Executive Team
CEO and Co-Founder
Jeff Holden is the co-founder and CEO of Pelago. He started the company in January 2006 with a vision of bringing to the physical world the innovations on the web in the area of discovery. Pelago’s flagship product, Whrrl, is a real-world game with a purpose, namely to end Social Rut – to help people escape from behind their computers and patterned lives, to get back out into the physical world with the promise of compelling, highly relevant new experiences.
Before Pelago, Holden spent 8 1/2 years at Amazon.com in a myriad of roles. Most recently, he was Senior Vice President of Consumer Websites, Worldwide, where he oversaw the end-to-end consumer experience including search, navigation, personalization, social computing, ordering, merchandising and automated email. He was also responsible for Amazon’s online traffic initiatives, including the Amazon Associates program, search engine optimization and search engine advertising.
Prior, Holden was the Director of Supply Chain Optimization Systems at Amazon.com. In this position, he led the design and development of the company’s unique and powerful forecasting, inventory planning, order fulfillment optimization and transactional purchasing systems.
Holden also spent five years at D. E. Shaw & Co., L.P. a New York-based hedge fund. He joined the firm as a software engineer and his first assignment was working directly with Jeff Bezos to develop a new trading strategy for the firm. Holden eventually became a Vice President at the company before leaving to join Bezos at Amazon.com.
Holden earned his BS and MS in computer science from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
Vice President of Engineering
Jeff Ayars is the Vice President of Engineering at Pelago. He brings over 18 years of experience building, leading and managing software product development organizations across a wide range of product domains and platforms from desktop to data center to mobile handsets and CE devices. In his current role at Pelago, Ayars leads product development and IT / operations.
Prior to joining Pelago, Ayars was the Chief Technology Officer at Seattle startup Konamoxt, Inc., responsible for managing technology strategy and engineering. Before that, he spent 11 years at RealNetworks as a key technical contributor and leader. Most recently, he served as Vice President of Product Engineering, responsible for core media delivery, DRM products and Open Source Strategy.
During his tenure at RealNetworks, Ayars held other key roles including leading new product efforts in the areas of content protection, technology licensing, and international standards bodies including W3C.
He also worked as a Developer and Technical Lead for RealAudio, RealVideo, and core streaming technologies for which he holds three patents. He began his career at Asymetrix Corporation, working on the ToolBook suite of multimedia authoring systems for CD-ROM and CBT applications.
Ayars holds a BS in Computer Science and Mathematics from the University of Puget Sound, and a Masters in Software Engineering from Seattle University.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
Vice President, Product Management and Marketing
Twitter: @jkimlosangeles
John Kim oversees the product, monetization and community strategies for Pelago. He brings over 15 years of experience of building and marketing high-growth new media products and businesses.
Most recently, Kim was Vice President of Product Management and Marketing for Medio, where he helped define core product functions and build Medio’s leading global mobile search, analytics and search advertising platforms.
Before Medio, Kim was the Senior Director of Strategic and Product Marketing at Yahoo!, leading efforts to conceptualize and build market leading advertising products and features. There, he played a key role developing the original vision and marketing requirements and led the go-to-market phase for Project Panama, Yahoo’s recently released search marketing platform. . Kim originally joined Yahoo! when the company acquired Overture Services, where he was Director of Marketing. At Overture, he helped grow revenues from their self-service channel by five-fold.
Prior to Overture, Kim worked as a strategy consultant at Accenture, where he advised executives at leading high-tech, wireless and Internet companies on new product development processes, potential new ventures and growth strategies. Kim also served as a White House appointee, advising the President on increasing the level of Asian American and Pacific Islander small-business contribution to the national economy.
Kim received a BA in economics from University of California Santa Barbara and an MBA from the University of Chicago.
