Company: Management Team
Ragnar Kruse
CEO & Co-FounderAs a serial entrepreneur with 30+ years experience in IT, Ragnar Kruse understands the unique challenges in bringing new technologies to market. He has built up several companies from inception to market launch in both the US and Europe.
At Intershop Communications, a leader in E-Commerce software solutions, Ragnar was VP of Sales and Marketing in San Francisco. During his tenure, Ragnar was instrumental in the company’s growth and ushering it through a successful IPO on NASDAQ and the “Neuer Markt” in 1998.
More recently, Ragnar held key management positions at high-tech companies in the U.S. and Europe including eCharge and Xtramind. Through his many years in IT, Ragnar maintains strong relationships with companies in the telecommunications and mobile sectors, including Deutsche Telekom, Telekom New Zealand, Telstra, Telia, Cable & Wireless, Siemens, T-Online, T-Mobile, France Telecom, HP and SUN.
Ragnar started his career as an entrepreneur. In 1980, he founded IPT GmbH, a computer retail business that imported products into Germany from the USA and Taiwan. In 1987 he expanded his business by starting DTP Partner GmbH, a distribution company in Hamburg.
DTP Partner was the exclusive distributor of several desktop publishing solutions such as Corel and was instrumental in establishing international distribution agreements with American and Taiwanese companies. Ragnar studied law at the universities of Hamburg and Munich, Germany.
Petra Vorsteher
EVP Strategic Alliances & Co-FounderPetra has over 18 years of business development experience in the US and Europe. She was VP of Business Development and Strategic Alliances at Intershop Communications, Inc. with responsibility for all strategic, business and technical partnerships globally.
As founding member of Intershop, Petra was instrumental in growing the company from a start-up to a publicly listed company with a market cap of $12B and worldwide offices in Europe, Asia, Australia and South America.
She was largely responsible for Intershop’s $25M licensing deal with Deutsche Telekom and their subsequent investment in the company. Petra has formed partnerships with IBM, HP, Apple, Intel, SAP, Oracle, Procter & Gamble, eBay, Visa, FedEx, UPS and major telecommunication companies including AT & T, Sprint, Telstra, Hong Kong Telecom, France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom. Prior to Intershop she did market entry strategies for companies wanting to establish a presence in the US or Europe. She is a board member of Hamburg@work responsible for International alliances.
Petra was named Mobile Women to Watch 2010 by Mobile Marketer and Top Female Executive 2010 by Mobile Entertainment.
Marc Junker
CIO & CTOMarc Junker has over 10 years experience in IT and mobile business. Before joining Smaato, he was Co-Founder and CTO of mobileview, one of Europe’s leading Wireless Application Service Provider (WASP) for mobile entertainment, infotainment and data services.
For seven years Marc has successfully led the company, with 35 employees to being profitable after only three years and having a turnover of 27 million Euros.
In his position Marc also established client relationships to leading international carriers and companies like Lufthansa, Talkline and T-Mobile in 17 countries and mobileview has worked with over 50 MVNOs globally.
Before Marc co-founded mobileview, he was Vice-President Development for OBS-AG and worked as an IT consultant for Geo++, Germany. Marc Junker has studied Mathematics, IT and Business Studies at the University of Hanover.
Oliver Reiss
CFOOliver has over fifteen years of experience in building internet and telecommunications businesses. Most recently, he was co-founder and CFO of the mobile platform service provider Exit Games based in Germany and the USA. Oliver was instrumental in securing funding from some high profile venture capital firms over the course of several years.
His background involves senior positions with a leading European online agency and a renowned management consulting firm, where he was involved in a large number of client projects for European telecommunications and media clients, focusing on corporate development and finance projects. More recently, he founded and headed a consulting venture in the software business. Oliver received a MBA degree and Ph.D. from the Philipps-University in Marburg.
Joern Wachsmann
SVP MarketingJörn has over fifteen years of experience in key marketing positions at several high-tech and software companies including Lobster Technology, INTERSHOP and ePages.
He started his professional career at Lobster Technology AG, a distributor of high-end server systems and hardware components. At INTERSHOP, an E-Commerce pioneer and worldwide leader in E-Commerce software solutions, he was in charge of European product marketing, and took over as Director of marketing for Germany, Austria and Switzerland. He was promoted to manage the European marketing in the high-tech and manufacturing sales sectors.
In 2002 he left INTERSHOP to become the Head of Marketing for ePages, a leading provider of E-Commerce cloud service platforms. At ePages Jörn was a member of the management team and formed a highly efficient marketing department. His professional marketing experience and background covers the fields of product marketing, brand building, public relations, search engine marketing, online marketing and channel development.
In his position at Smaato he is responsible for the marketing strategy and programs on a worldwide basis. Jörn holds a degree in Communication Science at the University of Berlin.
Ajitpal Pannu
SVP of Product StrategyAjitpal comes with a background of business development and product strategy from Digital Advertising Technology companies such as OpenX, AdaptiveAds, Adify and Google DoubleClick.
Over the course of 12+ years Ajitpal has been involved in display advertising technologies with the last role being at OpenX. OpenX is a leader in monetization platform for Publishers and a one of the top global RTB exchanges. During his tenure at OpenX Ajitpal was a key member of the business team helping build leadership position within premium publishers and growing RTB marketplace to a leadership position. Over the course of three years OpenX’s online RTB exchange grew by more than 200% YOY.
Ajitpal will help Smaato maintain similar growth in mobile RTB and drive the core business and product strategy for our supply and demand business. Ajitpal majored in Finance at Cal State East Bay in San Francisco bay area.
Marcus Tan
Managing Director, APACMarcus spent his last 20 years in business technology and media leadership roles with companies such as Velti, Nokia, Travelocity, Lycos and Media Corporation of Singapore where he managed business development, sales and marketing activities across Asia Pacific region.
Marcus started his career with United Parcel Service, moved into the traditional broadcast media business soon after. During the years, he had successful developed and built global and regional media sales and marketing teams with successful sales strategies that generated “win-win” partnerships and campaigns across traditional, online and mobile media platforms.
He traveled extensively and had live and worked in many parts of Asia and is well endowed with a good understanding of the diversified business cultures in the region. His “can do” and hardworking attitude won him numerous positive results. Together with his “never say die” and hands-on leadership skills, he had successfully built strong and effective sales and business development teams. Marcus completed his Masters in Business Administration at Victoria University in Australia.
Peter Baldwin
General Manager, AmericasPeter has a distinguished track record as a mobile pioneer with over 25 years of experience in Mobile Technology start ups. Prior to Smaato, Peter has been helping out start up mobile companies with their go-to-market, corporate development and product strategies. Amobee was the last company that Peter helped as Interim Head of Products and Strategy.
Peter’s last full-time role was CEO and Founder of MSX which was acquired by Cellmania in January 2008 and then became VP Strategic Business Development at Cellmania (acquired by RIM), a leading mobile content platform provider.
Before founding MSX, Peter was the executive vice president of operations at Insignia Solutions (INSG), responsible for repositioning the company as the leading mobile technology vendor, starting the end to end system provisioning business and divesting the Java Virtual machine product line.
Peter came to Silcon Valley when his company, DIP, was acquired by Phoenix Technologies (PTEC). While at Phoenix, Peter was the vice president responsible for growing the emerging businesses, including the Phoenix Information Appliance Division. From 1986 to 1994, Peter was founder and director of Distributed Information Processing Limited (DIP) who designed revolutionary software for the world’s first Pocket PCs, licensed to Atari and Sharp.Prior to DIP, Peter was one of the first employees of Psion Limited, Europe’s leading hand-held manufacturer which spun out Symbian. Peter holds a Degree in Engineering Mathematics at Bristol University.
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