Thomas Layton, CEO
Thomas Layton came to Metaweb from OpenTable, where he served as CEO from 2001 to June 2007. Previously, he was a co-founder of CitySearch, Inc., which later merged with Ticketmaster and is now a subsidiary of USA Networks. Prior to his experience at Ticketmaster-CitySearch, Thomas was with Score Learning Corporation, a leading educational services company, where he served first as Chief Financial Officer and later as President and Chief Operating Officer. From 1986 to 1988, Thomas was an Associate Consultant with the Boston Consulting Group.
Thomas holds an MBA from the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University and a BS from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
John Giannandrea, CTO
John Giannandrea co-founded Metaweb Technologies in July 2005. Prior to joining Metaweb, John was CTO of Tellme Networks Inc., where he was responsible for the development and operation of the world's largest VoiceXML network, handling over 2 billion voice transactions per year. Microsoft Corporation acquired Tellme in 2007. Prior to Tellme, John was the Chief Technologist of Netscape/AOL's Web browser group. Throughout his career John has contributed extensively to the industry's Internet standards and protocols, including Java, HTTP, SSL and RDF.
John is a native of Scotland and a graduate of Strathclyde University.
Robert Cook, Co-Founder and SVP of Platform Partnerships
Robert Cook co-founded Metaweb Technologies in July 2005. At parent company Applied Minds, Robert led the San Francisco office as Director of Knowledge Product Development. Since the start of his career, Robert has played the role of author, designer and programmer for myriad software applications. Robert’s first computer was an Elf II, which used the same microprocessor as the Voyager, Viking and Galileo spacecraft. At the young age of 15, Robert created database software for a small publishing company. He followed this first piece of work by publishing a number of computer games through Broderbund. This early work included the classic game Gumball as well as the Atari 400/800 and Commodore 64 versions of Karateka. Robert later designed the game D/Generation and acted as the technical director for The Last Express.
Robert holds a BS in Computer Science from Yale University.
Jason Douglas, VP of Product Development
Jason has been at Metaweb since 2007, initially working on the company's platform initiatives. He has spent the past 15 years working predominantly on the problem of content aggregation and distribution on the Internet, including at Yahoo! where he opened up MyYahoo! to third-party content for the first time in 2004 and then spearheaded the creation of the company's Open Content Platform used for integrating feeds from around the Web into Yahoo! properties in 2005. At Pointcast, Jason was the product manager for the introduction of Pointcast, the Internet's first "push" broadcast network in 1995 and later went on to head up all of Product. In between, Jason co-founded and led Product Management for Grand Central Communications in 2001, a hosted business-to-business data bus for application integration.
Jason holds a BA in Physics from Yale University.
Paul Davison, VP of Business Development
Paul joined Metaweb in 2007. As an early business employee at Metaweb, Paul has focused on a number of different areas, including leading the company’s partnership activity, managing site integrations, and developing new product features for Freebase. Previously, Paul worked at Google, helping to develop the company's brand advertising products. Prior to Google, Paul worked as a consultant in Bain & Company's San Francisco office, focusing on product development, operations, and strategy in the technology and media sectors.
Paul holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a BS in Industrial Engineering from Stanford University.
Reilly Hayes, VP of Data
Reilly Hayes comes to Metaweb from the quantitative data driven world of program and algorithmic trading. Reilly created innovative trading products at Schwab, B of A, and Merrill Lynch. While comfortable with the enterprise, he is the veteran of four startups, including his own trading technology firm. Prior to working in financial technology, Reilly worked as a developer on an early mini-computer RDBMS, a mini-computer OS from DEC, and a software startup from the launch of the PC era. Reilly is married and lives in Mill Valley, CA.