About SmartyCard
SmartyCard is the world's first learn, earn and play experience to provide real, online
and virtual rewards to the tens-of-millions of families that believe learning at home can be fun and
rewarding. Created by industry leaders in family entertainment, educational content and toys,
SmartyCard.com features age-appropriate content from supplemental education leaders Learnstar, Ignite
and Learning.com, as well as the most popular rewards from Club Penguin™, WebKinz, Star Doll,
BellaSara and many other popular family sites.
SmartyCard is backed by leading venture capitalists and is based in San Mateo, California.
Team
Robert Hutter, Co-Founder
Through investments and stewardship, Robert has focused on bringing breakthrough technologies,
innovative entertainment services and meaningful educational solutions to broad markets. Robert was most
recently a charter member of Revolution Ventures, where he led investments and took active management
roles in the firm's portfolio companies since the partnership began in late 1999.
At Revolution, Robert served as an EVP in charge of early-stage financing efforts for CombineNet, the
leading provider of advanced combinatorial procurement technology for Fortune 500 corporations. Robert
also served as VP of Corporate Development at Solarflare Communications, the worldwide pioneer in PHYs
and controllers for standards-based 10 Gigabit Ethernet networks running on copper cabling.
Prior to Revolution, Robert was an Associate at Fundamental Capital in Palo Alto, CA, where he was
instrumental in the start-up phases of a variety of companies including Silicon Spice, which was
acquired by Broadcom in August 2000 ($1.3 billion), and EduSoft, which was acquired by Houghton Mifflin
in 2003.
Currently, Robert is on the Board of Directors of SmartDrive Systems, Quantcast, and InGameAd Limited.
Robert is a graduate of Harvard University.
Bhavin Shah, Co-Founder
Bhavin has dedicated his career to making a real impact in areas of entertainment, science, and
education in the US and abroad.
Bhavin was previously a business development and product lead at Leapfrog Enterprises, Inc., a leading
designer, developer and marketer of innovative, technology-based educational toys and products. There,
Bhavin lead the development and deployment of instructional technology by offering engaging, effective,
standards-based instruction reaching students in over 100,000 K-6 classrooms. He also led a string of
businesses and initiatives for the company that provided interactive solutions to adults and families
across health care and workplace-based English language trainings.
Earlier in his career, Bhavin held positions at San Diego Supercomputer Center, and NASA's Calspace
Institute. Bhavin received his B.S. in Computer Science, from the University of California, San Diego,
and an M.A. in Education from Stanford University focusing on education, technology, and business.
Jason Sanders, CEO
For over fifteen years, Jason has consulted to, invested in and managed leading companies across the
United States. He began his career advising established and innovative companies including The New York
Times and MTV Networks, where he helped re-engineer their respective operations. Subsequently, he joined
Advent International and then served as a general partner for several funds managed by Crosslink
Capital, a multi-stage venture capital fund with over $1B of assets under management. While at
Crosslink, Jason was a member of the Business and Consumer Services team and was also responsible for
Crosslink's deal-related legal documentation, including deal structuring. As one of the investing
partners, Jason sourced and/or served as Board Member/Observer of many companies including: Equinix
(Nasdaq: EQIX), Brightmail (acquired by Symantec) and Miller-Heiman.
In 2004, he became the President of Fifteen Asset Management and the Chief Operating Officer of Fifteen
Group, an opportunity-driven, full-service real estate organization. Fifteen owned and managed over
14,000 apartments across nine states. Most recently, he was a Managing Director of Hercules Technology
Growth Capital. Jason received a B.S. in economics from the Wharton School at the University of
Pennsylvania.
Aaron Burcell, VP of Marketing
Aaron has spent the last five years creating millions of young consumers of social media and social
networking applications at Utterli, Jangl and PodShow. After having marketed new and compelling ways for
kids to consume and share media through podcasting, user-generated media, life-casting and mobile
blogging services, Aaron noticed his own daughter's desire to ask questions and learn when using the
home PC. Late in 2008, Aaron reconnected with SmartyCard co founder Rob Hutter, and within days, Aaron
was developing the SmartyCard go-to-market strategy.
Most recently the CMO of Morgenthaler-backed RPM Communications, Aaron was responsible for rebranding
and re-launching Utterli's now-thriving mobile blogging service and helped define a "group comms"
platform utilized by high-profile customers like eBay and the American Red Cross.
Aaron headed marketing at Jangl (acquired by LiveUniverse) in 2007, working closely with the founders to
develop some of the most widely-distributed voice and texting social applications for dozens of
networks, including leaders Match.com, Plenty of Fish, Facebook and Bebo.
Prior to Jangl, Aaron headed marketing as one of the first employees at PodShow, the company that
introduced the podcasting phenomenon to the world through PodShow, Podcast Alley, BTPodShow, Podsafe
Music Network and iTunes.
Earlier in his career Aaron held key marketing and communications positions at Stata Labs (acquired by
Yahoo!), Alterlayer and WebTV (acquired by Microsoft). Aaron is a graduate of Stanford University.
Micki Seibel, VP of Product Management
Micki is a well-known product management and user interface design executive with a range of consumer
technology business experience from early stage customer-facing web start-ups to tech giants like Intel,
eBay and Netscape. Micki has a proven track record of defining and managing successful Web-based
products worldwide.
Micki previously worked at MyNewPlace, a pay-for-performance apartment search site, where she served as
the director of product and user experience and was member of the executive team. She also held several
leadership positions at Ask Jeeves, including general manager of search engine distribution where she
was responsible for growing the number of users and overall market share in the U.S., U.K., and future
European and Asian countries.
Prior to Ask, Micki was the Sr. Director of Product Management for Buyers at eBay, where she was
responsible for the end-to-end buyer experience in the US and 21 International sites. At eBay, Micki
developed product strategies for buyer activation, global trade, advertising, sponsorships,
merchandising and selling tools.
Prior to eBay, Micki held senior product management positions at Dynaptics, Netscape and Intel.
Throughout her career, Micki has earned prestigious industry awards such as Business Week¹s Best of the
Web in Real Estate for the design of MyNewPlace.com (Sept, 2006), and Inman News Innovator Award for Web
site design of MyNewPlace.com (July, 2006); and several corporate awards from eBay, Netscape and Intel.
Micki is co-author of two textbooks on computing for the Macintosh and Unix environments (August, 1994).
Micki is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University.
Adrienne J Allen, VP of Creative
One of the original employees of SmartyCard, Adrienne has led all creative and brand design, including
original character and animated content development, as well as the visual and interactive design of the
SmartyCard service.
Prior to SmartyCard, Adrienne was Director of User Experience at imbee.com, the first social networking
site for kids and tweens. Adrienne has extensive experience leading development of youth brands
including Nickelodeon, GapKids, Sega Toys, Discovery Toys and Discovery Kids, DisneyGirl, NatGeo Kids,
PBSKidsGo! and The Girl Scouts of America. Other notable achievements include interactive design and
brand engagements for IDEO, AT&T mobility, Landor Associates and the 2008 Beijing summer Olympic Games.
Adrienne was also the Director of Creative for Novo (ArcWW), where she provided creative leadership for
award-winning engagements such as Behr/ColorSmart (Webby™ nominee), Orbitz, and Gloss (Estee Lauder).
Steven Linde, VP of Engineering
Steve Linde has spent much of the last decade developing some of the most widely adopted online consumer
services, and, as the father of two, Steve has developed a passion for creating entertaining
and educational content for children. Steve manages all of engineering efforts at SmartyCard, and he is
ultimately responsible for the technical delivery of the SmartyCard site and service.
Most recently the Director of Engineering at NexTag, Steve led technical teams through several years of
dramatic growth in site traffic, technical complexity and team size, as that team scaled to meet the
needs of millions of consumers.
Prior to NexTag, Steve spent several years at consumer-tech media giant CNET, managing and leading the
engineering teams responsible for launching a number of the company's most popular sites.
Steve has a master's in computer science from Columbia University and received his undergraduate
degree from Dartmouth College.
