Michael Sullivan holds an S.M. in Applied Mathematics and an A.B. in Computer Science from Harvard University. He is an expert in natural language processing, machine learning, computer vision and applied cryptography. Previously, Mike was a Research Associate at the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) in Alexandria, VA, where he performed research and technical analysis in support of the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Intelligence Community.

Jim Diaz brings 25 years of experience in media sales, sales management, business development and general management in both start-up and corporate environments. As SVP and General Manager at AskJeeves, Jim was responsible for P&L management of a $100m revenue division comprising 100 employees across the sales, client services, business development, ad product management and operations functions. He crafted and executed the strategic deal with Google that has delivered hundreds of millions in revenue since 2002 and led to a $2 billion acquisition by InterActive Corp. Prior to AskJeeves, Jim was VP of Sales and Business Development at Excite, where he Managed a $160m revenue organization comprising 150 sales, business development and ad product development professionals selling across narrowband, broadband and interactive television channels of the Excite Network. Prior to his career in online media, he spent 12 years in television sales at the network (NBC), national tv spot (Blair) and local affiliate levels (WJAR-TV, Providence, KOLO-TV, Reno, KEYT-TV, Santa Barbara).

Bobby Impollonia spent three years as a software engineer for the Microsoft Corporation. As a graduate student, he studied artificial intelligence (including machine learning, machine vision and natural language processing) and computer graphics, and worked as a consultant for Goldman, Sachs & Co. He holds an S.M. and A.B., both in Computer Science, from Harvard University.

Eric Venosdel brings many years of startup and entrepreneurial experience in display advertising and in both fixed and dynamic pricing modeled e-commerce. Eric was responsible for multiple in house and offshore support and operations facilities focusing on client services, content management, project management and advertising operations. He has honed a keen sense of process and execution strategies while working at companies such as Shop.com and Tumri, as well as several profitable personal ventures.

Aaron Culich spent five years as a senior member of the Advanced Research Computing staff at Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, responsible for developing core grid infrastructure services for Harvard’s Crimson Grid which included multiple clusteres, high-performance SMP machines, and a 4096-processor BlueGene/L supercomputer. His main fields of expertise are distributed, multicore and GPU computing.

Ali Zandifar received his Ph.D. from Electrical Engineering Department of University of Maryland in Computer Vision and Telecommunication, Aug 2004. His main fields of expertise are computer vision, image and video processing. He has authored over a dozen of US patents, publications in leading journals and conferences. Previously, Ali was a Computer Vision Scientist at Epson R&D Inc. and Novafora Inc. where he worked on fast camera calibration and image registration in visual inspection systems, and printed text watermarking, video indexing and search, interactive object segmentation, tracking, annotation and benchmark design.

David Carmona assist the coordination and managament of brand identity, researching & specifying products positioned for search, advertising, and classification of video products while managing outsourced development & operations. As Marketing Coordinator and Business Development at Revision3, David established micro-opportunities targeting large niche distribution channels for broadcast quality internet content. Serving as a marketing specialist and lead creative developer in the support of market penetration.

Based in Highland Capital Partners Menlo Park office, Richard is a General Partner at Highland focused on digital media investments with specific experience and interest in online advertising, online media properties, consumer payment systems and consumer media technologies and infrastructure. He invests in early stage companies as well as later stage opportunities including growth equity, venture buyouts, spin-outs and recapitalizations. Richard co-led Highland's investment in NameMedia in 2005 and has worked closely with NameMedia to build out its media business which now reaches 60 million monthly visitors. In addition to Affine Systems, Richard serves on the board of Digg, Metacafe, NameMedia and US SEARCH, and is or has been actively involved in Highland's investments in Fastclick (IPO, sold to ValueClick), Going.com, Quigo (acquired by AOL) and Turbine.

Gaurav is a Principal at Highland Capital Partners focusing on the internet, digital media, mobile, online marketing and financial services sectors. Gaurav represents Highland on the boards of StyleFeeder, Affine Systems and Top Ten Media. In addition, he currently is or has been actively involved with Highland's investments in Navic Networks (acquired by Microsoft), CMI Marketing, Gotuit, GlobalStreams, Vibe Solutions and Coremetrics. Prior to joining Highland Capital Partners, Gaurav was a Corporate Strategy manager at Microsoft Corporation, where he worked with the top leadership to define and implement corporate-wide growth opportunities via organic initiatives and acquisitions.