About Us
The Company
Vendio began in 1999 after closing a round of funding from a top tier Venture Capital firm. A follow-up round closed in 2001 and since that time, Vendio has celebrated five consecutive years of profitable growth. As an eBay® Certified Provider and the first licensed member of eBay API program, Vendio is the leading provider of services that help e-commerce merchants reach consumers, manage transactions, and profitably grow their businesses.
Vendio has been recognized for showing outstanding commitment to the eBay Community and driving a higher percentage of Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) on eBay than any other third party developer. Additionally, Vendio was awarded an eBay Star Developer award for creating the most innovative sales management service.
In 2005, Vendio successfully launched a consumer facing brand, Dealio™. Dealio.com is the premier destination for comparison shopping and community generated deals, helping consumers find the best prices on the Internet. The Dealio toolbar and Deskball™ has been downloaded more than 2.5 million times.
In 2006, Vendio acquired its closest competitor, Andale. Joining the best minds and technology behind the industry's two largest sales management providers translates into innovative and comprehensive new services for online merchants and continued growth for Vendio.
Rodrigo's professional background is in strategic analysis and supplier management with investment bank Credit Suisse First Boston (CSFB) Technology Group and Quantum Corporation, a leading provider of data protection and network storage systems. As a Research Associate at CSFB, Rodrigo prepared comprehensive reports on key players in the telecom equipment segment. As a Commodity Manager at Quantum, Rodrigo performed strategic analysis of the hard disk market, and managed an international portfolio of suppliers that provided Quantum with over $800 million worth of material each year. Rodrigo received his BBA from the University of San Diego and earned his MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Prior to Vendio, Mike spent five years serving his country as an officer in the United States Air Force where he was responsible for developing and producing classified defensive systems for the F-16 that still defend our pilots today. He also held various roles at MCI, Boston Consulting Group, and Raytheon. Mike graduated Summa Cum Laude from Georgetown University with a BS in Finance and Management and a minor in Government. He also has an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Michael is an expert at scaling Internet businesses in both the consumer and small/ medium business (SMB) markets. Most recently he ran the business side of Hearme and Paltalk, the largest video and voice chat communities on the Internet with over 4 million unique monthly visitors. Prior to that Michael established Broadband and affiliate marketing teams at AOL, co-founded Kmart’s online venture Bluelight.com where he ran business development, and founded and helped lead Accenture’s Internet Center of Excellence. Michael holds a Bachelors Degree in Mechanical Engineering and Bachelors and Masters Degrees in Business Economics from U.C. Santa Barbara and Oxford University.
Prior to Vendio, John has built and led engineering teams at VoloMedia, serving as Senior Director of Engineering. At Yahoo, he was Director of Engineering responsible for building the new direct-marketing infrastructure. Prior to that, he served as VP of Engineering at DVDPlay, was credited for architecting a robust and scalable remote management system in consumer automation. At AdForce/CMGi, he most recently served as VP of Engineering, was responsible for the data servers and application servers division and saw the growth of ad-delivery to nearly a billion transactions a day. He was Senior Director of Engineering at FullDegree and held management roles at United Webs and Silicon Graphics. Prior to his engineering management roles, John was architect/technical lead at Taligent, Sun Microsystems and Texas Instruments. John received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from University of California, Santa Barbara.
Tim is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) holder, earned his Bachelor of Sciences in Economics with honors from San Jose State University, and completed his MBA from Thunderbird, The Garvin School of International Management.
Prior to Vendio, Ravi was an Architect at Arzoo, where he lead architecture design and development of a large P2P commerce platform. Ravi also held various senior engineering management positions at Oracle, IBM and Covansys, where he gained extensive experience in building scalable enterprise application architectures and services. During his time at Oracle, he was part of Oracle Global Alliances, responsible for building and managing a highly specialized technical service practice to evangelize Oracle Technology adoption amongst global SIs and ISVs. Ravi received Masters degrees in Software Engineering and in Management from Birla Institute of Technology and Science in Pilani, India.
Prior to Vendio, Radu worked as a researcher for Romania's Ministry of the Economy and as a project manager with an independent French software company. Radu received his Masters in Computer Science from "Politehnica" University of Bucharest, Romania, whose prominent engineering alumni have helped to build some of the most well-regarded commercial and scientific organizations in the world.
Rick Stubblefield - Founder & Managing Director, Lighthouse Capital Partners
Prior to co-founding Lighthouse in June 1994, Rick was a Senior Vice President with Comdisco Ventures where he co-directed and co-managed West Coast investment activities since 1988. While at Comdisco he led the firm's investments in Synopsys, Spectrum Holobyte, Illustra, Visio, Aspect Development, Edify, and Tularik.
Rick holds a BS from the University of California at Davis and an MBA from Golden Gate University.
Bruce Shewmaker - Managing Director, MVC Capital
Bruce earned his undergraduate degree in Finance from The Ohio State University and has passed the Series 7 and 63 NASD qualifying examinations.
Reid Hoffman - Chairman and President, Products at LinkedIn
Reid graduated with distinction from Stanford University with a B.S. in Cognitive Science and from Oxford University with a Master's degree in philosophy.
Keith Rabois - Vice President, Strategy and Business Development at Slide
Keith graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University with a B.A. in political science and received a J.D. with honors from Harvard Law School.
The Management Team
Rodrigo Sales, Co-Founder, Chief Executive Officer, and Chairman of the Board
Rodrigo Sales is responsible for taking Vendio from a concept to a profitable enterprise. He is widely regarded as one of the leading authorities on online marketplaces and eCommerce. Rodrigo has been featured and quoted in several prominent publications including The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and Forbes. Entrepreneur Magazine named Vendio one of the "Hottest Businesses in 2003".
Mike Effle, EVP, Sales Management
Mike Effle joined Vendio in 1999 as one of the first 10 employees. He initially directed business development and strategy efforts and quickly gained more responsibility over his seven years at Vendio. Mike is now responsible for Vendio's Sales Management business, overseeing product development, customer support, business development, sales, and marketing.
Michael Levit, EVP Marketing and Business Development
Michael is an experienced leader adding 14+ years of brand building, partnership development, and executive management to the Vendio and Dealio team. He oversees customer acquisition, communications, brand management, research, and business development.
John Chen, Chief Technology Officer
John Chen brings 20+ years of technology and management expertise to Vendio with leadership experience in software development and engineering operations in data systems, distributed object technologies, enterprise applications and online media and advertising. He oversees software development, QA and operations.
Timothy Vago, Director of Finance
Timothy Vago joined Vendio as its Controller in 2005 and now serves as Director of Finance, in charge of the company's financial management. Prior to joining Vendio, Tim led the finance team as Controller at Veltec Sports, a distributor of premium bicycle components and accessories, and his previous position was Director of Finance for Automated Power Exchange (APX), a privately held technology company engaged in providing online scheduling and settlement services to businesses in the energy industry. Tim also held positions at Edison Mission Energy and The Sumitomo Bank, Ltd. following his postgraduate studies.
Ravi Garikipati, Senior Vice President, Managing Director India Operations
Ravi Garikipati has been with Vendio's Andale service since mid-2000 and has served as Vice President & General Manager of Andale's India operations. Ravi's prior responsibilities have included managing the growth and development of Andale's India operations in addition to his position as Head of Engineering at Andale. His duties included oversight of Andale's product development, quality assurance and release activities for its e-commerce products and services. Ravi has over 18 years experience in building teams to deliver high quality products and services in database, middleware and enterprise application areas.
Radu Togui, General Manager, Vendio Romania
Radu Togui joined Vendio in 2000 as one of the first employees of Vendio Romania. In his years with Vendio, he has been instrumental in helping to develop the Vendio's award-winning Sales Management products and services, rising from senior developer to product manager and general manager. Radu is now responsible for leading the Vendio Romania team as it grows and expands its capabilities as a world-class development organization.
The Board of Directors
Rick has over 17 years experience in structured venture capital investing. He is a co-founder of Lighthouse Capital Partners where he manages the day-to-day operations of the firm, directs West Coast investment activities, oversees investment decision making and other operational activities for the Funds. While at Lighthouse Rick has led the firm in over 100 investments including Mimosa, RiverBed, Omneon Video Networks, BlueLane, Transera, Tzero, Broadvision, Ariba, Marimba, Portal Software, RedBack Networks, Foundry Networks, Shasta Networks, MMC Networks, nVidia, Symyx Technologies, and Force 10 Networks. Rick serves on the Board of Vendio, and Axis Personal Trainers.
Mr. Shewmaker is a senior investment professional with over 30 years of private equity and investment banking experience. Prior to becoming a Managing Director of the Fund in November 2003, Mr. Shewmaker served as a member of the board of the Fund from March 2003 and served out his one year term. Mr. Shewmaker was a co-founder of Merrill Lynch Venture Capital Inc. where he initiated several private equity investment partnerships, including three business development companies. During his ten year career at Merrill Lynch, he participated in sourcing, negotiating and monitoring over 40 private equity transactions including leveraged buyouts and venture capital investments, of which seven companies completed initial public offerings. More recently, Mr. Shewmaker served as President and CEO of The US Russia Investment Fund, with committed capital of $440 million, where he managed a staff of 60 people, including eight private equity professionals, in seven offices across the Russian Federation. As a Managing Director of E*OFFERING Corp., he helped this investment banking firm participate in underwriting more than 50 initial public offerings of domestic companies and was responsible for organizing a global investment banking network. While Mr. Shewmaker has spent the majority of his career with registered investment companies or investment management divisions of NYSE listed firms (divisions of The Chase Manhattan Bank and Time Inc.), in the late 1990's Mr. Shewmaker co-founded Crossbow Ventures, a regionally focused private equity partnership located in Florida.
Prior to heading Products, Reid led LinkedIn through its first fours years of rapid growth as the company's founding CEO. Prior to LinkedIn, Reid was Executive Vice President of PayPal. At PayPal, Reid was in charge of all business relationships: business development, corporate development, international, government relations, and banking/payments infrastructure. During his tenure at PayPal, Reid was instrumental to the acquisition by eBay and was responsible for partnerships with Intuit, Visa, MasterCard and Wells Fargo. Reid also has held management roles in large technology companies, including Fujitsu Software Corporation and Apple. Currently, in addition to LinkedIn, Reid serves on the Board of Directors for several companies including Mozilla Corporation, SixApart, and Kiva.org.
Previously, Keith worked as Vice President of Business Development and Advertising Sales at LinkedIn where he was responsible for developing strategic partnerships as well as generating new revenue for the business. Earlier in his career, Keith served as Executive Vice President of Business Development and Policy for PayPal. Prior to his foray into Silicon Valley, Keith practiced law at Sullivan & Cromwell, clerked for the Hon. Edith H. Jones, and engaged in politics, serving as political director for former Vice President Quayle and associate counsel for a US Senate committee.



