Aww, you want to know more about us? Well pull up a chair, cancel your appointments, and get ready to hear a tale spun from the thread of dreams.
We are a small but scrappy 8-person team in the San Francisco Bay area who are a bit obsessed with creating a delightful experience to help you spend less time planning and more time enjoying yourself. This obsession is fueled by caffeine and our own frustrating experiences with the lack of a service that mixes the best things about local search with the best things about planning services. We think there is a better way, and with this better way comes more time, more successful events, and deeper connections with the people around you. We are working towards bringing this better way to you by focusing on delightful experiences, a deep understanding of our neighbors, and Indian food. Always with the Indian food.
So hey, thanks for stopping by. Check out the team below, and feel free to connect to us or drop us a line. If you like what we're about, you may even want to join us.
Jennifer Dulski is a co-founder and the chief executive officer at Center'd. Prior to Center'd, she held a variety of senior executive roles at Yahoo! during the past nine years, including group vice president and general manager (VP/GM) of local markets and commerce; VP/GM of Yahoo! Autos and VP of business unit marketing. As group VP/GM of Yahoo!’s local markets and commerce division, Jennifer was responsible for the strategy, operations and P&L for Yahoo!’s local, maps, shopping, travel, autos and real estate businesses. Under Jennifer’s leadership, all of those businesses became No. 1 or No. 2 in their category for the first time in Yahoo!’s history (ComScore, Sept., 2007). Prior to that, Jennifer was the founder and executive director of Summerbridge Pittsburgh, an academic program for at-risk students. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a B.A. in psychology from Cornell University. Jennifer also holds an M.B.A. from Cornell University’s Johnson Graduate School of Management.
Neighborhoods: Palo Alto, San Francisco, Menlo Park, Pittsburgh, Ithaca
Favorite places: Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, Fujimamas, Post Ranch Inn, Compadres, Primanti Brothers, Menlo Park Academy of Dance
Chandu Thota is a co-founder, and the chief technology officer at Center'd. He was previously the lead developer of Microsoft Virtual Earth. Chandu has authored three technology books, most recently Programming MapPoint and Virtual Earth in .Net published by O'Reilly. Chandu is listed as an inventor on over fifteen patent applications for Microsoft Corporation related to geo-spatial mapping and technology. He is a widely recognized expert in the field of mapping, geo-spatial applications and scalable web services. He holds a B.E. degree in electrical engineering degree from Osmania University, Hyderabad.
Neighborhoods: Palo Alto, Chicago, Seattle
Favorite places: Hyderabad House, Cafe Iberico, Times Square
See Chandu’s Center'd profile.
Kate Cook a Community Manager at Center’d and helps out wherever needed. As a mom of three, she makes a lot of plans, which is how she landed at Center’d. She tested the product pre-launch for a school picnic, and liked it so much that she joined the team. Kate holds a B.A. in Behavioral Sciences from Drew University in New Jersey and a law degree from Boston College Law School. She abandoned law in favor of having kids, but thinks the Internet is a much more fun place to work and is happy to have a place to come where she can complete a sentence and people actually listen to her.
Neighborhoods: Palo Alto, New York, San Francisco, Big Sky, MT
Favorite places: Crissy Field, Fraiche Yogurt, Moonlight Basin Ski Resort , Il Tinello Restaurant, Central Park, Metroplitan Museum of Art
See Kate’s Center'd profile.
Shirley Harrison is the office manager for Center'd. Prior to joining Center'd, Shirley spent 3 years at Yahoo! as an executive assistant and 5 years as an administrative assistant and document controller for TycoThermal/Raychem. Shirley was born in Honolulu, Hawaii and came to California when she was 11 and has lived in the Bay Area for most of her life. Shirley spends her free time raising her 3 children and taking mini vacations.
Neighborhoods: Union City, Aiea, Maricopa, Redwood City, Keaau, Las Vegas
Favorite places: Ardenwood historic farm, Mexico Tipico, Pearlridge Mall
See Shirley’s Center'd profile.
Luce Kim is a senior visual designer at Center'd. She was born in Seoul, Korea and immigrated to the States when she was eight years old. She is known among her friends and colleagues for her hypersensitivity to color, her penchant for night photographs and her unabashed bravery when it comes to eating candy she finds on the ground. When she is not putting her immune system to test, she likes listening to the likes of Monk, Mingus and Waits, if not watching Lee Marvin on the tube.
Neighborhoods: San Francisco, Mission District, Seoul (Korea), Anza (CA)
Favorite Places: Powell's Books, Foreign Cinema, Bi-Rite Creamery, Rhea's Deli, Castro Theatre
See Luce's Center'd profile.
Chris Millican- Some say, he's actually dead... but the Grim Reaper, is too scared to tell him. And that hes so hot he actually caused global warming. Some say that his first name is really 'The'. And that he created a swear word called 'Ferrari'. And others say that he once fought a shark... and lost. Some say he only knows two facts about ducks...and they're both wrong. Some say that his heart ticks like a watch, and that he's confused by stairs. Some say that he has no understanding of clouds, and that his ear wax tastes like Turkish delight. Some say he is scared of cheese. And that he once swore at a chicken, and was put in prison for 56 years. All we know is, he's called Le Millican!.
Neighborhoods: San Francisco, The Castro (San Francisco), Cleveland, Auburn
Favorite places: Go Kart Racer, Cleveland Browns Stadium, Stadium Pub
See Chris’ Center'd profile.
Dan Visnick is head of marketing and jack-of-all-trades at Center'd. Prior to joining Center'd, he worked at Yahoo! for nearly nine years where he held a number of marketing and public relations roles. As senior director of marketing, Dan was responsible for leading the marketing and editorial strategy for Yahoo!’s shopping, travel, autos, and real estate businesses. Before Yahoo!, he worked at Edelman Public Relations where he managed strategic communications programs for technology clients. Dan attended the University of California, Berkeley, and currently lives with his wife and son in San Francisco.
Neighborhoods: San Francisco, Noe Valley, Manhattan, West Village, Sacramento, Land Park, Sonoma, Napa, Charleston
Favorite places: Mama’s Fish House,Boulevard, Prune, The Met, Johnny’s, Heinz Field, Pride Vineyard, Yosemite National Park, Exploratorium, Maverick, Shem Creek Bar & Grill
See Dan’s Center'd profile.
Center'd Investors
Bill Harris is a private investor and former chief executive officer of Paypal and Intuit. He holds an M.B.A. degree from Harvard University. Bill has held numerous positions in the media, finance and technology industries. He started at Time Inc. doing consumer marketing for TIME, People, Sports Illustrated and Money magazines. From 1986 through 1990, he ran the non-editorial side of U.S. News & World Report as executive vice president. In 1991, Bill joined ChipSoft as president. ChipSoft merged with Intuit in late 1993, and he served for six years as executive vice president and then CEO. In 1999 and 2000, Bill was CEO of PayPal, an online payment service he helped launch which was later acquired by eBay. Bill serves on the boards of Macromedia, eOne Global, Yodlee, XTec, MyVest, and Center'd.
Jeff Drazan is a venture capitalist and private investor. He is the managing director of Bertram Capital. Jeff was previously a co-founder and managing director of Sierra Ventures, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm with $1.5 billion under management. Prior to Sierra, Jeff served in a variety of operations and research and development management positions at both AT&T and Bell Laboratories. He currently serves as a director of numerous public and private companies, including American Fiber Systems, Valere Power, Theravance, Element Labs, and AuthorHouse. Jeff holds a B.S. degree in engineering from Princeton University and an M.B.A. from New York University's Graduate School of Business Administration.
Sergio Monsalve is a venture capital investor at Norwest Venture Capital where he focuses on the consumer Internet and software sectors. Prior to NVP, Sergio was the first business executive and vice president of marketing at Photobucket, Inc. He drove viral marketing, public awareness, and user experience at Photobucket which is now part of News Corp. Previously, Sergio was director of new ventures at eBay, Inc. where he developed the company's digital goods marketplace and its consumer created content efforts. Sergio was also a co-founder at Cymerc and led sales and marketing from inception to more than $15 million. Sergio holds an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and a B.S. in industrial engineering from Stanford University.
Alessandro Biral is a founder and general partner of KeyNote Ventures, where he focuses on digital media and the consumer internet. Prior to KeyNote, he was head of corporate finance, development, and technology investments for the Fininvest Group, a $15 billion media conglomerate owned by the Berlusconi family of Italy. From 1994 to 1999, Alessandro was an investment banker at Morgan Stanley in London, where he completed more than $80 billion of strategic transactions. Alessandro holds an M.B.A. in finance from University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, and a B.S. in technology and industrial engineering from the Politecnico of Milan, Italy.
Board of Directors
Bill Harris, Director and Chairman
Sergio Monsalve, Director
Jennifer Dulski, Director
Chandu Thota, Director
Strategic Advisors
Hector Garcia-Molina is a technical advisor to Center'd. He served on the U.S. President's Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) from 1997 to 2001, as chairman of the Stanford University Computer Science Department. Hector is on the board of directors of numerous public companies, including Oracle and Kintera. Hector is also on the technical advisory board of DoCoMo Labs USA and Yahoo! Search, and is a venture advisor for Diamondhead Ventures.
Lauren Gelman is a privacy advisor to Center'd. Lauren is a director of Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society, where she writes and speaks about the interaction of new technologies and the law. She also teaches law, technology and privacy at the Stanford Law School and is an adjunct lecturer in Stanford's School of Engineering. Her current research focuses on the legal implications of technologies that increase citizens' opportunity to participate online. She also spent six years in Washington, D.C. as the public policy director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and as the associate director of public policy for ACM, the largest association of computer scientists in the world.
Tara Lemmey is a policy advisor to Center'd. Tara was a privacy advisor to Keyhole, Inc., which is now known as Google Earth. She was the president of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit organization working to protect civil liberties, privacy and freedom of expression on the Internet. She has played a major role in the Federal Trade Commission's Internet privacy hearings. She has also participated in the White House Framework for Global Economic Commerce and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). She is one of the founders and board members of TRUSTe, a nonprofit organization advocating privacy on the Internet. Tara was recently named one of the 10 most important people to the future of digital rights by Spin magazine for her efforts to protect consumer rights.
Rajeev Motwani is a technical advisor to Center'd. Rajeev is a professor of computer science at Stanford University, where he also serves as the director of graduate studies. He is a co-author of the paper "The PageRank Citation Ranking: Bringing Order to the Web," published in 1999 with Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page. He is a technical advisor to Google, as well as an early investor in the company.
Andreas Paepcke is a usability advisor to Center'd. He is a professor and researcher in Stanford University’s Human Computer Interaction group. His interests include user interfaces and novel Web search techniques. Andreas has served on numerous program committees, including a position as vice program chair, heading the World-Wide Web Conference's "Browsers and User Interfaces" program track. He was a member on several National Science Foundation proposal evaluation panels. Andreas received B.S. and M.S. degrees in applied mathematics from Harvard University, and a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Karlsruhe, Germany.
