Prior to co-founding RapidBuyr, Tom was an SVP at Dow Jones/News Corp. Tom came to Dow Jones in 2008 after it had acquired Generate, Inc., a software/analytics firm that he and his brother Darr had founded in 2004, where he had been the company’s president and CEO. Generate delivered a 4x return to its investors four years after launching. Prior to that, Tom was a founding partner at Reed Elsevier Ventures, the investment arm of the $8 billion media company. Tom co-lead investments in early stage technology companies including Siperian (exited to Informatica), Inxight Software (exited to SAP), Netli (exited to Akamai), Nextpage (exited to FAST) and iPhrase Technologies (exited to IBM). Prior to that, Tom launched and managed Computershopper.com (NetBuyer), Ziff Davis’ e-commerce business unit on ZDNet. This unit, one of the first PC online buying services, accounted for more than 40 percent of the advertising revenue of ZDNet, one of the largest and most profitable Internet properties at the time. He spent his early sales career at Shiva Corporation.

Robert Ball brings 30 years of financial, legal and entrepreneurial experience to the RapidBuyr team.Prior to joining RapidBuyr, Robert co-founded and was CEO of OfficeArrow, a 350,000-plus member online community and business-to-business destination designed to help small business owners, entrepreneurs and office professionals.  Before OfficeArrow, Robert was a Managing Director of LiveOak Equity Partners, an early-stage venture capital firm.  From 1999-2004, Robert served in a variety of executive management roles at Akamai Technologies, the leading provider of cloud optimization services.  Robert led Akamai’s international operations, where he grew the company’s international revenues four-fold in less than two years, served as General Counsel and managed Akamai’s record setting IPO and, as Vice President of Business Development, directed Akamai’s corporate strategy, new product development, strategic partnerships and international expansion.  Prior to Akamai, Robert co-founded and managed the Internet and e-commerce practice of Alston+Bird, LLP, one of the nation’s top corporate and technology law firms.  He began his career as a CPA with PriceWaterhouse.  A recognized expert in online commerce, startup strategies and social media marketing, Ball has been a contributor to The Huffington Post since January, 2011.

Prior to co-founding RapidBuyr, Kevin was VP Business Development for in8 Mobile a leading player in mobile recognition delivering more than 400 million audio IDs for Verizon and other carriers throughout the world. Prior to in8, Kevin was a VP and co-founder at Mobot leveraging visual recognition technology. He led worldwide business development and created global client relationships with Starbucks, Warner Electra, Tower Records, Acura, Hearst, General Foods, Conde Nast, Hachette Filipacchi, Elle Magazine, Vibe, A&E, and others. Mobot was acquired by NeoMedia in 2006. Prior to Mobot, Kevin led business development at BzzAgent, a leading agency funded by General Catalyst, activating word of mouth across social and offline media. Created key client relationships and grew revenues 300% in one year with brands such as Coca-Cola, Anheuser-Busch, Ralph Lauren, Estee Lauder, DuPont, Kellogg’s, Broadcom, Monster.com and others. Prior to that Kevin was a founding Director at ZDNet working with clients such as HP, Gateway, IBM and created NetBuyer with Tom Aley which became Computershopper.com, a multi-billion dollar sales channel for ZD advertisers.

Rob has more than 20 years of experience developing product strategy for successful start-up companies in the information technology and enterprise software industry. Prior to  joining RapidBuyr, Rob was executive vice president of products for Generate Inc., which was acquired by Dow Jones & Co. in 2008. Rob spent two years as executive director of products for the new division at Dow Jones created from the acquisition. Prior to that, Rob was a director of products for Siebel Systems, where he ran partner content integration and launched multiple product lines, including Siebel’s ERM business, which he founded. Siebel ERM was recognized as Siebel’s fastest-growing product line and named Product Line of the Year, growing to more than $30 million a year in license revenue. Prior to Siebel, Rob worked in a variety of product marketing and consulting roles for the Thomson Corporation, Lotus Development and Sandpoint. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Tulane University’s A.B. Freeman School of Business.

PJ brings almost 20 years of experience in the high tech industry. He had several roles at EMC Corporation over 11 years. PJ led business development initiatives for various groups within EMC focused on developing and adapting selling models for distribution and reseller channels. These models were widely accepted and adopted within the partner community. He also coordinated with EMC technology acquisitions to establish a channel strategy to bring these solutions through the appropriate selling channel. Prior to joining EMC he worked for venture backed startup companies Software Emancipation, Inc., Medical Foods, Inc. (merged with Amerifit later sold to Charterhouse Group), and MediaMap.com (acquired by Bacon’s Information, Inc.).