Company / Team
Management
Bob Lisbonne, CEO
Bob joined Luminate as the CEO in 2008. Before Luminate, Bob led early stage investments as a general partner at two-top-tier venture capital firms: Matrix Partners (2001-2008) and Crosspoint Venture Partners (1999-2001).
Prior to his work as a venture capitalist, Bob spent his career as an operating executive at a number of software and Internet companies including Netscape Communications. Bob joined Netscape in 1995 and served as senior vice president and general manager of its browser division. He led Netscape's famous "browser wars," while managing all engineering and product management for browsers, email clients, and HTML editors that garnered 100 million users and pioneered the widespread consumer adoption of the Internet.
In 1998 Bob embraced open source and launched mozilla.org, which represented the first time a major commercial software company adopted an open source strategy. Today Mozilla continues to enjoy considerable success with its Firefox browser. Bob currently serves on the board of directors of the Mozilla Foundation.
Prior to Netscape, Bob was vice president of marketing at Collabra, whose online collaboration software won numerous industry awards. While at Apple Computer's Claris subsidiary, Bob launched and directed the ClarisWorks product line. In the 1980s, he worked as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs, advising Silicon Valley technology companies on IPOs and mergers and acquisitions.
Bob attended Stanford University, where he earned MBA, MA, and BA degrees, and did graduate studies in Computer Science.
James Everingham, CTO
As CTO, James brings more than twenty-five years of experience as a manager, entrepreneur, and developer of great technology. Prior to Luminate, James was the chief technology officer and founding team member of LiveOps where he spent six years developing and building a world-class technology platform and team.
James joined LiveOps from Tellme Networks, Inc., where he served as senior director of engineering and managed core infrastructure groups responsible for data warehousing, reporting, web services, content feeds, and voice applications. Tellme was acquired by Microsoft in 2007.
Prior to Tellme, James served as senior director of engineering for Netscape Communications, where he led the engineering group responsible for the flagship Netscape browser. During his five-year tenure at Netscape, James was involved in browser versions 1 through 6 with responsibilities ranging from implementation to management.
Before joining Netscape, James held engineering and management positions at Oracle and Borland International. Prior to 1990, James founded Logical Alternatives, Inc., which developed state of the art programming tools. Logical Alternatives was acquired in 1989 by Magee Enterprises.
Chas Edwards, CRO and Publisher Development
Chas joined Luminate in 2010 as CRO and head of publisher development. Before Luminate, Chas served as publisher and chief revenue officer at Digg, the site that allows readers to organize content from across the web by voting on what they consider to be the best. For the four years prior to joining Digg, he was the co-founder (with John Battelle), publisher and chief revenue officer at Federated Media Publishing (FM), a next-generation media and publishing company that connects the highest quality conversational content (eg, Boing Boing, Mashable, Inhabitat, Dooce, NOTCOT and The Pioneer Woman) with leading brand marketers.
Previously, Chas was vice president of sales and marketing for CNET Networks's B2B Portfolio, managing the team representing News.com, ZDNet and TechRepublic to business-to-business marketers. Chas also served posts as VP for CNET's broadband & webcasting unit and as VP of business development for mySimon, CNET Networks's comparison-shopping portal. Prior to joining CNET Networks, Chas was the National Sales Manager for TechTV, a 24-hour cable TV channel and Web site dedicated to computing and the Internet (now owned by Comcast and called G4).
Terry Murphy, CFO
Terry brings more than 25 years of financial and operations experience to Luminate. As CFO, he directs Luminate's finance, accounting, human resources, facilities and legal functions.
Most recently, Terry served as the Chief Financial Officer for Risesmart, Inc. a provider of outplacement and recruiting solutions to large companies. Prior to Risesmart, Terry was the senior vice president of finance for LiveOps, Inc., a provider of virtual call center solutions. In his six years there, he led the company's financial operations during a period of explosive growth, as annual revenues increased from $18 million to $140 million. Terry guided the completion of a Series C equity offering of $28 million.
Prior to LiveOps, Terry held executive-level finance positions at GoBeam, Sigma Networks and Covad Communications. As CFO of GoBeam from 2002 to 2004, he completed the company's sale to Covad Communications for $48 million. While vice president of finance, treasurer and controller for Sigma Networks from 2000 to 2002, he established $280 million in vendor and lease-line financing and guided the completion of a Series C equity offering of $147 million.
Terry is a California-licensed CPA and has a Bachelor of Science from San Francisco State University, where he graduated with honors in business administration.
Troy Chevalier, VP of Engineering
Troy joined Luminate in 2011 as the VP of Engineering. He brings more than 25 years of experience to the team, spanning innovative tech start-ups and industry-leading public companies.
Before joining Luminate, Troy spent 11 years at Tellme overseeing development. As an early employee, Troy was brought on as VP of Platform Engineering, and he remained with the company throughout its acquisition by Microsoft. Under Troy’s leadership, his team created software that powered the Tellme Network, a highly-available, on-demand inbound/outbound IVR service. Troy also led development efforts for the RESTful web-based speech recognition and synthesis services used by consumer apps like Bing and Xbox.
Prior to Tellme, Troy spent more than five years at Netscape as a Sr. Software Engineer and Software Development Manager, where his team designed and implemented the software for the Netscape Navigator. He is recognized as one of the founding engineers of the Mozilla next-generation layout engine effort.
Throughout his distinguished career Troy has held key engineering positions at GO/EO, Borland, Sun Microsystems, and Data General. In each position, he has been recognized as an outstanding leader, strong team player, and remarkably talented developer. Troy holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Luminate Board
Directors:
Tod Francis, Shasta Ventures
Tod Francis has more than 20 years of experience working with marketing and consumer driven companies. Since 2004, Tod has been a managing director of Shasta Ventures where his investment focus is technology-enabled consumer companies. Some of his current investments include Logoworks, Flock, Turn and companies still operating in stealth mode. Prior to co-founding Shasta Ventures, Tod was a general partner at Trinity Ventures for ten years where he was involved with 16 companies serving the consumer and small business such as Blue Nile, FatBrain, LoopNet, NextCard, Wedding Channel and BabyCenter.
Saad Khan, CMEA Capital
Saad Khan is a Partner at CMEA Capital, focusing on the firm's IT investments. He currently sits on the board for CMEA portfolio companies Blekko, Evolution Robotics, Jobvite and Luminate. Saad also co-founded the Film Angels, an angel network for indie films. Prior to CMEA, Saad was a Venture Partner and lead the advisory services group at Garage Technology Ventures (GTV), a seed stage venture fund. While at Garage, he focused on emerging technology investments in the software and digital media space, working closely with many companies, including TripleHop (acquired by ORCL), cFares and Savage Beast (Pandora). Prior to that, he worked for the IBM alphaWorks Group, as well as the Walt Disney company, helping to develop the strategic and operating plans for ABC, ESPN and Disney's e-businesses.
Saad has a B.S. degree in Symbolic Systems and an A.B. in Economics with Honors in Science, Technology and Society from Stanford University.
Danny Shader, PayNearMe
Danny Shader is the founder and CEO of PayNearMe, an innovative payment network and technology platform that enables consumers who do not have a credit or debit card or who prefer to pay with cash to safely and easily conduct remote business transactions. Prior to PayNearMe, Danny served as CEO of Jasper Wireless, Inc. Before Jasper, Danny served as the President and CEO of Good Technology, Inc., the leader in standards-based enterprise wireless messaging and data access, which Motorola acquired in 2007. Before Good, Danny served as a vice president and general manager at Amazon.com, which he joined when Amazon acquired Accept.com, the first consumer-to-consumer payment services company, which Danny co-founded and led as CEO. Danny earned a B.S. in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from the University of California at Berkeley and an M.B.A. from Stanford University.
Strategic Advisor and Board Observer:
Elliot Schrage, Facebook
Elliot Schrage is the Vice President of Global Communications, Marketing and Public Policy at Facebook where he is responsible for developing and coordinating key messages about products, corporate business and partnerships. Elliot joined Facebook from Google, where he was the Vice President of Communications and Public Affairs. Prior to Google, Elliot was the Bernard L. Schwarz Senior Fellow in business and foreign policy at the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations. Earlier in his career, Elliot served as the Senior Vice President of Global Affairs for Gap Inc. and as adjunct professor at Columbia University and Columbia Law School. Elliot holds a Bachelor's degree from Harvard University, a Master's degree in Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government and a JD from Harvard Law School.
