Management Team
Rich Skrenta: CEO
Rich brings to Topix.net a background in both business management
and technical expertise. In his last position, Rich held a
variety of senior roles at Netscape/America Online, including
Director of Engineering for Netscape Search, AOL Music, and
AOL Shopping. Rich joined Netscape/AOL upon its purchase of
NewHoo/The Open Directory Project, where he was Co-founder
& CEO. The Open Directory is
the largest human-edited directory of the web, currently used
by Google, AOL and other major web portals. Prior to that, Rich
led an engineering group at Sun Microsystems implementing network
security and encryption products. Rich also successfully operated
a successful small online gaming company from 1994-2001. Rich
has a BA degree from Northwestern University. See also: http://www.skrenta.com for more
background.
Tom Markson: Co-Founder
Tom Markson brings over ten years of broad experience to
Topix.net. He is a seasoned entrepreneur who has co-founded two
start-ups prior to Topix.net. In his previous role at Terraspring,
Tom was the Chief Architect for the Terraspring product. He helped
build Terraspring from three founders to an 80 person company and was
involved in all aspects of the company including engineering, sales,
and marketing. Terraspring was acquired by Sun Microsystems in 2002.
Prior to Terraspring, Tom was the principal investigator at Sun
Microsystems working in the area of networking and security and his
work on the SKIP protocol was widely published. Prior to Sun
Microsystems, Tom started an internet e-commerce company, The
Grapevine, that specialized in selling wine directly from wineries to
consumers. Tom has a BS in Applied Mathematics from Kent State
University.
Bryn Dole: Co-Founder
Bryn brings to Topix.net his technical expertise in Internet
Search. Bryn was a co-founder of NewHoo/The
Open Directory Project and also joined Netscape/AOL upon its
acquisition. While at Netscape/AOL he developed a price comparison
search engine for AOL Shopping and created a music search product for the AOL
Music Channel. Prior to that he developed the search engine powering
the ODP and Netscape Search, which served over
6 million search queries a day. Prior to NewHoo, Bryn worked at Sun
Microsystems developing cutting edge firewall technology. Bryn has a
BS degree in Mathematics and Computer Science from the University of
Illinois and a Master's degree in Computer Science from the University
of Purdue.
Bob Truel: Co-Founder
Bob brings a diverse technical background to Topix.net. He co-founded
NewHoo/The Open Directory Project, and joined Netscape/AOL upon
the directory's acquisition by America Online. During his years at
Netscape/AOL, Bob was a Principal Engineer and later a Senior Technical
Manager in Netscape Search, AOL Music, and AOL Shopping. Prior to the
NewHoo acquisition, he has worked as a Software Engineer at Sun
Microsystems and IBM. Bob has a BSEE from the University of
Pittsburgh and an MSCS from Indiana University.
Michael Markson: VP of Business Affairs
Michael brings to Topix.net many years of transactional experience,
both from a business and a legal background. Prior to Topix.net,
Michael was the General Counsel and Director of Business Development
for Terraspring, Inc. While at Terraspring, Michael led the company's
strategic partner program, forming valuable alliances with entities
such as HP and EMC. In addition, Michael headed the efforts involved
with the final sale of the company to Sun Microsystems. Prior to
joining Terraspring, Michael was a transactional attorney for the New
York offices of Brown & Wood. Michael has a BA in Economics from
Wittenberg University, a JD from Capital University Law School and an
LLM from Georgetown University Law School.
Chris Tolles: VP of Sales and Marketing
Chris is a marketing executive with a wide variety of Internet and
software industry experience. Prior to joining Topix.net, Chris
co-founded Spoke Software, where he was the Vice President of Marketing.
Before Spoke, Chris was Director of Marketing for products at AOL Music,
Netscape Search and the Open Directory Project. In 1998, Chris
co-founded NewHoo, which was acquired by Netscape and became the Open
Directory Project, the Web directory behind AOL, Netscape, Google, and
Lycos. From 1990 to 1998, Chris held a variety of sales and marketing
positions at Sun Microsystems, including direction of all marketing for
the network security product group, which provided Sun's customers with
encryption, firewall, and authentication solutions. Chris has degrees in
Computer Science and Economics from the University of California at San
Diego, where he was a Warren Scholar and recipient of the Michael
Addison Award for his thesis on the Information Economy.
