The Story Behind BookRenter

Mehdi has over 20 years of experience building great teams and operating both startups and public companies. Before BookRenter, Mehdi was SVP of products and services at CafePress where he joined the team in the early days and grew the company to over $130M in revenues. Prior to CafePress, Mehdi was SVP of products at Intellisync where they had 90% ownership of the mobile sync market before Nokia bought the company for $450M. Mehdi held a number of executive positions at other Valley companies and currently sits on the board of FaceTime, Pbworks and Fotomoto. Mehdi is also a geek at heart and did his undergraduate studies at Berkeley and his graduate studies in computer science at Stanford. Mehdi's favorite topic in college was fuzzy logic by Professor Lotfi Zadeh.

Before founding BookRenter, Colin worked at Decide Interactive, an online advertising company focused on search engine bidding, where he worked as a Technical Account Manager implementing their solution for large clients, and opening up their first U.S. office in Sunnyvale. Decide Interactive was sold to 24/7 Real Media in 2006 for $40M. Just prior to founding BookRenter, Colin worked at Google in online advertising and at 24/7 Real Media as a Marketing Manager. He has a BS in Management Information Systems and a Minor in Information Technology from Santa Clara University where he graduated with Honors in 2003. Colin resides in San Francisco and is an avid snowboarder, basketball enthusiast, mountain biker, and golfer.

Steve has held a wide variety of Engineering, Management, and Business Development positions at several notable Software and Networking companies. Prior to his retirement in 2007, Steve spent 11 years at Cisco Systems, mostly as Director of Business Development in their Strategic Alliances organization. In that group, his responsibilities included second-level management of several of Cisco's largest and most complex Strategic Alliances, including Microsoft, Intel, Sun, Sony, Phillips, EMC, and other worldwide brand-name companies. Steve also "wrote the book" on Ecosystem Partnering efforts, in which Cisco partnered with multiple companies in multiple product and service segments in order to pull together large-scale Solutions for large customer deployments. Prior to Cisco, Steve was a senior contributor at Lotus Development in Cambridge MA, where he worked for 8 years. While there he was the Chief Architect for Lotus Notes, and he led various technology efforts in the SmartSuite and Lotus Notes ViP teams. Before Lotus, Steve was Manager of Networks and Communications at Symbolics, an AI Workstation spinoff from MIT's AI Lab. Steve holds a BS in Physics from MIT and MS and ScD degrees in Physiology from the Harvard School of Public Health.

Justin brings both creativity and rigor to his leadership of the Engineering organization. Prior to BookRenter, he has held numerous Engineering, Product, and founding roles at growing start-ups throughout Silicon Valley. Most recently, Justin served in a General Management role at the online retailer CafePress.com, where he was responsible for the vision, product, and marketing of the CafePress Groups business. While studying Computer Science at the University of Rochester, Justin created a service that would presage his future career with BookRenter: after typical weekend of feverish coding, The Book Swap launched to overnight success, drawing hundreds of textbook classified postings from across campus in the first day of operations.

Michael has over sixteen years leading successful high-growth, entrepreneurial, consumer-focused internet business ventures at both fledgling startups and large behemoths. Prior to joining BookRenter, Michael co-founded Homestead.com, which Intuit bought in 2006 for $170M, and was an executive at Yahoo!, serving as the Vice President of Marketing and Business Operations for the broadband and mobile businesses. Most recently, Michael served as President of Tonic, a media and ecommerce startup focused on social good. He's also held various positions at Infoseek and Grant Thornton, where he had to wear a suit every single day. Michael currently serves as an advisor to a few venture-backed start-ups, and holds an MBA from Harvard University and a BSE in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, where he grossly overpaid for an early edition of his favorite textbook "Modeling and Control of Robotic Manipulators", thus proving he is truly a geek at heart.

Gene comes to BookRenter with over 27 years of finance, retail, and ecommerce experience. Most recently, he was the CFO/COO of Bella Pictures, a blended service and technology company in the bridal photography industry. At Bella, Gene managed the traditional finance and accounting functions in addition to legal, human resources, investor relations and real estate. Prior to Bella, Gene spent just under a quarter century at Macy’s in a variety of executive roles, as a founding team member of macys.com in 1998 and its SVP/CFO in 2003, where he was responsible for financial planning and analysis, accounting, legal compliance, internal audit and centralized inventory planning until his departure in 2007. And at one time, given the proper lighting conditions, he was actually capable of certifying the grade of loose diamonds. Gene has a BA in Communications & Organizational Development from the University of the Pacific, graduating with honors in 1983, and his MBA from Santa Clara University, graduating as a Beta Gamma Sigma. In his spare time, he enjoys family, his dog that can do no wrong, wine tasting, music, and art, and like any good CFO, he knows the world is at peace when his socks are packed neatly in little rows, light to dark, organized in shoe boxes tucked away in the dresser.

Pete Rumpel most recently served as the Senior Vice President at Rosetta Stone, leading Rosetta Stone's global institutional business. Over a thirty month period, Rumpel led the growth of Rosetta Stone's institutional business including K-20 Education, Corporate, Government and Non-profit from $30 million to over $60 million in annual sales. He was instrumental in professionalizing Rosetta Stone's institutional business by leading the transition from a private to public entity and serving as the executive leader and sponsor for the institutional business from strategy through global go to market execution.

Prior to joining Rosetta Stone, Pete was vice president and leader of SAP Americas business development. Prior to SAP he held global sales and marketing leadership positions with several leading companies, including Thomson Reuters (the Yankee Group), HayGroup, Gartner, Inc. and Pitney Bowes Inc.

Pete holds an undergraduate degree in Political Science from Fairfield University and has completed extensive management coursework at NYU Stern School of Business.

Alex is a founding managing director of Storm Ventures. Storm Ventures is a venture capital firm focused on investing in seed and early stage companies in the Mobile Internet, Enterprise Cloud, and Internet-enabled Commerce sectors. Storm was founded in 2000 by a seasoned group of industry veterans with the common vision of sharing our collective experience, passion and energy to help talented and driven entrepreneurs build great companies of enduring value. Storm has invested in over 100 companies including Airespace (Cisco), Appcelerator, BookRenter, EchoSign, IML (TWSE: 3638), JetCell (Cisco), Kidaro (Microsoft), Lightera (Ciena), Marketo, Mobile Iron, NetScaler (Citrix), OSA Technologies (Avocent), Sanera (McData/Brocade), and SandForce (LSI).

Alex has served on the board of several companies including Sanera (acquired MCDT), Airespace (acquired CSCO), Qumu (acquired RIMG) and McData (acquired BRCD). He currently serves on the board of BookRenter, Cellfire and Restorando. Prior to founding Storm Ventures, Alex spent twenty-one years in high tech at ROLM, IBM, Stratacom, and Cisco, holding several executive positions, most recently as an SVP/GM at Cisco. He was part of the early management team of Stratacom which Cisco acquired in 1996. Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Alex holds a BSEE from Stanford University, and MBA from Santa Clara University. He is a private pilot and likes to travel, ski and golf and speaks both Spanish and German fluently.

George joined Adams Capital Management in 1999 as a General Partner, from Apax Partners, a private equity firm in New York. Prior to joining Apax Partners, George was a Management Consultant at McKinsey & Co. in New York, working closely with clients in the telecommunications and media industries, on strategic and operational issues for media and technology clients. He is currently a director of several private companies.

Marc Randolph is a veteran Silicon Valley entrepreneur, high tech executive, and start-up consultant. Most recently Marc was co-founder of the online DVD rental service Netflix, serving as their founding CEO, as the executive producer of their web site, and as a member of their board of directors until his retirement in 2004.

Prior to founding Netflix, Marc was on the founding team of more than half a dozen other successful start-ups in the e-commerce, media, enterprise software and portable device markets – all of which went on to IPOs or other liquidity events.

He currently provides advice and/or sits on the advisory boards for numerous high tech startups in the areas of product marketing, product management, and general management.

Marc also provides his time, talents and financial support to numerous local and national non-profit organizations. Among others, he is involved with the community foundation of Santa Cruz County, he has spent nearly 10 years on the board of the Gateway School (three as board chair) and he currently serves on the board of the National Hydrocephalus Organization.

Marc is charming, handsome and modest; and whenever possible avoids referring to himself in the third person.

Sergio is a venture investor with Norwest Venture Partners. He has more than 16 years of operational and investing experience from a wide range of business and consumer technology companies; Sergio is on the board of myYearbook, Center’d, M-Factor and is a board observer at Lending Club. Prior to NVP, Sergio was Vice President of Marketing at Photobucket, (Sold to News Corp for $300M) which grew virally to become one of the top 20 sites in the U.S. with more than 70 million unique visitors per month. Sergio was Director and General Manager of the consumer electronics division at eBay, which he grew from $150 million to more than $500 million in gross merchandise sales. Sergio was also a Director of New Ventures at eBay, where he pioneered several new marketplaces and formats. Sergio was also a marketing executive at Portal Software (now a part of Oracle). Portal Software created one of the leading enterprise billing software platforms, had a successful Initial Public Offering in 1999. Sergio started his career at Morgan Stanley Mergers & Acquisitions Division where he advised several private and public companies on mergers and acquisitions. Sergio holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a Bachelor of Science Degree in Industrial Engineering from Stanford University.

Walter G. Kortschak is a senior advisor and former managing partner of Summit Partners. Over a venture capital career spanning 25 years, Walter has served as a director of 40 companies, including 20 public companies. He was an investor in E-TEK Dynamics (acquired by JDS Uniphase), McAfee, and Finisar. For the last 6 years, he was voted one of the country’s 50 best VCs in the Forbes Midas List, an annual ranking of top technology investors. He has endowed the USC Kortschak Center for Learning and Creativity at the University of Southern California, to support USC students with dyslexia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and other identified learning differences. He is also a past director of the National Venture Capital Association. He holds an MBA from the University of California, Los Angeles, an M.S. from the California Institute of Technology and a B.S. from Oregon State University.

Bryan has worked and consulted in the retail industry for over 28 years. He has served as Chief Executive Officer of the University Book Store, Inc. in Seattle (University of Washington) since 2002. Before assuming the role of CEO, Bryan was the company’s Director of Finance and Administration. Prior to joining the Book Store, Bryan was a manager with the public accounting firm of Deloitte & Touche in Seattle, specializing in the retail industry. Bryan serves on the boards of several private companies and on various university and retail industry advisory committees. He holds a BA in accounting and an MBA in finance and is a certified public accountant and certified financial planner. Before jumping headfirst into the business world, Bryan was a professional drummer in the Chicago area. He is a rabid UW Husky fan and enjoys reading, film, music, fine wine, cycling (manual and motor), and rowing.

Every college has a mascot. We've enlisted Tikiman to represent our mission to make education more affordable, and he can often be found rallying students to rent textbooks and save tons of their hard-earned money. He is also a symbol of our undying commitment to making sure every customer feels special and is delighted by their experience by renting from BookRenter. To learn more about him, visit his Facebook Page at facebook.com/bookrenter.