The Team
Farhad Mohit
dot.purpose: To help people easily distribute any truth they find to other people.
dot.past: Prior to DotSpots, Farhad started BizRate.com in 1996 and Shopzilla in 2004, leading both sites from launch to profitability and through a successful $562 million sale. Farhad holds an MBA in Entrepreneurial Management from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and a BS in Mathematics/Applied Science and a BA in Economics with a specialization in Computing from the University of California, Los Angeles.
dot.passion: Iranian poetry and culture, art, burning man.
Matt Mastracci
dot.purpose: To pursue challenging technical problems and push the envelope of computing.
dot.past: Matt previously worked on building scalable and fast solutions for energy companies, both as desktop and web applications. Along with Ryan Perry, he worked with StumbleUpon to build a newest generation of IE Toolbar prior to their acquisition by EBay. DotSpots is by far the grandest and most challenging of all his projects. Matt has a BSc in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Calgary.
dot.passion: He spends his spare time with his family, playing with his son, making devices do things they couldn't and reading.
Navid Aslani
dot.purpose: Take part on initiatives that in some way help humanity.
dot.past: Navid started his career at GE and spend his first two years in their Information Management Leadership Program. After leading and delivering multiple business critical projects in Europe and the States, he left GE as an Operations Leader in 2006 to pursue the startup world. Navid has a BS in Business - Computer Science concentration, and an emphasis in Information Systems from the University of Kansas.
dot.passion: music, meditation, the outdoors, reading.
Ryan Perry
dot.purpose: To develop high quality software and to be part of something that will improve the way people use technology.
dot.past: Ryan originally developed risk analysis and economic software for the oil and gas industry. DotSpots is his third internet technology start-up company where he's specialized in front-end development. He worked with Matt Mastracci to build the Internet Explorer toolbar for StumbleUpon which was integral for their acquisition by Ebay. Ryan has a Bachelor of Science in electrical and computer engineering.
dot.passion: hockey, family and the outdoors. Enjoys games and game development in his spare time.
Kai Gradert
dot.purpose: Create solutions that are functional, emotional and fun to use.
dot.past: Prior to DotSpots, Kai worked as Senior Designer at Google where he was responsible for the design of Google Desktop, Toolbar and other client products. In addition, Kai lead the R&D efforts at MetaCreations Corp. for new interface concepts in cooperation with the LEGO Group and Apple Computer. Notable among Kai's many achievements is the design and execution of the award-winning project for Professor Stephen Hawking, entitled Life In The Universe. Kai has a background in physics and mechanical engineering, and a BA in typography and design.
dot.passion: Arts, Music, Marathon, Travel, Typography & Yoga.
Brian Long
dot.purpose: To create, and improve…
dot.past: Brian originally spent several years in the game industry developing AI systems for several triple-A PC titles. Seeking a radical change, he then switched gears to the e-commerce space and worked at Amazon.com for a number of years in the Item Management and WebStore groups, before most recently joining DotSpots. Brian has a B.S. in mathematics and computer science from Carnegie Mellon University.
dot.passion: My wife and son, cooking, music, road trips, d.i.y., games.
Lance Riedel
dot.purpose: To discover, invent, and seek the truth.
dot.past: Lance has been working to improve search technology across multiple sectors for the last 15 years. Most recently he worked as a Principal Research Engineer at Yahoo! Research where he was a founding member of the Computational Advertising group that has been widely published (WWW, SIGIR, CIKM) for their work on applying Information Retrieval and Machine Learning for ad selection. He also spent four years as a Verity consultant where he engineered search solutions for many Fortune 500 companies as well as internet startups. Lance has a BS in Computer Science with Minors in Math and Physics.
dot.passion: Hanging out with my family, flying, tinkering with cars and anything else i can fix.
Aaron Leventhal
dot.purpose: To improve the world, of course :)
dot.past: Aaron worked as a Web accessibility architect for IBM Software Group. He was a key driver for the W3C's WAI-ARIA standard, enabling true accessibility for Web 2.0 applications. Aaron's work to drive accessibility standards included implementing complete accessibility support in Firefox. Aaron was also the lead adviser for the Mozilla Foundation's accessibility grant and outreach programs, forming a coalition working to improve accessibility across browsers, assistive technologies and operating systems. This work continues to drive a revolution accessibility on the web today.
dot.passion: Enjoying family and nature; understanding different views of the world.
Dariush Afshar
dot.purpose: Help cultivate clarity and mutual understanding.
dot.past: Formerly of Cisco's Corp Dev Group and McKinsey 's Silicon Valley Office, he also led the social media effort while on the Biz Dev Team of Retrevo.com, a consumer startup. A world cultures enthusiast (Fubright-France, Mitchell Scholar-Ireland, U.N.'s ITU-Switzerland), he holds degrees from Georgetown (BS) and the University of Pennsylvania (Wharton MBA & MA in International Studies, Lauder Institute).
dot.passion: An avid scuba diver, he enjoys music, the arts, and hiking the Bay Area.
Arash Danesh
dot.purpose: To cultivate transparency and awareness in order to bridge cultural gaps.
dot.past: DotSpots is Arash's first foray into internet world. Always a tech and internet enthusiast, he finished his studies in Film and Audio Engineering, working on various projects before joining DotSpots.
dot.passion: Music, Art, Soccer (Hala Madrid!), Yoga, Justice and Equality, and of course: Love :)
Nigel Daley
dot.purpose: To automate, automate, automate.
dot.past: For over a decade Nigel has applied his passion for quality to the challenges of testing large-scale distributed systems. At Sun Microsystems he developed automation frameworks and led testing for Jini Network Technology and Java RMI. At Yahoo!, Nigel led quality engineering and release management for Apache Hadoop. Over time he built and led a multi-national team of talented quality and release engineers. He has been an Apache Hadoop committer since 2007, and is a member of the Apache Software Foundation. Nigel has a M.Sc. in Computer Science with a specialization in software test automation.
dot.passion: my kids, traveling, camping and hiking, quality.