Jay Ashton
CEO, Co-founder
Prior to co-founding Revinate, Jay was President of Five Star Alliance, the leading online travel agency for luxury hotels. Jay helped grow the company into a major player in the luxury hotel market, driving significant business for the world's best hotels. Five Star Alliance was sold to Questex Media in 2007. Previously, Jay ran development at Epinions.com and led the development of one of Japan's first major e-commerce portals at Digital Garage. Jay graduated from Williams College and received his MBA from the Darden Graduate School of Business Administration.
Marc Heyneker
VP of Sales & Business
Development, Co-founder
Prior to co-founding Revinate, Marc was a top sales executive at Akamai Technologies, the global leader for Internet content delivery and web application acceleration services. At Akamai, Marc helped build the Alliance Partner Program, developed and managed key Reseller relationships and ran the National Channel Development team. Prior to Akamai, Marc worked as a management consultant, helping US technology companies more effectively enter the European Market. Marc graduated from Vanderbilt University.
Kyle Duffy
VP of Global Accounts
Kyle is a 10 year veteran of the travel industry and joined the Revinate team from Travelocity where he managed Travelocity's largest hotel, airline, and destination partners. At Travelocity he recognized both the challenges and opportunities created by social media for the hospitality industry, and he's excited to show hoteliers how Revinate can help drive significant business results. Kyle graduated from Boston College with a BS in Marketing.
Michelle Wohl
VP of Marketing
Michelle is the VP of Marketing at Revinate. She began her career at GoLive Systems, creators of the first WYSIWYG Web authoring product for the Mac. The company was acquired by Adobe in 1999. At Adobe, Michelle led product marketing for the Web products, and later, Acrobat. Prior to joining Revinate, Michelle was the VP of Marketing at Sprout where she worked with some of the world’s leading brands such as Disney, Coke and Pepsi to develop social media campaigns and strategies. Michelle graduated from Cornell University with a BA in English.
Wayne Huang
VP of Engineering
Wayne has over 10 years of software and systems engineering experience in both the private and public sectors, and was most recently at social network startup Ning. Previously, Wayne built large-scale data warehouses and tools to store, analyze and visualize terabytes of genomic sequencing data for the US Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute. He also brings extensive experience in operating mission-critical systems and networks, having founded hosting provider Osiris Communications and having served as a software and IT consultant for numerous organizations over the years including MIT and the University of California. Wayne has a masters degree in Computer Science from the University of California, Davis, enjoys photography and traveling, and is a private pilot.
Jim Hornthal, Advisor
Jim was the founder of Preview Travel, one of the first online travel companies, which went public in 1997 and then merged with a division of Sabre Holdings to form Travelocity.com, where Jim was Vice-Chairman of the Board. Jim has a wealth of knowledge and experience in early stage investing and advising to venture capital, private equity and hedge funds. Jim is currently a Venture Partner with CMEA Ventures, a fund with $1.2 billion under management, and the Lester Center Fellow for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business. In addition to advising Revinate, Jim is also Chairman of Triporati.com, an online travel service he founded to help travelers discover their ideal destination. Jim was an active member of Young Presidents Organization (YPO), and a founding board member of the Peace Action Network chapter.
Paul Nelson, Advisor
Paul's Rolodex reads like a who's who of the modern travel industry. A 25 year veteran of the travel business, Paul recently retired from Travelocity as President of Global Media and Partner Marketing, where he focused on worldwide supplier relationships. Paul also ran Travelocity's media business, including media sales, product, strategy and execution. Prior to Travelocity Paul held a variety of executive positions at leading travel companies, including U.S. Travel, Paradise Marketing and Hawaiian Adventures. Paul also served in Vietnam, becoming a decorated officer in the U.S. Marine Corps. His knowledge of the travel industry is paralleled only by his personal travel experiences.
Jay Parikh, Advisor
Jay is a Director of Engineering at Facebook, where he oversees infrastructure engineering and operations. Jay is responsible for leading software development and operations efforts focused on scaling Facebook's infrastructure in order to support the company's millions of users, developers and partners worldwide. Prior to Facebook, Jay was the Senior Vice President of Engineering and Operations at Ning, where he oversaw the global engineering and operations teams. While there, the teams he led created and scaled the company's social networking platform from 50,000 social networks to over 1.5 million social networks. Before Ning, Jay was the Vice President of Engineering at Akamai Technologies where he helped build the world's largest and most globally distributed computing platform. In addition to working with Revinate, Jay also serves as a technology advisor to several other early-stage companies and has filed several U.S. patents.
Cal Simmons, Advisor
Cal is one of the most trusted, recognized and successful travel experts in North America. Cal founded Cal Simmons Travel in 1972, which he grew over 25 years into one of the top travel agencies in the country. Cal is a frequent speaker at travel industry events, and has served on the advisor boards of several airlines, hotel companies and a rental car agency. Cal is the co-founder and manager of three early-stage venture funds. In 2001 he co-authored the popularly acclaimed investment guide Every Business Needs an Angel, published by Random House. In addition to advising Revinate, Cal currently focuses on two companies he co-founded: Five Star Alliance, an online travel agency for luxury hotels, and Adcision, an ad network focused on the luxury market. Cal is a past member and chapter chair of the Washington Young Presidents Organization (YPO).
Sean Trigony, Advisor
Sean is an entrepreneur, angel investor and strategic advisor to several start ups including Revinate, Myxer, Exclusively.in and HowStuffWorks.com (sold to Discovery Communications in December 2007). Sean currently serves as General Manager of WO Central, a division of WideOrbit, the leading provider of business management software for the media industry. Sean graduated from Vanderbilt University.