Board of Directors

Matt Hulett is the Executive Chairman of Mpire. He is a serial entrepreneur who has successfully built profitable companies from scratch. After joining Mpire as CEO in early 2006, Matt turned the standalone comparison shopping site into a multi-vertical ad distribution platform that serves over a billion impressions a month. Before Mpire, Matt was President of the corporate travel division of Expedia, Inc., the world's largest online travel company, where he launched the corporate travel business from an idea to a billion dollar worldwide leader in just a couple of years. Prior to Expedia, Matt was a founding partner of the next generation entertainment company, AtomFilms. He served as President of Atom Entertainment, a firm backed by both Sequoia Capital and Macromedia and was purchased by Viacom for $200M. Under Matt's direction, Atom captured over 20 million unique monthly users and became a leading consumer destination. Matt was the founding consumer products leader at RealNetworks, launching many of the company's most successful products including the RealPlayer and its premium subscription software businesses. Matt also ran the market-leading Reflection X product line at AttachmateWRQ, a privately held provider of enterprise software. A Seattle native, Matt is a Puget Sound Business Journal 40-under-40 recipient (Sept. 2008), and he offers his extensive executive business insights through his personal blog, http://startupwhisperer.com.

William K. (Bill) Bryant has had early and instrumental involvement in over twenty leading software and Internet companies, as a founder, senior executive, investor and Board Member. After serving as founding Vice President of Sales & Marketing for Visio (now part of Microsoft Corporation) in the early 1990s, Bill went on to found Netbot (which built the first comparison shopping agent for the Internet, Jango, as well as the first metasearch engine, Metacrawler, prior to being acquired by Excite) as its President; Qpass (www.qpass.com, acquired by Amdocs) where he served as CEO and later Chairman; Medio Systems (www.mediosystems.com) where he continues to serve as a Strategic Advisor; and 3Guppies (formerly Mixxer, www.3guppies.com), a market leader with over 4M members in the consumer mobile entertainment and community sector. In these founding capacities, Bill drove definition of the core product and market strategy; raised >$125M in venture capital; recruited senior management teams; and built customer, partner and channel relationships in launching software products, Internet and mobile services.

Previously, Bill was an early investor or Board member in nine other companies that were later acquired or went public, including Loudeye (Nokia), AEI Music (DMX/Liberty Media), Viafone (Extended Systems), Teamplate (Captaris), Exstatic Software (Xchange Applications), Throw (Excite), Singing Fish (Thomson/AOL); NearMe (Hands On Mobile) and WebRelevance (Medio).

Bill received a BA in European History, an MBA, and his Ph.D. Candidacy in Business Strategy, all from the University of Washington. He holds a patent for an electronic commerce network.

Michelle is a Partner at Ignition, investing in consumer and enterprise software and services.

Michelle represents Ignition as director on the boards of Mpire, Visible Technologies, and SEOmoz. She was an observer on UIEvolution (sold to Square Enix, Japan).

Michelle was an investment banker at Olympic Capital Partners where she specialized in mid-market mergers and acquisitions. Michelle worked in management consulting for A.T. Kearney. As an associate in the Financial Institutions Group, Michelle focused on strategic and operational improvements for Fortune 100 clients. She also spent time working in Taipei with a group developing export strategy for the Chinese government.

Michelle earned her B.A. degree from Columbia, and an M.A. degree from Harvard University.

Michael is a 25-year veteran of U.S. and international business finance who has worked successfully in start-up, rapid growth and turnaround environments. Most recently, he worked one year (2007-2008) for Zumobi, a mobile phone technology business, where he led the process to secure "Series B" financing, and oversaw the establishment of ad serving operations. Prior to Zumobi, Michael worked five years (2000-2006) with aQuantive, a NASDAQ-traded Internet advertising technology company. Under Michael's guidance as CFO, aQuantive became profitable and commanded a broad Wall Street following due to its fast-growing, high-margin business. The company grew from a net revenue base of approximately $30 million in 2000 to an estimated $400 million and a market cap in excess of $2 billion in 2006, his last year with the company. In 2007, Microsoft acquired aQuantive for approximately $6 billion, making it one of the largest online advertising purchases to date. Michael has also held CFO positions within international hotel chains, including Park Plaza International and Red Lion Hotels. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of online advertising network Mpire. He earned both his B.S. degree and M.B.A. from Stanford University, and was an officer on a guided missile destroyer in the U.S. Navy.