Management

David Karnstedt - President and CEO
Dr. Anil Kamath - Co-Founder & CTO
Anand Ranganathan - Co-Founder
Robin Smith - Sr. Vice President, Account Development
Andy Torgerson - Vice President, Product Management
Morgan Simonson - Sr. Vice President, North American Sales
Nick Morley - Vice President, International Sales and Client Development
Justin Merickel - Vice President of Marketing and New Product Development
Tony Russo - Chief Financial Officer
George Rekouts - Vice President of Engineering

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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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 North America. 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 oversees Efficient Frontier's International Operations which encompasses activity in Europe and Asia. 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 business development 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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Tony Russo

Tony Russo serves at Efficient Frontier's Chief Financial Officer. Russo brings more than 20 years experience in the areas of finance, operations and corporate development at venture-backed technology companies.

Russo previously served as Chief Financial Officer of SolidCore Systems where he refocused the company on new markets and developed a new business strategy. He also significantly improved the financial performance of the company. Prior to SolidCore, Russo served as Chief Financial Officer at Tablus, Inc., an enterprise software company, where he was instrumental in developing and advancing the company's growth and performance. 

Before Tablus, Russo was Chief Financial Officer of MailFrontier, Inc., a provider of email security software and has also held senior positions at Bravanta, Inc., GreatCoffee.com, Shetland Toys and First Deposit Corporation (now Providian). He began his career at Morgan Stanley.

Russo holds a bachelor’s degree in Quantitative Studies from The John Hopkins University and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

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George Rekouts

George Rekouts serves as Vice President of Engineering for Efficient Frontier where he is responsible for the company's engineering and operations.

Prior to Efficient Frontier, Rekouts served as ValueClick's Vice President of Engineering, and, most recently, as Senior Vice President of Engineering. Under his leadership, the company introduced a new behavioral targeting product to enrich the advertising experience. He also built their search engine marketing product as well as their Mojo Mail bulk mailing product.  Additionally, he helped integrate a number of technologies resulting from various acquisitions.

Prior to ValueClick, Rekouts served as Vice President of Engineering for Mediaplex, Inc. before their merger with ValueClick. At Mediaplex, he played an instrumental role in building the company's Mojo Adserver offering that provides agencies with third party advertising and publishing capabilities. Prior to Mediaplex, he served in various senior engineering roles at AdKnowledge Inc. and CyberMedia.

Rekouts received his MS in Computer Science at Moscow University.

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