Scott A. Jones - Chairman of the Board
Scott Jones carefully sculpted the Gracenote company into existence by acquiring pivotal enabling technologies from CDDB, ION, Escient, Quintessential Player, and Cantametrix. He served as the company's Chairman/CEO from 1998 to 2001 and is now Chairman of the Board. Jones raised significant capital, recruited a talented management team, contributed technology and intellectual property, and strategically guided Gracenote to pursue market segments that are the foundation of the Company's success.
He is CEO, Chairman, and co-Founder of ChaCha, a groundbreaking search engine for mobile phones providing "answers on the go" that trumps desktop search engines. He serves as Chairman of Gazelle TechVentures, a top-performing Midwest-based venture capital company, Founder/Director at San Jose-based Powerfile, and Chairman/CEO of PrecisePath Robotics. In the mid-1990s, he played a pivotal Board role at Cambridge-based ATG, a leading provider of e-commerce platforms for Fortune 500 companies. In 1986, he co-founded voicemail provider, Boston Technology, Inc., serving as Chairman and Chief Scientist. Boston Technology experienced strong growth and later merged with Comverse Technologies to become the world's leading provider of voice-messaging solutions. Jones' inventions are used by nearly all the major telephone companies throughout the world and by over a billion end-user customers today.
Sameer Gandhi
Sameer Gandhi is a partner at Sequoia Capital, responsible for Sequoia Capital's investments in Pacific Edge, and Sourcefire. He is currently a Director of Aceva Technologies, Conformia, Elemental Security, Gracenote, Market Wire, Mirra, Multimedia Live, and Trados. Previously, Sameer was a director of Obongo (acquired by AOL) and was involved with eGroups (acquired by Yahoo) and MP3.com (acquired by Vivendi Universal). Before joining Sequoia Capital in 1998, he was a Principal at Broadview, an investment banking firm specializing in information technology mergers and acquisitions. Earlier, he held technical field sales and consulting positions at Oracle. Sameer has a BSEE and MSEE from M.I.T. and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Jeremy Levine
Jeremy Levine is a Principal with Bessemer Venture Partners in Massachusetts. He focuses primarily on software and services investments. Prior to joining BVP in 2001, Jeremy was Vice President of Operations at Dash, an Internet software publisher.
Jeremy joined Dash from AEA Investors, a private equity firm with an expertise in leveraged and management buyouts, where he specialized in consumer products, specialty chemicals, and light industrials in the U.S. and in Europe. Earlier, he was a management consultant with McKinsey and Company, helping Fortune 500 financial services and consumer products companies address challenges in strategy and technology.
Jeremy graduated from Duke University with a B.S. in Computer Science and Economics.
Craig Palmer, President and CEO
Joining Gracenote at the beginning of 2003, Palmer brings over 20 years of high technology experience working with successful business-to-business software companies, including Aspect Development, a leader in Supply Chain Management acquired by i2 Technologies in 2000 for over $9 billion; as well as Cadence Design Systems and Hewlett Packard.
Prior to joining Gracenote, Palmer was Chairman, President and CEO of eWanted, an Internet startup company with an online consumer marketplace of over 750,000 users. From 1994 to 2000, Palmer held several vice president positions for Aspect Development, where he helped the company achieve a successful Initial Public Offering in 1996, and was instrumental in growing the company from $2 million in annual software revenues in 1994 to over $100 million in 2000. Aspect was acquired by i2, the leader in Supply Chain Management in 2000. From 1989 to 1994, Palmer held a range of senior marketing positions at Cadence Design Systems as it grew to become the leading Electronic Design Automation (EDA) vendor. Prior to Cadence, Palmer spent seven years in marketing at Hewlett Packard, working for the division that spearheaded the company's launch into the Unix workstation marketplace.
Palmer holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin.
Palmer has spoken at numerous financial events, as well as Global Wireless Forum and Jupiter's Plug-In.
Tom Kelly
Tom Kelly joined Gracenote's board of directors in August of 2006. He most recently held the position of Chief Strategy Officer at Sprint Nextel, before retiring from the company in April 2006. Prior to that, Kelly served as executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at Nextel. He had previously served as Executive Vice President, Chief Strategy Officer, and Chief Marketing Officer since he began his career with Nextel in 1996. Before joining Nextel, Kelly was the Vice President of Marketing for AT&T Wireless Services. He has years of experience as a partner in Howard, Bedford, and Nolan, a consulting practice focused on providing marketing and new product consulting to Fortune 500 companies.
Kelly currently serves on the Board of Greater Washington Sports Alliance. He is a graduate Wofford College with BA in Economics.
