Urban Airship's Board of Directors and Board of Advisors are comprised of a cross-section of tech entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and educators. They make decisions, made recommendations and make sure UA stays on course.
Board of Directors
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Scott Kveton
Scott Kveton is the co-founder and CEO of Urban Airship based in Portland, Oregon. He is widely recognized as an expert on mobile app strategy and cloud infrastructure. He speaks frequently on app monetization, engagement and the developer ecosystems around the various mobile platforms. Prior to starting Urban Airship, Kveton had more than a dozen years of experience building technology, developing business strategy and leading engineering teams with companies including Amazon.com, Rulespace, JanRain and Vidoop.
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Pete Grillo
Pete Grillo has been active in Portland-area high-technology firms for more than 20 years and is currently CEO/President of iterasi, Inc. which he formed in 2007. In 1997, Pete founded WeSync.com, a venture-backed Web and wireless data synchronization company. WeSync.com became widely recognized for its innovation and advanced technologies, which lead to its acquisition by Palm, Inc. in 2001. Previously, Pete co-founded ProTools, Inc., a venture-backed developer of network management applications, which was acquired by Network General, and co-founded DWB Associates, a software-consulting firm.
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Puneet Agarwal
Puneet Agarwal brings a strong mix of operating and venture capital experience to True Ventures and the companies he works with. At True, Puneet focuses on infrastructure and software applications specifically around cloud computing, open source, SaaS, and mobile. He currently sits on the board of LoopFuse, Puppet Labs and Urban Airship. Prior to joining True, Puneet was the VP of Product Management at Geodesic Information Systems, which specializes in mobile and Internet communication products. Puneet holds a BS with honors in Industrial Engineering, Stanford University; MS in Industrial Engineering, Stanford University and is a Mayfield Fellow, Stanford University.
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Jason Mendelson
Jason Mendelson is a co-founder of Foundry Group and has over a decade of experience in the venture capital and technology industries in a multitude of investing, operational and engineering roles. Prior to co-founding Foundry Group, Jason was a Managing Director and General Counsel for Mobius Venture Capital, where he also acted as its chief administrative partner overseeing all operations of the firm and before that Jason was an attorney with Cooley Godward Kronish LLP. In addition to serving on Urban Airship’s board of directors he also serves on the board of directors of Brightleaf, Next Big Sound, Oblong, Occipital, OpenSpace, Sifteo and Sympoz for Foundry Group. Jason holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics, with distinction and a Juris Doctorate, cum laude, from the University of Michigan.
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Clent Richardson
Clent Richardson is Managing Director of Huntington Hill Ventures and brings 24 years of experience developing winning strategies and delivering flawless execution with companies such as Apple, AOL, AVG, Immersion, TiVo and T-Mobile. Clent leads organizational and operational transformations by building high performance teams and creating vision to deepen customer loyalty, drive efficiencies, focus, and deliver key business metrics. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Counseling Psychology from Antioch University and has completed several executive management programs, including Deutsch Telecom’s Global Advanced Management Program conducted by Harvard Business School and The Stanford Graduate School of Business. He serves on the Board of Directors of FlightStats, a leading publisher of flight information. Based in Oregon, Clent is also pioneering a new brand of wines.
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John R. Johnston
John co-founded August Capital in 1995. Prior to that he served as a general partner with Technology Venture Investors (TVI) from 1988, and Hambrecht & Quist Venture Partners (H&Q) from 1983 to 1988. During his venture career, John has invested in more than 25 technology companies including Sybase, Intuit, Visio, Postini, Shopping.com and eShop.In addition to his U.S. venture capital experience, John worked in Hong Kong for five years at a pioneering Asian venture capital firm, Inter-Asia Management Co., Ltd. (IAM). While at IAM, he participated in investments such as McDonald’s Restaurants (HK) Ltd. and Ikea Furniture (HK) Ltd. John received an AB in English from Princeton University and an MBA from Harvard University. He is a past director of the Western Association of Venture Capitalists.
Board of Advisors
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Chris Devore
Chris DeVore is General Partner and co-founder at Founders Co-op, a seed-stage venture fund focused on web and mobile software startups in the Pacific Northwest. Prior to Founders Co-op, Chris co-founded Judy’s Book, a local social search platform backed by Mobius and Ignition Partners. Previously Chris was a Vice President at Sapient Corporation, where he built and led the company’s strategy consulting practice and was a core member of the M&A and corporate venturing teams. Chris arrived at Sapient via the acquisition of Adjacency, an e-Commerce services firm he and his partners bootstrapped to profitability serving clients like Apple, Nordstrom, Virgin, and Land Rover. Prior to Adjacency, Chris served as Patagonia’s Director of eCommerce, building that outdoor retailer’s first online retail presence, and also led and managed six of the company’s product lines. Pre-Internet, Chris held senior product management and strategic planning roles at McCaw Cellular and at AT&T. Chris is a Seattle native and lives in Wallingford with his wife, Emily, and two children.
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Holly Files
Holly Files is the former Chief Operating Officer/Chief Financial Officer for KC Distance Learning, a leading is a leading provider of distance learning programs for middle school and high school students. Today, Holly is one of the leaders of VelocX, a successful consulting business focused on helping both early-stage and mid-market companies grow their leadership and operational capacity. Prior to joining KCDL, Holly was the COO at Chockstone, a leading provider of loyalty marketing solutions overseeing all day-to-day operations. Holly serves on the Board of Directors of the Association for Corporate Growth (ACG), the Oregon Entrepreneurs Network (OEN) as well as several early stage ventures.
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Justin Fitzhugh
Justin Fitzhugh is the VP of Engineering Operations for the Mozilla Corporation. He responsible for all Mozilla’s production and corporate infrastructure, including serving the Firefox product to more than 150 million users. In addition to Firefox distribution, his team designs, implements and supports the infrastructure for one of the largest open source organizations in the world. Prior to Mozilla, Justin managed Macromedia’s global datacenter environment.
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Jason Grigsby
Jason Grigsby was the project lead on the Obama iPhone application and helped design the user interface for the Wall Street Journal’s Blackberry application. He founded and organizes Mobile Portland, a local mobile development user group. He has spent the last 11 years building web sites professionally before being bitten by the mobile bug prompting him to throw caution to the wind and start a new company focused on mobile and web development. He blogs both at Cloud Four.com and his personal site, User First Web.
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David Hose
David Hose is Managing Director of Ideas & Plans, focusing on very early to mid-stage technology companies in mobile. David has a long record of firsts including the first PC map software in 1982 (sold to EDS), the first C++ class library for SQL databases in 1989 (sold to Rogue Wave), the first mobile location company in 1995 (took public as CEO in 2000 and sold to Openwave). Since 2005 David has been a founder, advisor, or board member to numerous successful (and some unsuccessful) companies.
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Chris Messina
Chris Messina arrived in San Francisco in 2004 as a volunteer for the Mozilla Foundation, leading the Spread Firefox community marketing project in raising over $220,000 in micro-donations to launch Firefox to a worldwide audience with an ad in the New York Times. He went on to co-found the Flock web browser and helped to organize the first-ever BarCamp in Palo Alto in 2005. Chris now works on Diso, an effort that he co-founded to facilitate the development of building blocks for the open, social web. He is also a board member of the OpenID Foundation. Chris is well-known in the Web 2.0, open source, and startup worlds for his community advocacy and work on open standards initiatives and speaks at numerous conferences around the world.
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Raven Zachary
Raven Zachary is President of Small Society, working with big brands, established companies, investors, and startups on iPhone strategy and product development. Raven directed the Obama ’08 for iPhone application for the Obama Campaign, and has worked with companies such as Whole Foods Market, Zipcar, Clif Bar, and Air New Zealand on iPhone application initiatives. He is the founder of iPhoneDevCamp, a not-for-profit iPhone developer conference. Raven is also a Contributing Analyst with The 451 Group, an IT industry analyst firm and works closely with O’Reilly Media on iPhone and mobile technology related events and coverage. He is a frequent conference speaker on the topic of mobile technology.