Greg Gottesman

Greg came up with the idea for A Place for Rover thinking back on a frightful experience at a local kennel with the family dog, Ruby Tuesday. Yes, Greg and family love the Rolling Stones. Here's a link to the original pitch for A Place for Rover at Startup Weekend in Seattle.

When not working on A Place for Rover, Greg is a Managing Director at Madrona Venture Group, an early stage venture capital firm in the Pacific Northwest. Greg joined Madrona in 1997 and currently serves on the boards of A Place for Rover, AdReady, Bocada, BuddyTV, Cheezburger, Decide, Intrepid Learning Solutions, Nimbic, ThinkFire, and WildTangent. Outside of Madrona, Greg is a board member of the Evergreen Venture Capital Association and the University of Washington Technology Transfer Office. He is the author of three books. Greg is also an adjunct faculty member at the University of Washington Business School, where he teaches a class on Entrepreneurship.

Aaron Easterly, CEO/Top Dog

Rover's Top Dog, Aaron Easterly, brings an accomplished resume and over 10 years of experience in the technology industry to the position of CEO. Aaron has a long track record of success in driving innovation in digital media across a variety of established technology businesses Aaron relies heavily on the invaluable consultations he receives on a nightly basis from his four pound Pomeranian, Caramel, also known as the ever intimidating 'Killer'.

Prior to joining Rover.com, Easterly served as general manager of Network Strategy and Monetization within Microsoft’s Advertiser and Publisher Solutions (APS) group. In this position, he was responsible for driving revenue and improving yield from the $3 Billion suite of Microsoft ad offerings. Easterly began his career with Microsoft in 2008 as a General Manager of Ad Networks responsible for business management, strategy, product marketing, and product management for Microsoft’s scale ad offerings – including Search, Contextual, and Display.

Before joining Microsoft, Easterly served as a vice president and general manager at Atlas Publisher, a unit of aQuantive, Inc., working on Atlas' suite of software solutions for large publishers. During his time at Atlas Publisher, Easterly led the team responsible for design of the company’s yield engine that defined methods for performance estimation, segmentation, and optimization and helped launch the DRIVEpm advertising network. Before his work on the Atlas Publisher team, Easterly served the advertiser side of business as a lead in strategy and product planning, overseeing such efforts as reach forecasting and ad targeting.

Easterly started his career in digital marketing by joining media agency Avenue A in 1999 as a data analyst. He drove much of Avenue A's original research in ad effectivenessand targeting.

Easterly graduated with Honors from Harvard College with an A.B. degree in Economics. As CEO of Rover.com, Aaron is excited to help fellow dog owners solve a problem he has frequently faced himself. He is excited to host other, dogs in his home, provided they can hold their own against Caramel!

Phil Kimmey

After high school, Phil spent a year studying Mandarin in Beijing. His skills have slipped, but he can still dig up the word "dog" to explain Rover when needed.

After acquiring three-quarters of a bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Washington University in St. Louis, he found himself on the Rover team at Startup Weekend, and has been working on it ever since.

He can be found behind his computer monitors with headphones on and a coffee mug in hand. Although he loves dogs, his cat, Patches, has repeatedly objected to the idea of adopting one.

Kevin Audleman

Kevin has been a Seattle-based software developer since 2005 after graduating from Brown University with a Masters in Computer Science. His passion lies in working with the latest web-development frameworks, managing software projects, and watching his creations grow. He hopes Rover becomes the #1 site for dog sitting!

Kevins love of dogs comes from his time with his childhood best friend, Randy, a Shetland Sheepdog (a.k.a. a Lassie). Randy was at his side 24/7 and the two were inseparable. While he can't currently have a dog in the apartment he lives in, he hopes some day to find a new best friend. In the meantime, he fills that passion by supporting the world of dog lovers through Rover.com!

David Rosenthal

David is an Associate at Madrona Venture Group, an early stage venture capital firm in the Pacific Northwest. David joined Madrona in 2010 and assists in identifying and executing new portfolio investments and supporting Madrona's existing portfolio companies and community relationships. He is currently a board observer for Mixpo and PayScale.

Outside of work David enjoys reliving his high school glory days on the baseball diamond and trying to keep up with the French he studied in college.

Ambika Singh

Ambika graduated from Dartmouth College with a degree in Economics and History, and completed an Honors thesis about risk models in Microfinance. After an internship at Washington Senator Maria Cantwell’s office, she went to Microsoft, and spent four years in a variety of roles in student audience marketing, social media, and consumer marketing for Windows 7 and Internet Explorer.

From there she spent dove headfirst into startup mayhem, acting as the Product Marketing Director on the founding team of TravelPost.com. She is currently on the board of the Seattle chapter of Pratham, an India-based early learning organization.

In her spare time, Ambika can be found being walked by her Airedale Terrier, Layla.

Farhad Kasad

Farhad graduated from University of Florida with a Master degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering. Farhad has 12 years of experience in architecting, designing, implementing, and deploying complex Web and telecommunication solutions. Farhad specializes in location based products, Internet/Intranet Development, 9-1-1 Wireless and VoIP Development, Usability, Fault Tolerant & Geo-Redundant Systems

Farhad was one of the founding members on the Rover team which won the Startup weekend in Seattle. When not working on Rover, Farhad is a development Manager for location products at TeleCommunication Systems in the Pacific Northwest. However his love for dogs and technology motivates him to work on Rover during his nights and weekends. Outside of work Farhad enjoys hiking, tennis and photography.