About Us - oDesk Management Team

Gary Swart, Chief Executive Officer

As CEO at oDesk, Gary Swart brings more than 15 years of sales, management and leadership experience in the enterprise software market. Most recently, Gary was the VP of Worldwide Sales for Intellibank, responsible for building the direct and indirect sales organization and channel development. Prior to Intellibank, he was a Business Unit Executive for IBM's Rational Software Product Group. Gary was responsible for leading Small and Medium Business sales for the Americas, including 180 field, technical, and telesales team members. In this capacity, he had responsibility for $200 million in license, consulting and support revenues.

Gary joined IBM through the acquisition of Rational Software, where he ran Western Field Operations, contributing $120 million to Rational's $700 million revenues. He also held a number of other senior management positions at Rational, including Americas Medium Business Leader, Area Manager, District Manager, and Director of Telesales. Prior to Rational, Gary held a number of sales, management and leadership positions with Pure Software, subsequently Pure-Atria, which previously merged with Rational.

Gary holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration from the University of Maryland.

Odysseas Tsatalos, Chief Technology Officer, Co-Founder

Odysseas Tsatalos has over a decade of experience in designing and managing research and development operations for Internet-based applications and related projects.

Prior to co-founding oDesk, Odysseas was a co-founder of Intacct Corporation and, as the Chief Technology Officer, oversaw the development of all phases of the Intacct web-based enterprise accounting system. Prior to Intacct, Odysseas was Chief Technology Officer and co-founder for BroadQuest Inc., a developer of enterprise portals for managing information within corporate enterprises. There, he headed the company's Internet application efforts and transformed the company from an enterprise software provider into a B2B infrastructure enabler. Previously, Odysseas was a research staff member at the IBM Almaden Research Center, where his work focused on lightweight Internet appliances and the integration of databases into web-based applications.

Odysseas received his Ph.D. in Computer Science with a minor in Business from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He also holds a Master of Science degree in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin at Madison and a diploma in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences from the National Technical University in Athens, Greece.

Stratis Karamanlakis, Vice President of Development, Co-Founder

Stratis Karamanlakis runs engineering by applying the oDesk technology that his own team developed. Expanding on more than a decade of experience in software engineering, he leads a team of oDesk software engineers spread over three continents.

Prior to co-founding oDesk, Stratis was co-founder of Ergion Corp., which developed one of the first commercial rich-client .NET applications to make use of Web services. A major ASP company eventually acquired this technology and deployed it as its offline client. As VP of Engineering in Postcriptum Communication Informatics, Stratis directed development of multimedia content management system that was deployed in the Athens 2004 Olympics Youth website. Stratis also worked at L-Cube Information Systems, where he supervised R&D in a number of information technology projects for the European Union's ESPRIT and RACE initiatives.

Stratis holds a diploma in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece.

Brian Goler, Vice President of Marketing

Brian brings over 15 years of management experience that spans several online community and publishing businesses. Most recently, Brian co-founded and launched YorZ, an online community dedicated to helping people advance their careers. Prior to YorZ, Brian held several senior positions at LookSmart, including Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing, where he led LookSmart's rapid entry into the paid listings business and generated over $30 million in revenue in the first year.

Prior to LookSmart, Brian was co-founder and CEO of Zeal Media, a community-built web directory that LookSmart acquired. Brian was also an early team member at CitySearch.com where he was instrumental in the development and implementation of the company's new market rollout strategy. Earlier, he was a consultant with McKinsey & Company.

Brian graduated from Harvard College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Chemistry, magna cum laude. He also holds a Master of Science degree in Economics from the London School of Economics.

Bin Xu, Vice President of Engineering and Technical Operations

As Vice President of Engineering and Technical Operations, Bin Xu oversees all oDesk product development, quality assurance, service deliveries and IT.

Bin has worked in the software industry for over a decade with extensive development experience with Software as a Service, web applications and client-server software. He has led and managed small and large teams, in the United States and offshore, for product and service design, development and releases. Bin has extensive experience in building and managing distributed and remote engineering organizations. Prior to oDesk, Bin worked at WebEx Communications from 2002 to 2006, where he managed PSO and later on all major product development and releases that helped to grow the company's annual revenue from under $40 million to more than $400 million. Before WebEx, Bin was engineering executive at FusionOne and Preview Systems, where he grew with the company from an early stage start-up to its successful IPO. Additionally, Bin served as Senior Technical Staff in several high-tech companies in the Silicon Valley.

Bin holds a Ph.D. from Cornell and an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Wyoming. Bin also holds graduate and undergraduate degrees in Computer Science and Engineering from Peking University and Zhejiang University in China.

Venky Ganesan, Globespan Capital Partners

Venky is a Managing Director based in Globespan's Palo Alto office where he focuses on enterprise software and infrastructure investments. He serves on the boards of Agitar, Exeros, Nominum, Plaxo, Sendia, Steelwedge, and Strongmail.

Prior to Globespan, Venky was a Vice President of JAFCO Ventures where he focused on enterprise software investments. Prior to founding Trigo Technologies, Venky was an Associate in JAFCO's Boston office where he envisioned the idea behind Trigo and where the company was incubated at the time of inception. As co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Trigo Technologies, Inc. Venky played an integral role in helping the company take the leadership position in the product information management space. Trigo was accquired by IBM resulting in a substantial investment return for all investors.

Previously, Venky worked with McKinsey & Co. in their Los Angeles and Johannesberg offices. He also was a program manager at Microsoft's Encarta group. Venky received degrees in Computer Science, Math, and Economics from both the California Institute of Technology and Reed College.

Greg Gretsch, Sigma Partners

As a former founder and executive of four start-up technology companies, Greg uses his expertise to assist entrepreneurs in building strong businesses. Greg has been in the high-technology industry for more than 17 years. He joined Sigma in 2000, and brings to the firm expertise in new venture creation and marketing. Greg tracks markets that have an impact on both the enterprise and the consumer, including business applications, enterprise infrastructure, storage, Internet services, consumer services, and alternative energy.

In 1997, Greg co-founded Connectify, an enterprise software company that sold software for Electronic Direct Marketing. After selling Connectify to Kana Communications in 1999, he stayed on board as the Vice President of Electronic Direct Marketing. Prior to Kana, Greg started GiftONE in 1996, which he later sold to SkyMall. In 1993, Greg launched his first start up, Vicarious, an education and reference CD-ROM publisher. Early in his career, Greg spent time at Apple Computer where, in addition to spearheading product marketing programs, he lead a project partnering with CNN that offered the first public showcase of QuickTime. Before joining Apple, Greg was an IT consultant for Andersen Consulting (now Accenture).

Greg has a B.B.A in Management Information Systems (MIS) from the University of Georgia.

Kevin Harvey, Benchmark Capital

Kevin is a seasoned entrepreneur with a long track record of developing innovative technologies into successful enterprises. Prior to Benchmark, Kevin was founder, president and CEO of Approach Software where he led the development of the world's first end-user client/server database for Windows. Approach Software was purchased by Lotus Development in 1993.

Before founding Approach Software, Kevin founded Styleware and pioneered integrated software for the Apple II personal computer. Styleware was purchased by Claris Corporation where Kevin's team went on to create ClarisWorks, one of the best-selling software programs for the Macintosh.

Kevin received his BSEE degree from Rice University.

Thomas Layton, CEO of OpenTable

Thomas Layton served as CEO of OpenTable from 2001 to June 2007. Previously, he was a co-founder of CitySearch, Inc. which later merged with Ticketmaster to become Ticketmaster Online - CitySearch (NASDAQ: TMCS), now a subsidiary of USA Networks. In his role as President and COO at TMCS he helped grow that organization to become the leading online local content property, serving more than 128 cities worldwide.

Prior to his experience at Ticketmaster - CitySearch Thomas was with Score Learning Corporation, a leading educational services company, where he served first as Chief Financial Officer and later as President and Chief Operating Officer. Prior to that, Thomas was Vice President and General Manager for MicroFinancial Corporation, a high-growth, nationwide equipment leasing company, and from 1986 to 1988, he was a Consultant with the Boston Consulting Group. Thomas also has extensive experience in other entrepreneurial firms and in venture capital.

Thomas holds an MBA from the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University and a BS from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Rob Chesnut

Robert Chesnut is the Vice President and Deputy General Counsel of eBay, Inc., the Internet's leading person to person trading community. In January 2002, he was appointed to form and lead eBay's new Rules, Trust and Safety Department, which is responsible for the formation and coordination of eBay's trust and safety strategy worldwide. Rob's group is responsible for changes to eBay's site rules and policies to make eBay an even better marketplace, eBay's proactive efforts to detect and prevent fraudulent and abusive activity on the site, programs like escrow and user verification that promote safer trading, and cooperation with law enforcement and regulatory agencies to encourage lawful activity on the site and prosecution of wrongdoers.

Before starting eBay's Rules, Trust and Safety department, Rob was a member of eBay's legal team for over three years, overseeing domestic legal issues for eBay. Rob joined eBay in early 1999 after spending 11 years as a federal prosecutor with the United States Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia. Rob served as the Chief of that office's Major Crimes unit, and handled several noteworthy espionage cases including the prosecution of CIA employee Aldrich Ames. He is a graduate of the University of Virginia and Harvard Law School.

Ronald Conway

Ronald Conway is the Founder and Managing Partner of the Angel Investors LP funds. Ron worked with National Semiconductor Corporation in various marketing positions (1973-1979). Altos Computer Systems benefited under Ron's leadership as a co-founder, President and CEO, and as a member of the Board (1979-1990).

He led Personal Training Systems (PTS) for five years as President and CEO (1991-1995). PTS was acquired by SmartForce/SkillSoft and Ron served on their Board of Directors until September 2002. Ron has served on several Boards/Advisory Boards including: The Red Herring Magazine, AtWeb (sold to Netscape/AOL), SendMail, Bright Mail, Ask Jeeves, Napster, and Support.com, SNOCAP, Plaxo, Soliel Securities, Marimba, Metamatrix and AVP.

Ron is involved in community activities as a member of the Board of Directors and Treasurer for The Altos Foundation (1993-2000), which has contributed over $10M to Bay Area Charities. He is on the development committees of UCLA, St. Francis High School, Sacred Heart Schools, and UCSF Medical Center. Ron serves as Chairman of the Development committee of Ronald McDonald House at Stanford and the Packard Children's Hospital. Ron co-founded the UCLA VC Fund whose investments benefit UCLA, and was a member of the DAPER VC Fund that benefits the Stanford Athletic Department (1999-2002). Ron is also on the Benefit Committee of the Tiger Woods Foundation.

Robert Frick

Robert Frick previously served as the Vice Chairman of the Board, Chief Financial Officer and head of the World Banking Group for Bank of America, as Managing Director of BankAmerica International, and as President of Bank of America's venture capital subsidiary. Now retired, he previously served as a director of Connectify, Inc. from its founding to acquisition by KANA and currently serves on the boards of directors for five private companies. Mr. Frick holds a B.S. in Civil Engineering and an M.B.A. from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.

Anoop Goyal

As a founding member of the Media and Ad Services division at TiVo, Anoop is responsible for building new advertising products targeting its 4 million customers. He has over 14 yrs of software experience in companies like TiVo, Tavant, eBay, Accenture, and Oracle.

Prior to TiVo, Anoop was the General Manager of Tavant India. He started the Tavant Engineering operations in Bangalore which now has over a 1000 people. He managed eBay's outsourced offshore product development team of 100 people split between three centers: Chennai, Bangalore, and San Jose. Prior to that, he was a founding member of Accenture's Oracle Solution Center in Palo Alto where he helped manage, design, and implement systems and offerings for the Center. Earlier, at Oracle Corporation, he managed consulting projects for Fortune 500 clients in the US. In his early days there, he was a member of the tools development division. While at Oracle, Anoop was responsible for identifying and coordinating the first project that Oracle undertook in India.

Anoop has a Masters in Computer Science from Stanford University and a Bachelors in Computer Science from The Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur.

Ken Rudin

As co-founder and CEO of LucidEra, Ken is focused on redefining the Business Analytics market by providing simple to use Business Intelligence On Demand.

Before founding LucidEra, Ken was VP and General Manager of Siebel CRM OnDemand at Siebel Systems, where he created and successfully launched Siebel's top rated hosted CRM solution and grew it to be one of the leading hosted solutions in the market. Prior to that, Ken was VP of Marketing for Siebel Analytics, where he leveraged nearly ten years of analytics experience to help Siebel become the industry's largest provider of analytics applications. Before Siebel, Ken served as Senior VP of Products for Salesforce.com, where he spearheaded all development and product marketing functions for the company's hosted CRM solution which ultimately defined the Software as a Service market. Before Salesforce.com, Ken was co-founder and CEO of Emergent Corporation, a consulting company focused on building large-scale data warehousing solutions for Fortune 500 companies which was acquired by Keane, Inc. in 1999.

Ken holds a bachelor's degree in computer science and electrical engineering from Harvard University and a master's degree in business from Stanford University.

Mary Lou Song

Mary Lou Song is a community development consultant, advising Internet companies who want to build cooperative relationships with their consumers.

Song was most recently director of community development for Friendster, a start up company focused on building social networks.

Previous to Friendster, Song was senior product manager for eBay. As the company's third employee, she was instrumental in the development of the eBay online community. When she joined the company in 1996, eBay had approximately 15,000 community members; today it has more than 40 million around the world.

In eBay's early days, Song built a cooperative relationship between the company and the user community, combining traditional product marketing with online community marketing. She was responsible for the strategic direction of community products, for the development and implementation of community tools, and for community initiatives that impact eBay's global community.

Prior to eBay, Song worked as a journalist. She holds a bachelor's degree from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University and a master's degree in Communications/Media Studies from Stanford University.

Maynard Webb

Maynard brings almost 30 years of experience developing and leading high-growth companies to his role as CEO of LiveOps. He joined LiveOps most recently from eBay where he served as Chief Operating Officer. At eBay, Maynard directed engineering and technology operations, product development, customer support, trust and safety, global billing, human resources, and legal functions. Prior to eBay, Maynard was Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer for Gateway, Inc. He has also held management and leadership positions at Bay Networks, Quantum Corporation, Thomas-Conrad Corporation and IBM. A respected member of the Silicon Valley technology community, Maynard sits on the boards of several successful companies, including Salesforce.com, Admob and Baynote. Maynard holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Florida Atlantic University.