Board of Directors

Brad Feld

Brad has been an early stage investor and entrepreneur for over twenty years, and co-founded Foundry Group as well as Mobius Venture Capital. Brad also founded Intensity Ventures, a company that helped launch and operate software companies and later became a venture affiliate of the predecessor to Mobius Venture Capital. He previously served as chief technology officer of AmeriData Technologies and currently serves on the board of directors of several companies, including NewsGator, Gnip, Oblong and Zynga Game Network. In addition to his investment efforts, Brad has been active with several non-profit organizations and is currently chairman of the National Center for Women & Information Technology and co-chairman of the Colorado Governor's Innovation Council. Brad is a nationally recognized speaker on the topics of venture capital investing and entrepreneurship and writes widely read and well respected blogs at www.feld.com and www.askthevc.com. He holds Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in Management Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Brad is also an avid art collector and long-distance runner. He has completed ten marathons as part of his mission to run a marathon in each of the fifty states.
 

Nick Fera

Nick Fera has more than 24 years of business software management experience. As the Chairman and CEO of Parlano, Fera grew Parlano to more than 60 employees, established an intercontinental presence, raised $11 million in capital, and exponentially grew the customer base. Under his direction, Parlano was acquired by Microsoft in October 2007. Prior to Parlano, Fera spent 18 months as the vice president of data warehousing and business intelligence at Platinum Technologies, launching a Year 2000 software product and driving revenues to over $20 million in just eight months. He has also held executive management positions a number of companies including President and COO of The Alcar Group (acquired by Hyperion Software) and currently sits on the Board of Directors at NewsGator Technologies, Inc. Fera holds a BS in Finance from the University of Illinois and a master’s degree in management from Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management.
 

J.B. Holston – CEO and President

Holston has run a wide range of technology and media enterprises over the last two decades. As President of Ziff Davis International, Holston managed Ziff Davis' operations across more than 100 countries, and launched Yahoo! Europe. He was part of the senior management team that led the successful LBO of ZD by Forstmann, Little, and subsequent sale to Softbank. Since selling his last technology start-up, Holston has helped create a wide range of for-profit and not-for-profit entities, including Media-x at Stanford, among several others. After receiving a BA in creative writing from Stanford in 1979, he taught English at Phillips Academy, worked as a consultant for the Boston Consulting Group in Boston, studied and wrote in Paris, France, then worked in strategic planning for NBC and RCA. J.B. received his MBA from Stanford in 1986, then worked on Jack Welch's staff at GE before moving back to NBC, where for five years he was responsible for strategic planning and NBC's international operations.
 

Richard W. Levandov

Richard W. Levandov has more than 20 years of senior executive and principal investing experience in a variety of technology companies. Prior to joining Masthead, he was a private investor and consultant to venture stage technology companies. From 1996 to 1998, Mr. Levandov was a partner with SOFTBANK Technology Ventures. While at SOFTBANK, he led investments in several companies, including Personalogic (acquired by AOL) and Art Technology Group (ARTG). From 1994 to 1996, Mr. Levandov served as Vice President of Business Development at America Online. From 1983 to 1993, Mr. Levandov was a co-founder and Vice President of Phoenix Technologies, Ltd., a personal computer systems software company that went public in 1988. He was lead investor and served on the boards of Valent Software Corporation (acquired by Lycos), Sombasa Media (acquired by PrimeMedia), Software.com (acquired by OpenWave), Mobilee (acquired by Natural MicroSystems), Bright Mail (acquired by Symantec) and OLiVER (acquired by LivePicture). Mr. Levandov holds a B.S. degree from Binghamton University. He is a Director of Intercasting Corp., Liquid Machines, Newsgator, Nexaweb and Tacoda, which are Masthead portfolio companies.
 

Lisa Reeves

As Vice President, General Manager of Access and Cloud for Citrix Online, Lisa Reeves is responsible for the product development and marketing strategy for the company’s GoToMyPC® remote access product brand and all initiatives related to cloud computing. Prior to Citrix Online, Reeves was a general partner at Vista Ventures, a venture capital firm targeting early-stage investments in companies in the software, digital media and network sectors.  She previously led SAP Ventures, the corporate venture investing arm of SAP AG, and spent nine years in senior operations roles at SAP America, including sales, marketing, business development and consulting. She began her career in the automotive industry.  Reeves holds a B.A. from Kalamazoo College and an M.B.A. from the Thunderbird School of Global Management

 

Greg Reinacker – Founder

Reinacker is the Founder and CTO of NewsGator Technologies. Greg's background includes technical consulting work for companies such as Galileo International, as well as several commercial software ventures with companies such as McGraw-Hill. Greg is recognized as a thought leader in the weblog and RSS arenas, publicly speaks about RSS and is a vocal proponent of business uses of RSS and syndication technologies. Greg holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Colorado in Boulder. To keep up with Greg, read his blog at www.rassoc.com/gregr/weblog.