Management Team:
Ben Cruz, Co-Founder / CEO – Mr. Cruz has 22 years of international,
executive management experience with large and small companies including Black
& Decker and Noise Cancellation Technologies, Inc. Prior to Demand
ID Systems, Mr. Cruz was founder and Managing Director of Synchromedia, the
first company to provide multi-city entertainment and dining recommendations
to users of wireless information access devices, done in partnership with
Motorola. In addition to 8 years of strategic and commercial development in
the interactive travel, entertainment and digital and wireless media arenas,
Mr. Cruz brings skills in P&L management, marketing, distribution, product
development, licensing, fund raising, quality management and team building.
Mr. Cruz holds a Masters in International Management from The American
Graduate School of International Management (Thunderbird), consistently ranked
the top International MBA program in the country by US News and World Report. Jay Bartlett, Co-Founder / VP
Product Management – Mr. Bartlett is a 31-year veteran of the information
publishing industry, encompassing media from printed books to applications
software to online reference and decision support systems for the
professional, educational, and consumer markets.
He has held P&L responsibility in addition to managerial and
executive positions in product management, sales, marketing, corporate
development, strategic planning, operations, and technology. Among the companies he has helped to develop new lines of
business and enter new markets are Fair Disclosure Financial Network, Inc.,
VeriSign, Inc., Thomson Financial, Information Access Company, Strategic
Intelligence Systems, and Wadsworth Publishing Company.
A frequent concert-goer with wide-ranging tastes, he comes from a
family of notable professional musicians and visual artists from whom he
inherited no discernible artistic talent but an active appreciation for
creative work--and for the challenges of reaching an audience.
Mr. Bartlett holds a bachelor's degree from Brandeis University and has
taken continuing education coursework in information technology.
Skip Daly, Partnership Manager
– Mr. Daly is
a co-founder and principal of the indie record label BOS Music (www.bosmusic.com), which has released
CDs for such rising artists as Railroad Earth and The Ordinary Way. He moonlights as the bassist
in the Wammie-nominated group Oddbox. His network of friendships in the industry (especially in
his native Washington, DC, area) and knowledge of the indie music business has proven invaluable
in expanding the TourVote network. Mr. Daly also is an 8-year veteran of the financial information
industry, having managed large databases for Thomson Financial and The Nasdaq Stock Market, with
additional experience in a technical sales role for Thomson Investor's Network. He holds a bachelor's
degree from the University Of Maryland at College Park and has pursued additional education in the
information technology field.
Advisory Board:
Michael J.
Bebel – Michael Bebel is currently engaged in a number of
consulting and advisory engagements that draw upon extensive knowledge and
expertise gained while leading various online initiatives in the music
industry. His most recent leadership post was
president and chief operating officer of Roxio’s Napster Division. As COO,
Bebel was responsible for overseeing the operations of the company's online
music division including the launch of the new, legitimate Napster 2.0 service
in October of 2003. Bebel took on this position after serving as president and
CEO of pressplay where he led the effort to establish one of the first
successful legitimate online music services. Before joining pressplay, Bebel was
executive vice president of the eLabs division of Universal Music Group (UMG),
where he played a leading role in the formation of the pressplay joint venture
between UMG and Sony Music. Prior to that, Bebel was senior vice president for
strategic planning and business development of Universal Music Group’s eCAT
division, where he helped shape the landscape of various online initiatives and
played a lead role in negotiating key joint ventures and strategic alliances.
Bebel was brought to Universal Studios, Inc. from its then-parent company,
Seagram, in January 1996 and served in a leadership capacity focused on
improving operations across the studio, theme park and music divisions. From
1991 to 1995, he held several financial management and business development
positions at the Seagram Beverage Company in New York.
Carl Freed, President, Trevanna Entertainment – Mr. Freed's founded Trevanna
Entertainment, a company which provides consulting services for live musical events.
Trevanna also provides tour management for Alternative Venue Entertainment, a
unique program which brings concert tours to prominent summer camps. Mr. Freed is also managing director of the Independent Promoters
LLC, a collection of the largest independent concert promoters in North America who have come together to produce concert tours, one time major events and
collectively to secure corporate sponsorships. Previously, Mr. Freed was Sr. VP
Business Development at Metropolitan Entertainment, at that time one of the largest independent full service entertainment companies in the country.
Mr. Freed has over 20 years of experience in the production,
marketing and promotion of entertainment properties.
Mr. Freed's skills as a cutting edge entertainment executive
have borne fruit in many areas as he has negotiated precedent
settings agreements for Metropolitan wearing many hats:
He secured the first tour for the arguably the world's
most famous boy group, The Backstreet Boys , helped in the creation
of the Up In Smoke Tour, named one of the top ten tours of all time
by Spin Magazine. Negotiated one of the largest webcasting contracts
at the time for Woodstock 99,
helped acquire the exclusive 25 year relationship with the
award winning Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City and
generated key sponsorship agreements for Metropolitan.
Prior to his 10 years at Metropolitan,
Mr. Freed was executive Director of the North American Concert
Promoters Association, a trade group comprised of the largest
concert promotion companies in North America.
There he acted as the concert promotion industry's liaison
to all sectors of the music industry and governmental agencies.
Mr. Freed's experience also includes a stint as
Director of Development for BRB Entertainment,
one of Hollywood's most successful musically-oriented television
production companies. Mr. Freed also served on the boards of the
CityKids Foundation and Concerts for the Environment. David E. Leibowitz, Managing Partner, CH Potomac -
David E. Leibowitz is Managing Partner of CH POTOMAC,
a strategic services company focused on the entertainment, media and technology industries.
Mr. Leibowitz brings twenty-five years of experience in copyright, media, communications, and
technology matters, as well as business issues facing the entertainment, new media, consumer
electronics and information technology industries. Among other activities, Mr. Leibowitz
serves on the Industry Advisory Boards of Peppercoin, 13 Colonies Software, CD Intelligence
and Neurok Optics. Earlier in his career, Mr. Leibowitz Co-Founded VERANCE and served as its Chairman.
VERANCE offers innovative technology solutions to protect, manage, and monitor audio and
audiovisual content, including broadcast monitoring and verification, copy protection and
content management. Before that, Mr. Leibowitz was Executive Vice President and General
Counsel of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), responsible for business
and legal issues facing the industry with particular emphasis on how to position the industry
to utilize new physical and electronic format systems. During this period, Mr. Leibowitz
chaired the worldwide recording industry’s International Steering Committee on DVD Audio,
the RIAA New Technology and Multimedia Committee and the RIAA Legal Committee. Prior to his work at
the RIAA, Mr. Leibowitz was a partner in the Washington, D.C., law firm Wiley Rein & Fielding.
Mr. Leibowitz also has served as Policy Planning Advisor to the Register of Copyrights for the
U.S. Copyright Office.
Jeffrey Salinger, Co-Founder & COO, Versura, Inc. – Mr. Salinger is a senior
executive with nearly 25 years of financial services experience in marketing,
systems, operations, and strategic acquisitions and alliances. As a
seventeen-year veteran at Sallie Mae, Mr. Salinger held progressively more
responsible positions. His last position at Sallie Mae was Vice President of
Product Management and Business Development. His responsibilities included
marketing, product and systems development, advertising, direct mail, research
and retail loan operations. He also directed the development of strategic
alliances and business acquisitions, and served on the boards of two holding
company subsidiaries. Most recently, Mr. Salinger was a principal in the
investment firm, Stuart Mill Capital, and was a senior executive at Sato Travel,
one of Stuart Mill Capital's acquisitions. In this capacity, he directed
marketing and sales efforts, including commercial sales, military and government
sales, product development, advertising, marketing services, business
development, and contract administration.
George Seff - Mr. Seff
is Vice President of Technology at Infocruiser. Prior to Infocruiser, Mr. Seff was executive vice president and CTO of
Claritas, a
premier data mining company which was acquired in 1999 by VNU of the
Netherlands. Managing a $14M annual budget, Mr. Seff delivered e-commerce,
Internet, client-server and desktop solutions in the decision support
marketplace. Mr. Seff has successfully founded two high technology
start-ups. He holds a BA in Mathematics, an MS in Computer Science and
attended the Stanford University Executive Program for Growing Companies.![]()
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Brian Dearth, Partner, Brand2B – Brand2B is a consultancy
providing strategic and tactical advice and services to cutting edge new media
companies. Prior to Brand2B, in February 2000, Mr.
Dearth joined HSX® Research as CEO to lead the company's market research
efforts. Mr. Dearth brought to HSX over a decade of senior-level operations and development
experience in entertainment market research. From 1997 to 2000, Brian was the
senior vice president of the Entertainment Group at VNU USA, a $3-billion Dutch
publishing and business information company whose holdings collectively
represent the largest market research operation in the world. He oversaw VNU's
efforts to build marketing applications for entertainment companies and headed a
team that spent $250 million to acquire companies in the entertainment
information space, including National Research Group, SoundScan, and Broadcast
Data Systems. From 1990 to 1996, Brian was the group vice president of Claritas,
Inc., a precision market research company wholly-owned by VNU, where he was
responsible for marketing and product development. Brian holds a B.A. in
Statistics from Miami University and a M.A. in Demographics from Georgetown
University.
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