The Namesake Team
Who are we?
Namesake consists of five positive and curious people. We're not your typical team. Everyone is an entrepreneur at the core and has ownership of key aspects of the product. We believe deeply in building a differentiated company. Today, our relatively small team can think up, wire, mock, code, test and deploy new features in less then a day because of our back-end infrastructure and product development process. We're very proud of this and hope it lasts. We've also been known to play a practical joke or two on each other every once in a while. If you have a technical background and care to inquire about joining the Namesake team, let us know.
Founding Team
Dan Gould
FounderDan is the founder of Namesake and works on Product and Technology. Dan also founded Newroo (acquired by Fox Interactive Media), Ad.ly and Corridor. At Fox Audience Network Dan served as Vice President of Technology. Dan previously was a researcher at the National Institutes of Health and at the Brown University Computer Graphics Group and has won various Computer Science awards. Dan is both a high school and college dropout.
Brian Norgard
FounderBrian is the founder of Namesake and works on Customer Development, Business Development, Marketing, and Design. Previously, Brian founded Newroo (acquired by Fox Interactive Media) and Ad.ly. Brian graduated with honors from Brown where he won a National Collegiate Inventors & Innovators Alliance grant. He likes to surf and fish in Baja with his dad. Brian is from Del Mar and his personal site is: www.briannorgard.com.
Michael Cyrulnik
Founding EngineerMichael handles deep infrastructure tech at Namesake. Previously, he worked at ZoomInfo where he created one of the company's early algorithms. He graduated from MIT in 3 years with a degree in Computer Science and is a real rockstar (not the overused terms we're all inundated with these days): His band toured on and off for over 2 years.
Scott Hurff
Director UX, member of founding teamScott was the youngest EIR in the history of Kodiak Venture Partners. Scott founded Groupvine (acquired by DailyJolt) and graduated from Wake Forest with honors, where he won the John Chambers Grant. When not designing and building product, Scott runs marathons, watches James Bond films obsessively and plays the guitar and piano. Scott can be found at www.scotthurff.com.
Michael Viamari
Engineer & Technical Manager, member of founding teamMike attended Brown University where he graduated with Honors in 2004 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering. Mike last worked as a Product Development Engineer at Analog Devices. More recently, he was accepted to Standford's Graduate Program in Electrical Engineering, but declined to attend so he could work on Namesake.
Minnie
Mascot, member of founding teamMinnie dropped out of CalTech after being implicated in the 'Popcorn Incident'. She designed and built a high powered laser that destroyed the home of famed professor Dr. Hathaway. In her spare time she likes to sleep and eat.
