ChoiceStream

Steve Johnson is a seasoned executive with a track record of building innovative technologies into successful enterprises. Mr. Johnson started his career by founding Johnson-Grace Company to capitalize on the Internet’s unlimited potential for media distribution. The patented compression technology developed by Johnson-Grace and embedded into America Online’s client, made fast, easy distribution of images, sound and video a reality for millions of consumers and enabled unprecedented access to content. In 1996, AOL purchased Johnson-Grace and made Mr. Johnson Vice President of AOL’s Software and Technology Development division where he brought leading-edge media, telephony and broadcast products to market. In 2000, Mr. Johnson founded ChoiceStream to help consumers navigate through this new era of easy access to virtually infinite choices.

Michael Strickman is ChoiceStream’s co-founder and head of the engineering and product development teams. Mike was co-founder and CEO of the companies that developed the BRIEF™ editor (now owned by Borland) and TrackRecord™ project/defect tracking tool (now owned by Compuware/NuMega). Both tools were the leaders in their respective markets, with over 150,000 licenses sold. Before joining ChoiceStream, Mike worked at Compuware Corporation (NuMega Lab), which acquired TrackRecord in 1998. He received an Sc.B. from Brown University in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science with honors, magna cum laude, in 1983.

As a Managing Director of General Catalyst Partners, Joel Cutler invests in both new and existing technology businesses. Areas of special interest include: Internet and new media; financial services; consumer services and e-commerce; and travel.

Prior to co-founding General Catalyst Partners, Joel co-founded and operated numerous businesses focused on leveraging applied technology and high standards of customer care for the travel, information services, specialty retail, consumer direct marketing, and payment processing industries. These businesses include: National Leisure Group, one of the largest leisure travel technology and distribution companies in the U.S.; Retail Growth ATM Systems (sold to PNC Bank), a national ATM and interactive network provider; and Starboard Cruise Services (sold to LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton, Inc.), the operator of more than 300 duty-free retail stores on 100 cruise ships and owner of the Miami and Ft. Lauderdale Airport duty-free stores, where Joel served as Chairman and CEO. He is a graduate of Colby College and Boston College Law School.

Greg Sands focuses on software, internet services, and advertising, marketing and media technologies and services across channels. Sands joined Sutter Hill Ventures in 1998 from Netscape Communications. As the company’s original product manager, he co-authored the company’s original business plan and launched and shipped its initial products, working closely with both engineering and sales. He then created and led the SuiteSpot business unit, growing it from $0 to $150M. He also worked previously at Cisco Systems, where he was the architect of a global channel management plan and at Corporate Decisions (now Mercer Management Consulting), where he consulted to start-ups and Fortune 500 companies on product development and marketing strategies.

Greg is a trustee of the Stanford University DAPER Fund and is also a member of the Board of Trustees for the Stanford Business School Trust. He earned an AB in government from Harvard College in 1989 and received an MBA at Stanford in 1994.

Usama Fayyad most recently served as chief data officer and executive VP, Research & Strategic Data Solutions at Yahoo! Inc. Fayyad was responsible for Yahoo!’s overall data strategy, policies, systems, and managing the Company’s data processing/analytics infrastructure. He also oversaw Yahoo! Research in building the premier scientific research organization to develop the new sciences of the Internet, on-line marketing, and innovative interactive applications. Previously, Fayyad co-founded and led the DMX Group, a data mining and data strategy company that was acquired by Yahoo! in 2004. In early 2000, he co-founded and served as CEO of digiMine Inc. (now Revenue Science, Inc.) hosting data warehouses and mining/analytics for large enterprises and now specializing in Behavioral Targeting and advertising networks. He lead the data mining and exploration group at Microsoft Research (1996-2000) and built data mining products for Microsoft’s server division. From 1989-96 he held a leadership role at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) where his work in the analysis and exploration of scientific databases gathered from remote-sensing platforms and spacecraft garnered him the top research excellence award from Caltech and a U.S. Government medal from NASA.

Fayyad earned his Ph.D. in engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and also holds BSE’s in both electrical and computer engineering; MSE in computer science and engineering; and M.Sc. in mathematics.