Board of Directors
Jeffrey S. Bennett
Jeff Bennett serves as the CEO of Raptor Sports Properties. Jeff has enjoyed a successful career building and accelerating the growth of companies as an entrepreneur, operating executive and advisor.
Most recently Jeff was the CEO of Swap.com, a consumer-to-consumer marketplace for the exchange of goods. Under Jeff’s leadership, Swap.com became the market leader in North America and was the recipient of many innovative company awards. Swap.com was acquired by Netcycler, to form the largest swap market in the world with operations in the US, UK, Germany and Finland.
Prior to Swap.com, Jeff founded and served as President and COO of NameMedia. NameMedia built one of the largest domain portfolios in the world and leveraged this internet real estate to form the largest secondary domain marketplace and a media network that serves over 60 million visitors/month. Jeff was awarded the E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year Award in New England for his efforts in establishing NameMedia. Jeff remains a member of the Board of Directors of NameMedia.
Prior to NameMedia, Jeff served in several executive roles at Terra Lycos and Lycos, including VP of eCommerce and Executive Vice President of Corporate Development. During his tenure, Jeff created the Lycos eCommerce business that integrated many leading online commerce brands. Jeff was also the architect of several strategic investments, joint ventures and alliances that helped propel Lycos to become one of the largest Internet companies in the world at this time. These global alliances included the Sydney Olympics, Manchester United FC, Bertelsman, Telefonica, and many others. Jeff also served on the Board of Directors of Lycos joint ventures in Europe and Canada.
Jeff earned his B.S. Degree, cum laude, from Bentley University.
Bob Davis
Bob Davis is a General Partner at Highland Capital Partners, a firm that was founded with the mission of helping great people build great companies. Since its inception in 1988, the firm has taken a sector-focused approach to investing in exceptional communications, consumer, digital media, healthcare and information technology companies. With over $3 billion of committed capital and offices in Boston, Silicon Valley, Shanghai and Geneva, Highland has invested in and worked to create such firms as Ask Jeeves, Avid Technology, CheckFree, Conor Medsystems, Continental Cable, Helicos BioSciences, lululemon athletica, Lycos, MapQuest, Navic Networks, Ocular Networks, Odyssey Healthcare, P.A. Semi, Quigo, Starent Networks, Sybase, Telica and VistaPrint.
Prior to joining Highland, Bob served as the Chief Executive Officer of Terra Lycos (TRLY) formed in October 2000 with the $5.5 billion acquisition of Lycos by Terra Networks of Spain. Previously, Bob was the Founder of Lycos, Inc (LCOS) and served as its President and Chief Executive Officer since its inception in 1995 where he led Lycos from a start-up with $2 million in venture capital funding to become the most visited online destination in the world with over 100 million unique visitors. Under his leadership, Lycos jumped from the fastest IPO in Nasdaq history, a mere nine months from inception to offering, to a global media entity and an esteemed member of the Nasdaq 100. Bob has served on the boards of several public and private sector companies including John Hancock (JHFS), Ticketmaster (TCMS), Terra Lycos (TRLY), Lycos (LCOS) and Lycos Europe (LCY). He also serves as a Trustee for Children’s Hospital Trust Board, The Rivers School and also serves on the Board of Advisors for the Boston College Carroll School of Management and the Northeastern University School of Technological Entrepreneurship. Bob is the best-selling author of “Speed is Life: Street Smart Lessons from the Front Lines of Business (Currency).” He holds a B.S. from Northeastern University, an M.B.A. from Babson College, and Honorary Doctorates from both Bentley College and Northeastern University. Bob has been inducted into the Academy of Distinguished Entrepreneurs and received the Massachusetts Interactive Media Council’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
Russell S. Lewis
Mr. Lewis is President and CEO of Lewis Capital, LLC, which was formed in 1999 to make investments and provide general business and mergers & acquisitions consulting services to growth-oriented firms.From February 2002 until January 2005, Mr. Lewis served as Executive Vice President and General Manager of the VeriSign Naming and Directory Services (VRSN) Group, known for running a major portion of the Internet’s critical addressing infrastructure that manages the authoritative directories of all .com and .net domain names. For the preceding 15 years, Mr. Lewis ran a wireless transportation systems integration company that is the market leader in RFID electronic toll collection systems, which he acquired from Control Data in 1986 and sold to SAIC in 1994. Prior to 1986, Mr. Lewis managed an oil and gas exploration subsidiary of a publicly traded utility company (UGI Corporation) and was a Vice President of EF Hutton in the Municipal Finance group. Mr. Lewis is also a Director of Castle Energy Corporation (NASDAQ/CEC and Delta Petroleum.Mr. Lewis is a graduate of Deerfield Academy and holds A.B. from Haverford College and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.
Martin J. Mannion
Marty Mannion is a Managing Director of Summit Partners, a growth equity firm he joined in 1985, when it had fewer than ten employees operating out of one office. Since then, the firm has expanded to more than 160 people across three offices – Boston, Palo Alto and London – and has raised more than $11 billion in capital. Summit has invested in more than 300 businesses, which have completed nearly 125 public offerings and more than 115 strategic sales or mergers.
Marty has served on the boards of numerous private and public companies, with a particular focus on healthcare, financial services and technology companies. His board directorships and investments include: American Dental Partners, Bartlett Holdings, Benesight, Bennington Marine, Champion Windows, Clinical Pathology Laboratories, Educational Services Institute, EMED Co., Help/Systems, Lincare Holdings, Liquidnet Holdings, Litchfield Financial Corporation, LogistiCare, MEDITECH, NameMedia, Prompt Associates, Sparta Systems, and Suburban Ostomy Supply Company.
Marty graduated from Princeton University in 1981 with a degree in Economics. Upon graduation, he worked as a Systems Engineer at IBM Corporation. Following two years at IBM, Marty earned an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and then joined Summit Partners’ Boston office in 1985.
Marty serves on the boards of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Massachusetts Bay and National Association of Basketball Coaches Foundation. He also sits on the board of Harvard Business School Dean’s Board of Advisors and is a trustee of the Park School in Brookline, Massachusetts. Additionally, he is on the Board of Advisors of Year Up, an intensive training program that provides urban young adults with a unique combination of technical and professional skills, college credits, an educational stipend and corporate internship. His past directorships include Children’s Hospital Trust of Boston and Regis High School in New York City.
Babba Shetty
Baba Shetty is the Chief Strategy Officer at advertising agency Hill Holliday and leads brand planning, consumer research, content, and media planning / buying. Under his stewardship, Hill Holliday was named 2011 Media Agency of the Year in the full service category by MEDIA magazine. For four consecutive years Hill Holliday has won Media Plan of the Year from Adweek Magazine — the only agency in the country to do so.
Prior to Hill Holliday, Baba led digital at Fallon Worldwide, and spent three years as a research director and principal analyst at Forrester Research in Cambridge, MA. While at Forrester, Baba advised clients on a wide variety of digital topics, including Web site design best practices, digital marketing, and e-commerce. Baba’s research and perspective have been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Fortune, Business Week, and CNBC.
Baba also worked seven years as a client at BMW, first in product planning then leading marketing communications for the U.S. market. He helped initiate the BMW Films project, which won the first ever Cannes Titanium Lion, became a Harvard Business School case study, and was recently named one of the 10 Best digital marketing campaigns of the decade (2000-2010) by The One Club.
Baba has served on the advisory board of Maven Networks, a broadband video company acquired by Yahoo! for $160 million, and is currently a director of two internet-focused companies, DailyBreak and Name Media. Baba also serves as a judge for the IAB MIXX awards and for the Webby Awards.
Joseph S. Tibbetts, Jr.
Joe Tibbetts has over thirty years experience in finance, working primarily with fast-growth technology companies. Currently, Mr. Tibbetts is Senior Vice President and CFO of Sapient, a leading technology consulting services company. Previously, Mr. Tibbetts was the senior Vice President and CFO of enterprise software company Novell. Mr. Tibbetts has also been CFO of SeaChange International, where he led the firm’s IPO, and at Lightbridge.Earlier in his career, at Pricewaterhouse (now Pricewaterhouse Coopers), Mr. Tibbetts built a twenty-year track record of success that included responsibilities as an audit partner and as the founding partner of the firm’s Entrepreneurial Services Center, which assisted more than 100 technology and venture-backed clients during his tenure, including Lotus Development, Wellfleet and Shiva. Mr. Tibbetts has also been a partner at a leading venture capital firm, Charles River Ventures, where he created an in-house consulting practice, helped raise a $1.2 billion venture fund, and assisted portfolio companies in operations, finance and related areas. Mr. Tibbetts also served on the board of Great Plains Software for five years, through the company’s transition to a public company and its eventual acquisition by Microsoft as well as a board member of Flarion Technologies, an early stage venture-backed company, before its acquisition by Qualcomm.