Management

David Karnstedt - President and CEO
Dr. Anil Kamath - Co-Founder & CTO
Anand Ranganathan - Co-Founder
Robin Smith - Sr. Vice President, Account Development
Anbu Gounder - Vice President, Finance
Andy Torgerson - Vice President, Product Management
Morgan Simonson - Vice President, Sales- Eastern Region
Nick Morley - Vice President, Sales, Europe
Justin Merickel - Vice President of Marketing and New Product Development

David Karnstedt

As President and CEO, David Karnstedt leads Efficient Frontier's overall strategy and is responsible for the management and operations for the company. He also serves on Efficient Frontier's Board of Directors. Before joining the company in 2009, he served as Executive-in-Residence for Redpoint Ventures, an investor in the company.

Prior to Redpoint, he served as Senior Vice President of Yahoo!’s North American Sales with responsibility for more than $3 billion in revenue. At Yahoo!, Karnstedt successfully led the integration of the Search and Display sales teams into one central unit and helped establish Yahoo! as a recognized leader in both display and search marketing.

Karnstedt's experience includes several industry firsts. Prior to Yahoo!, David led the Direct Sales team at Overture Services, the company that pioneered the paid search industry and was acquired by Yahoo! in 2003. He also served as Vice President and General Manager of Alta Vista, where he was responsible for the consumer business and helped shape product development and marketing strategies that leveraged the auctions-based search approach. Prior to Alta Vista, David served as Western Advertising Director at Wired Digital where he helped to develop some of the first advertising models on the Web. He is also active in the industry, having served on both the Advertising Council and Interactive Advertising Association's Boards of Directors.

Karnstedt holds a BA in Speech Communication with a Minor in Business from the University of Illinois.

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Dr. Anil Kamath

As the Co-Founder of Efficient Frontier, Anil Kamath is the primary architect of the company's core technology and algorithms. He is responsible for guiding the company's overall technology vision, focusing on creating innovative technologies that leverage Efficient Frontier's optimization platform.

Prior to co-founding Efficient Frontier, Kamath founded eBoodle, an ecommerce company providing comparison shopping and digital wallet services. eBoodle was acquired by Bizrate in 2000. At Bizrate, he managed the San Francisco Bay Area office and was responsible for Bizrate's contextual advertising product. Prior to founding eBoodle, Kamath was Vice President of International Equity Trading at D.E. Shaw & Co., a hedge fund that specializes in using quantitative models for program trading. He has authored multiple technical papers in the area of applying algorithms to SEM and also holds several patents.

Kamath has a B.Tech. from IIT and an MS and a PhD in computer science from Stanford University.

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Anand Ranganathan

Anand Ranganathan leads Efficient Frontier's efforts to expand the breadth of services offered globally. In this capacity, he leads Efficient Frontier's service center in Bangalore, India. Prior to this, Ranganathan lead the company's design and development system architecture with a focus on scalability and availability. Ranganathan brought a number of technical accomplishments to this role, including contributions to major open source projects such as Apache and FreeBSD, and experience building highly scalable and distributed backend systems for services delivered over the Web.

Before co-founding Efficient Frontier, Ranganathan worked at Desktop.com, where he was solely responsible for architecting, building and maintaining the data model and backend infrastructure on which the Web site was built. He has co-founded a political Web site, an Indian community Web site, and Bookmarks magazine, where he is Associate Editor.

Ranganathan has an MS in distributed systems from the University of Utah.

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Robin Smith

Robin Smith is responsible for leading Efficient Frontier's account development organization in providing clients with industry leading, full-service SEM solutions.

Before joining Efficient Frontier in 2007, Smith was Vice President of Client Services at Avenue A|Razorfish (a division of Aquantive), where she led teams of technologists and user experience/design professionals to launch new Internet products and properties, optimize ecommerce Web sites, and advertise to targeted prospects online. Before that, she held senior Client Services and General Management roles in New York, London and San Francisco at leading marketing agencies, such as marchFIRST, US Web/CKS, Young & Rubicam, Wunderman Cato Johnson and Ogilvy & Mather Direct.

Smith has a BA in history from Smith College.

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Anbu Gounder

Anbu Gounder is Vice President of Finance for Efficient Frontier and manages the Company's worldwide finance and administrative functions. Gounder brings over 15 years of financial management experience to Efficient Frontier.

Prior to joining Efficient Frontier, Gounder's financial management experience included positions as: Co-Founder and CFO of XPFLOW Software, Inc. where he raised angel funding and top-tier venture capital funding; Senior Director of Finance and Administration at Elance, where he was a key contributor to raising $50M; and Director of Finance at Junglee/Amazon.com where he was a key contributor to the due diligence and merger processes. Earlier in his career, Gounder held planning and treasury management roles at Cirrus Logic, Inc.

Gounder is a Chartered Accountant, Cost and Management Accountant, and Company Secretary. He earned his MBA from the University of Texas and has a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Madras, India.

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Andy Torgerson

Andy Torgerson leads the Product Management team, responsible for developing a product roadmap that builds on Efficient Frontier's technology leadership in SEM.

Before joining Efficient Frontier in 2007, Torgerson held VP positions in Business Development and Product Management at Mediaplex, a ValueClick Inc., company. In these roles he was responsible for everything from strategic partnerships, participating in technology due diligence as part of the corporate development team, and overseeing the development lifecycle of Mediaplex's technology products. Prior to Mediaplex, Torgerson was at ADP, where he held various management roles in Product, Finance, and Operations.

He has a BA in economics from University of California at Berkeley.

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Morgan Simonson

Morgan Simonson oversees Efficient Frontier's client acquisition efforts in the Eastern region.

Prior to joining Efficient Frontier in 2004, he led mid-Atlantic sales efforts at Yahoo! Search Marketing (formally Overture Services). Before Overture, Simonson was Director of Strategic Alliances at About.com, where he was responsible for developing and negotiating marketing partnerships with Fortune 500 and leading Internet companies. He has held positions at a number of other online media firms including WiseAds New Media (acquired by About.com) and has spoken at several industry conferences, such as Search Engine Strategies and the JPMorgan Internet Conference.

Simonson holds a BA in economics from Wesleyan University and an MBA from NYU's Stern School of Business.

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Nick Morley

Nick Morley is responsible for Efficient Frontier's client acquisition efforts in Europe.

Prior to joining Efficient Frontier in July 2006, Morley was Director of Sales at Seekport a leading European search engine.  Before Seekport, Morley spent 7 years in a variety of senior sales roles for leading internet and telecoms companies Inktomi, Axiom Systems and Worldcom. 

Nick holds a BA in Business Management from the University of Wales.

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Justin Merickel

Justin Merickel serves as Vice President of Marketing and New Product Development where he is responsible for corporate marketing and the company’s expansion into new business areas.

Justin joins the company after almost 5 years at Yahoo!, where he served as Managing Director, Category Development focused on building revenue from performance marketers across both search and display advertising. Justin began his career at Yahoo! in their search marketing division leading sales and marketing efforts in the financial services category.  Prior to joining Yahoo!, Justin launched and led the financial services practice for Compete Inc., a web analytics and competitive intelligence company now part of TNS Media. Before Compete, Justin spent seven years in interactive marketing and analytics consulting which included founding an interactive marketing agency that was purchased by Arnold Communications in 1999. He began his career in advertising with McCann Erickson.

Justin earned a B.A. in Mathematics from Hamilton College.

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