfully built profitable companies from scratch. After joining Mpire, WidgetBucks' parent company, as CEO in early 2006, Matt turned the standalone comparison shopping site into a multi-vertical ad distribution platform that serves over a billion impressions a month. Before Mpire, Matt was President of the corporate travel division of Expedia, Inc., the world's largest online travel company, where he launched the corporate travel business from an idea to a billion dollar worldwide leader in just a couple of years. Prior to Expedia, Matt was a founding partner of the next generation entertainment company, AtomFilms. He served as President of Atom Entertainment, a firm backed by both Sequoia Capital and Macromedia and was purchased by Viacom for $200M. Under Matt's direction, Atom captured over 20 million unique monthly users and became a leading consumer destination. Matt was the founding consumer products leader at RealNetworks launching many of the companies most successful products including the RealPlayer and its premium subscription software businesses. Matt also ran the market-leading Reflection X product line at AttachmateWRQ, a privately held provider of enterprise software. A Seattle native, Matt is a Puget Sound Business Journal 40-under-40 recipient (Sept. 2008), and he offers his extensive executive business insights through his personal blog, http://startupwhisperer.com.

• Greg Harrison, Co-Founder & CTO
• Greg Harrison is the Co-Founder and Chief Technical Officer of WidgetBucks. Greg co-founded Mpire, WidgetBucks' parent company, in 2005, and oversees the company's network which processes 10-15 terabytes of data each month. Prior to Mpire, Greg was an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Ignition Partners, where he researched the impact of Web services platforms on consumer businesses. Prior to Ignition, Greg served as CTO and VP of Engineering of Vidiator, a Hutchison Whampoa Limited company responsible for deploying all of Hutchison's 14 global third-generation wireless carrier infrastructure. Before Vidiator, Greg held a number of senior engineering, product and program management positions at Envision, Loudeye, and Mosaix, and he has also founded and operated his own consulting and software development company. Greg holds a B.S. in Computer Information Systems from Colorado State University.

• Kirby Winfield, Chief Revenue Officier
• Kirby Winfield is the Chief Revenue Officer of WidgetBucks. Kirby joined WidgetBucks in August, 2008 and is responsible for the company’s advertising sales and distribution strategy. Before WidgetBucks, Kirby operated Ascend Solutions, which provided strategic guidance for portfolio companies of Clearstone Venture Partners, Monster Venture Partners, and Wescom Capital. Prior to Ascend Solutions, Kirby was the General Manager and Vice President of the consumer Web site division of Marchex, Inc. (MCHX), overseeing more than 200,000 owned and operated Web sites. During his tenure, Marchex grew to 31 million unique monthly visitors and conducted a successful NASDAQ IPO. Prior to Marchex, Kirby was responsible for corporate, brand, and product marketing at Go2Net (acquired by InfoSpace [INSP]), which became a top 20 online network and conducted a successful NASDAQ IPO during his tenure. Kirby sits on the Board of Directors of SharperAgent, LLC, a leading provider of CRM and marketing services to real estate agents, and invests in and advises a number of online media startups.

• Jeff Berstrom, Chief Financial Officer
• Jeff Bergstrom is Chief Financial Officer of WidgetBucks. As WidgetBucks' CFO, Bergstrom is responsible for managing the company's financial strategy and operations, as well as overseeing and implementing all financial reporting, forecasting, tax functions, and cash flow operations. Jeff has been an Internet startup "exit" veteran during his 18-year financial career. He has managed multi-billion-dollar acquisitions and mergers, facilitated private equity transactions, and navigated business finances during tough macro-economic times. In all, Bergstrom has built and sold three tech and Internet companies resulting in over $2.2B in shareholder value. He spent five years with Internet company Go2Net, helping the company grow to over $110M in annual revenue and $40M in annual operating cash flow. He was deeply involved with the purchase and integration of nine companies in two years, and also led the financial team ultimately responsible for the acquisition by InfoSpace for approximately $2.0B. Before WidgetBucks, Bergstrom was CFO of The PowerTech Group, senior director of finance within Areva T&D, a French public multinational industrial conglomerate, and Controller of Risk Management Solutions, which was sold to a private equity fund run by Morgan Stanley. He has also had two tours of duty with Arthur Anderson, LLP.

• Dean Jutilla, Director of Marketing & Social Media
• Dean Jutilla is Director of Marketing and Social Media for WidgetBucks. Dean joined Mpire, WidgetBucks' parent company, in October 2006, and today oversees all external-facing marketing, public and media relations efforts, including the company's blog. His 16 years of marketing communications experience includes time spent at eBay (2004-2006) and Yahoo! (1999-2002), as well as serving as principal and owner of his own marketing communications firm.

Board of Directors/Investors

• Bill Bryant, Venture Partner, Draper, Fisher Jurvetson
• Bill Bryant is venture partner at Draper Fisher Jurvetson, having joined the firm in October 2007 to focus on expanding DFJ’s presence in the Seattle-area startup market. He joined the Mpire/WidgetBucks board with DFJ's investment in June 2008. Bill has had early and instrumental involvement in over twenty leading software and Internet companies, as a founder, senior executive, investor and Board Member. In these founding capacities, Bill drove definition of the core product and market strategy; raised >$125M in venture capital; recruited senior management teams; and built customer, partner and channel relationships in launching software products, Internet and mobile services. Previously, Bill was an early investor or Board member in nine other companies that were later acquired or went public, including Loudeye (Nokia), AEI Music (DMX/Liberty Media), Viafone (Extended Systems), Teamplate (Captaris), Exstatic Software (Xchange Applications), Throw (Excite), Singing Fish (Thomson/AOL); NearMe (Hands On Mobile) and WebRelevance (Medio). Bill received a BA in European History, an MBA, and his Ph.D. Candidacy in Business Strategy, all from the University of Washington. He holds a patent for an electronic commerce network.

• Michelle Goldberg, Principal, Ignition Partners
• Michelle Goldberg is a principal at Ignition Partners, investing in consumer facing companies. Michelle also represents Ignition as director on the boards of DocuSign and Entellium. Prior to joining Ignition, Michelle worked as an independent consultant at Microsoft where she developed the initial business plans for products in the enterprise server space. Michelle was an investment banker at Olympic Capital Partners where she specialized in mid-market mergers and acquisitions, and she also worked in management consulting for A.T. Kearney. As an associate in the Financial Institutions Group, Michelle focused on strategic and operational improvements for Fortune 100 clients. She also spent time working in Taipei developing export strategy for the Chinese government. Michelle earned her B.A. degree from Columbia and her M.A. degree from Harvard University.

• Rob Solomon, Former CEO, Sidestep
• Rob Solomon joined the Mpire Board of Directors in June 2007. He is former president and CEO of SideStep, which merged with Kayak.com in December 2007. Rob is a veteran of managing high-profile, hyper-growth Internet businesses. Prior to Sidestep, he spent six years at Yahoo! where he managed the company’s booming commerce businesses as Vice President and GM of the Yahoo! Shopping Group. He also served as VP of Product Marketing at Cendant Corporation, and prior to that as Product Manager at EA. He received his bachelor's degree in history from California-Berkeley in 1988.

• Richard Tong, Managing Partner, Ignition Partners
• Rich Tong is a founding partner of Ignition Partners. He specializes in the telecommunications and wireless industries as well as end-user/consumer-facing companies. Prior to joining Ignition, Rich spent 12 years at Microsoft where he most recently served as Vice President of Marketing for MS Office and BackOffice. Rich oversaw the purchase and integration of over 20 different companies and technologies into the Microsoft enterprise software family. Rich received his MBA and M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, and he received his B.S., summa cum laude, in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from Princeton University.

• Mpire executive Matt Hulett is also a board director.

Company Advisors

• Philip Rosedale, Founder and CEO, Linden Labs
• Philip Rosedale has an extensive background in the development and pioneering of streaming technology, having built his first computer in 4th grade, and started his first computer software company while still in high school. In 1995 he developed FreeVue, a low-bitrate video conferencing system for Internet-connected PC's, resulting in the acquisition of his company in early 1996 by RealNetworks. For 3 1/2 years, Rosedale served at RealNetworks as Vice President and CTO, where he was responsible for the development and launch of RealVideo, RealSystem 5.0, and RealSystem G2. In 1999 Rosedale returned to San Francisco, joined Accel Partners as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence, and began the basic research that would become the technology behind Linden Lab. Rosedale holds a BS degree in Physics from the University of California at San Diego.

• Sujal Patel, Founder and CTO, Isilon Systems
• Sujal Patel is the co-founder and CTO of Isilon Systems and is the chief architect of the company's network storage system. Prior to founding Isilon, Sujal spent five years at RealNetworks, in part as chief architect behind the company's second-generation core media-delivery system. Sujal has been an active member of the open-source software-development community, including work as a developer on the FreeBSD operating system. Sujal holds a number of patents and pending patents, including those for the Isilon OneFS distributed file system and for the RealNetworks network adaptive SureStream technology. Sujal holds a bachelor's degree in computer science from the University of Maryland at College Park.

• Evan Kaplan, Founder, President & CEO, Aventail Corporation
• Evan Kaplan is president, chief executive officer, and chairman of the board for Aventail Corporation. He co-founded the company in 1996 and pioneered the first commercial implementation of SSL based Virtual Private Network (SSL VPN) and the industry's first Managed Extranet service. Today, Aventail is the market's leading SSL VPN technology company, and Kaplan continues to focus the company on providing enterprise secure communications solutions. Kaplan serves on the Board of Directors for The Center of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Washington and the Washington Software Association. In addition he sits on the advisory boards of Mpire, Interop, Pacific Partners Venture Capital, and a number of Seattle based technology startups. Kaplan holds a BS in environmental science from Western Washington University, a MS from Antioch University, and an MBA from the University of Washington.

• Laurence Toney, VP of Marketplace Operations, Art.com
• Laurence Toney is the Vice President of Marketplace Operations with Art.com. He is responsible for Sistino, which is a consumer brand focused on art from emerging artists. Sistino combines commerce, community and content to create a groundbreaking destination for consumers. He manages the P&L and team responsible for the product, marketing, and operations. Before Art.com, Laurence was the Director and General Manager of eBay’s Collectibles Business Unit (CBU) where he managed the P&L and team for $3 billion in annual transactions, which was more than 12% of the U.S. transaction volume of the eBay marketplace. Prior to eBay, Laurence was the Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) with Opportunity Capital Partners where he evaluated investment opportunities and advised existing portfolio companies on strategy and business development. Laurence received his M.B.A. from the Haas School of Business (University of California at Berkeley) and received his B.S. from Hampton University in Virginia.

• Jon Zimmerman, Ph.D candidate University of Washington.
• Jon Zimmerman helps leading companies optimize price and revenue. For more than fourteen years, John has worked within a variety of industries including wireless communications, travel and leisure, and e-commerce. Most recently, John was the Director of Strategic Pricing for T-Mobile USA. He created a Pricing Group that developed pricing strategies for new and existing voice products and services based on quantitative analyses. Before joining T-Mobile, John served as Director of Customer Analytics for Expedia.com, the leading on-line travel agency. He led the group that is responsible for designing recommendation systems and other quantitative applications. Prior to joining Expedia, John was a senior consultant at Decision Focus, Inc. At DFI, he focused on revenue management, overbooking, and pricing-related applications for clients including British Airways, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, United Airlines, and Hyatt Hotels. This work resulted in a patent that John shares with several DFI colleagues for a method and system that determines optimal prices in revenue management. John graduated with a BS in Industrial Engineering from Stanford University and earned an ME in Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia where he received a University Graduate Fellowship. He is currently pursuing a PhD in marketing at the University of Washington.