LINDEN LAB: executive management

Executive Management


Philip Rosedale Founder and CEO
Robin Harper Vice President, Marketing & Community Development
Joe Miller Vice President, Platform & Technology Development
Cory Ondrejka Chief Technology Officer
Marty Roberts General Counsel
Ginsu Yoon Vice President, Business Affairs
John Zdanowski Chief Financial Officer


Board of Directors

Mitch Kapor Kapor Enterprises, Inc.
Jed Smith Managing Partner, Catamount Ventures
Bill Gurley Partner, Benchmark Capital
James Currier Founder and President, Tickle, Inc.


Executive Management


Philip Rosedale - Founder & CEO

Philip Rosedale has an extensive background in the development and pioneering of streaming technology, having built his first computer in 4th grade, and started his first computer software company while still in high school. In 1995 he developed FreeVue, a low-bitrate video conferencing system for Internet-connected PC's, resulting in the acquisition of his company in early 1996 by RealNetworks. For 3 1/2 years, Rosedale served at RealNetworks as Vice President and CTO, where he was responsible for the development and launch of RealVideo, RealSystem 5.0, and RealSystem G2. In 1999 Rosedale returned to San Francisco, joined Accel Partners as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence, and began the basic research that would become the technology behind Linden Lab. Rosedale holds a BS degree in Physics from the University of California at San Diego.

Robin Harper - Vice President, Marketing & Community Development

In her initial years at Linden Lab, Robin led the emergence of the Second Life brand, including naming, positioning and the other marketing efforts supporting introduction of this life-changing technology. In the past few years, she shifted focus to the interface between the Second Life Residents and Linden Lab, facilitating communication at all levels and establishing policies, operations and support mechanisms to address issues ranging from social mores to technical support; all with the aim of ensuring inspired content creation is not compromised by the inevitable hurdles encountered when breaking new ground. In the last year, Robin has resumed leadership of Marketing while continuing to implement new programs geared to ensuring the booming, worldwide Second Life population's voice is heard and life is good, or at least gets better and better.

Prior to joining Linden Lab in 2002, Harper was the Vice President of Marketing at Maxis, a division of Electronic Arts (EA). At Maxis she played a prominent role in their emergence as the leader in PC simulation games and was a core member of the senior executive team that guided the company through their IPO and subsequent sale to Electronic Arts. Also while at Maxis, she established SimCity as one of the most recognized brand names in entertainment software, and was named one of the marketing 100 by Advertising Age/Newsweek. In addition to Maxis and Linden Lab, Harper has held senior marketing positions at Ninth House Network (corporate learning and online education), at Mondo Media (online entertainment) and in advertising, leading media and later account management services for clients ranging from Clorox to Nintendo. She holds an MBA in marketing from the University of Chicago.


Joe Miller - Vice President, Platform & Technology Development

Joining the company in April 2006, Joe Miller is responsible for extending the Second Life platform to reliably support very large member communities. He has spent nearly 30 years squarely at the intersection of engaging consumer experiences and interactive technologies, including senior executive positions at Atari, Koala Technologies, Epyx, Convergent, and Sega of America. He was a founder and CEO of the Knowledge Universe Interactive Studio, and president of MindQ Publishing, two companies focused on lifelong learning services and applications. Prior to joining Linden Lab, Miller's product design company, Perilux Group, was engaged to develop several award winning products now offered by LeapFrog, Bright Things, Apple, and Fitniks. His diverse career started at Battelle Memorial Institute, where he created a portion of the developer training curriculum for the PLATO educational network. He also was a co-founder and president of CyberVision, Inc., the developer and manufacturer of the CyberVision home computer, sold nationally by Montgomery Ward a long, long time ago...

Cory Ondrejka - Chief Technology Officer

As CTO, Cory Ondrejka leads the team developing "Second Life," Linden Lab's award-winning, user-created digital world. His team has created the revolutionary technologies required to enable collaborative, atomistic creation, including distributed physical simulation, 3D streaming, completely customizable avatars and real-time, in-world editors. He also spearheaded the decision to allow users to retain the IP rights to their creations and helped craft Linden's virtual real estate policy.

Prior to joining Linden Lab in November, 2000, Ondrejka served as Project Leader and Lead Programmer for Pacific Coast Power and Light. At PCP&L, he brought the "Road Rash" franchise to the Nintendo for the first time with "Road Rash 64" and built the core technology teams that completed multiple products for Nintendo and Sony consoles. Previous experience includes Lead Programmer for Acclaim Coin-Operated Entertainment's first internal coin-op title and work on Department of Defense electronic warfare software projects for Lockheed Sanders. While an officer in the United States Navy, he worked at the National Security Agency and graduated from the Navy Nuclear Power School. Ondrejka is a graduate of the United States Naval Academy, where he was a Presidential "Thousand Points of Light" recipient and became the first person to earn Bachelors of Science degrees in two technical majors: Weapons and Systems Engineering and Computer Science.

Marty Roberts

As General Counsel, Marty is responsible for managing the legal department and advising the company's board and management on legal issues and corporate governance matters. Before joining Linden Lab in July 2007, Marty was Deputy General Counsel of eBay Inc., where he managed regulatory affairs and legal operations. Previously, he was General Counsel of Shopping.com, where he helped lead the company through its IPO and subsequent acquisition by eBay, and of LookSmart, where he handled the company's IPO and many corporate transactions. Earlier in his career, Marty was Senior Counsel for the PMI Group and for Fair Isaac Corporation. Marty received his law degree from the University of Alabama School of Law and a BA in English from the University of Virginia.


Ginsu Yoon - Vice President, Business Affairs

Gene Yoon handles a variety of business matters for Linden Lab, including international market development, corporate and business development, and external developer programs. He was also previously the company's general counsel and provided interim leadership for finance. Prior to Linden Lab, he was general counsel and corporate secretary at Airespace, a wireless LAN equipment company, where he negotiated key strategic relationships, including the sale of the company to Cisco Systems. Before joining Airespace, Gene was a principal at KTB Ventures, leading the firm's investments in wireless communications, networking equipment and semiconductors. He worked with the Airespace founders prior to joining KTB, while consulting with portfolio companies of Storm Ventures. He practiced law at Venture Law Group, advising many technology startups and venture capital firms, and at Kirkland & Ellis in New York, where his practice focused on leveraged buyouts and other complex corporate transactions. Gene received an A.B. degree from Princeton University and a J.D. from New York University School of Law.

John Zdanowski - Chief Financial Officer

John oversees all the financial and accounting activities of Linden Lab including management of the rapidly growing Second Life economy. John has extensive experience building and growing profitable internet companies. Prior to Linden Lab John was CFO at HouseValues where he led finance and accounting as the company profitably quadrupled to over $100 million in revenue in 3 years. John also arranged the company's first institutional financing round of $15 million and its $94 million IPO in 2004. Prior to joining HouseValues, John co-founded Affinity Internet, Inc. raising more than $60 million to build a highly profitable Web hosting and services company serving more than 200,000 small and medium sized business customers. John has worked as an investment banker and a management consultant and began his career as an engineer in GE's highly acclaimed management training programs.

John holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, an MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Syracuse University, and a BS in Electrical Engineering from Clarkson University.






Board of Directors

In addition to Philip Rosedale, Linden Lab's Board of Directors includes:

Mitch Kapor

Mitch Kapor is the founder of Kapor Enterprises, Inc. He has been a leading figure in the computer industry for 20 years. He was the founder and CEO of Lotus Development Corporation and the designer of Lotus 1-2-3, which sparked the desktop revolution in business computing. Mitch has been at the forefront of the information technology revolution for a generation as an entrepreneur, investor, social activist, and philanthropist. For the past 15-plus years, Mitch has been an investor and advisor to high-technology start-up companies including founding investments in UUNET Technology and Real Networks. He is currently a director of Linden Lab and Reactivity, Inc. From 1999 to 2001, Kapor served as a partner with Accel Partners, a leading venture capital firm based in Palo Alto, California. He has an undergraduate degree from Yale in linguistics and psychology and is an alumnus (but not graduate) of MIT's Sloan School of Management. He held an Adjunct Professorship at MIT's Media Lab from 1994-1996. His writing has appeared in Scientific American, Wired, Forbes, the Harvard Business Review and the New York Times.

Jed Smith

Jed is the Managing Partner of Catamount Ventures. Catamount was founded to focus on the underserved seed/early stage venture investment market. Catamount is investing out of its second fund and has approximately $45M under management. Prior to Catamount, in 1997 Jed was the founder of drugstore.com (NASDAQ: DSCM), and served on its board of directors with John Doerr, Brook Byers, Peter Neupert, Howard Schultz and Jeff Bezos. Prior to drugstore.com, Jed co-founded and spent four years at Cybersmith, a retail store chain that showcased the latest advances in information technology and multimedia software. Before that, Jed was Vice President of Sales at Tribe Computer Works (a networking hardware and software company that was successfully sold). Jed began his career in technology working for Tom Siebel at Oracle Corporation, ultimately serving as District Manager for Eastern Region VARs. He is a recipient of the Albert Einstein High Technology Award. Jed holds a BA from Middlebury College and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Bill Gurley

Bill Gurley joined Benchmark Capital in 1999 after spending two years as a partner with Hummer Winblad Venture Partners. Before entering the venture capital business, Bill spent four years on Wall Street as a top-ranked research analyst, including three years at CS First Boston focusing on the personal computer hardware and software business. His research coverage included such companies as Dell, Compaq, and Microsoft, and he was the lead analyst on the Amazon IPO. In both 1995 and 1996, Bill was a member of the Institutional Investor All-American Research Team. Prior to his investment career, Bill was a design engineer at Compaq Computer, where he worked on products such as the 486/50 and Compaq's initial multi-processor server. Before Compaq, he served in the technical marketing group of Advanced Micro Devices' embedded processor division. Bill is the author of the Above the Crowd newsletter which focuses on the evolution and economics of high technology businesses.


James Currier

James Currier is the Founder and President of Tickle, Inc. James graduated from Princeton in 1990. He worked for GTE New Ventures in Hollywood until 1992, funding broadband service startups in the entertainment industry. He then worked at STAR TV in Hong Kong. Beginning in 1994, he was an associate at Battery Ventures funding early stage software and communications companies. He received his MBA from Harvard in 1999, graduating with distinction.


top
HOME | CONTACT US | PRIVACY POLICY | ©2007 LINDEN RESEARCH, INC. All Rights Reserved.