Leadership

  • Management Team
  • Directors + Strategic Advisors
  • MEHDI MAGHSOODNIA

    CEO
    Mehdi has over 20 years of experience building great teams and
    operating both startups and public companies. Before Rafter, Mehdi was
    SVP of products and services at CafePress where he joined the team in
    the early days and grew the company to over $130M in revenues. Prior
    to CafePress, Mehdi was SVP of products at Intellisync where they
    gained 90% ownership of the mobile sync market before being
    bought by Nokia for $450M. Additionally, Mehdi has held a number of
    executive positions at other Valley companies and currently sits on
    the board of FaceTime, Pbworks and Fotomoto. A geek
    at heart, Mehdi did his undergraduate studies at Berkeley and his
    graduate studies in computer science at Stanford. His favorite topic in
    college was Fuzzy Logic by Professor Lotfi Zadeh.
  • COLIN BARCELOUX

    VP of Business Development and Founder
    Colin is the founder of BookRenter, the forerunner to Rafter and the
    company that introduced the concept of textbook rental. Prior to
    founding BookRenter, Colin worked at Google in online advertising and
    at 24/7 Real Media as a Marketing Manager. He has a BS in Management
    Information Systems and a Minor in Information Technology from Santa
    Clara University where he graduated with Honors in 2003. Colin resides
    in San Francisco and is a basketball enthusiast, mountain biker, golfer,
    and as avid a snowboarder as a Bay Area resident can be.
  • CHARLES FERER

    CFO
    Charles brings his extensive financial leadership experience to Rafter;
    he was most recently President of EchoFirst and prior to that he was
    President and CFO of Sungevity and CFO of SolarCity. His
    accomplishments included the successful raising of multiple
    structured finance funds totally in excess of $700M, which enabled
    the consumer leasing programs which now account for over 70%
    of industry sales. Charles responsibilities at Rafter include financial
    planning, structured finance, corporate development, accounting and
    treasury. In addition, Charles brings over twenty years of experience in
    leadership roles at high growth companies in a variety of industries,
    including such consumer products and financial services companies as
    PepsiCo, GAP, Inc, and Transamerica. Mr. Ferer holds an MBA in Finance
    from Indiana University and a BA in Economics from the University of Puget Sound.
  • JUSTIN McCARTHY

    VP of Engineering
    Justin brings both creativity and rigor to his leadership of the
    engineering organization. Prior to Rafter, he held numerous
    engineering, product, and founding roles at growing start-ups
    throughout Silicon Valley. Most recently, Justin served in a general
    management role at the online retailer CafePress.com, where he was
    responsible for the vision, product, and marketing of the CafePress
    Groups business. While studying Computer Science at the University of
    Rochester, Justin created a service that would presage his future career
    with Rafter: after a typical weekend of feverish coding, his Book Swap
    launched to overnight success, drawing hundreds of textbook classified
    postings from across campus in the first day of operations.
  • SARA LEONI

    VP of Ecommerce
    Sara is a metrics-obsessed, ROI-driven marketer who spent the past 15
    years building strong online brands. Prior to Rafter, Sara held a senior
    leadership position at online retailer Cafepress where she was
    responsible for attracting customers, keeping them happy, and scaling
    revenue. As the head of marketing for Yahoo! Personals, Sara's devotion
    to customers helped the dating service woo singles and catapult
    the brand to the number one most visited dating site. At E*TRADE she
    drove customer development efforts across the Investing, Banking &
    Mortgage business units yielding significant returns. Highly collaborative
    and team-oriented, Sara's approach to management was born of her
    experience playing center field for the UNLV women's softball team (Go
    Rebels!) where she was Second Team All American.
  • PETE RUMPEL

    General Manager and VP of Sales
    Pete Rumpel most recently served as the Senior Vice President at Rosetta Stone, leading Rosetta Stone's global institutional business. Over a thirty month period, Rumpel led the growth of Rosetta Stone's institutional business including K-20 Education, Corporate, Government and Non- profit from $30 million to over $60 million in annual sales. He was instrumental in professionalizing Rosetta Stone's institutional business by leading the transition from a private to public entity and serving as the executive leader and sponsor for the institutional business
    from strategy through global go to market execution. Prior to joining Rosetta Stone, Pete was vice president and leader of SAP Americas business development. Prior to SAP he held global sales and marketing leadership positions with several leading companies, including Thomson Reuters (the Yankee Group), HayGroup, Gartner, Inc. and Pitney Bowes Inc. Pete holds an undergraduate degree in Political Science from Fairfield University and has completed extensive management coursework at NYU Stern School of Business.
  • MICHAEL GELLER

    VP of Marketing
    Michael has over 20 years leading successful high-growth internet business ventures at both fledgling startups and large behemoths. Prior to joining Rafter, Michael co-founded Homestead.com, which Intuit bought in 2006 for $170M. He also spent some time at Yahoo! as the Vice President of Marketing and Business Operations for broadband and mobile businesses. Most recently, Michael served as President of Tonic, a media and ecommerce startup focused on social good. He's also held
    various positions at Infoseek and Grant Thornton, where he had to wear a suit every single day. A true entrepreneurial junkie, Michael still serves as an advisor to a few venture-backed start-ups. He holds an MBA from Harvard University and a BSE in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, where he grossly overpaid for an early edition of his favorite textbook "Modeling and Control of Robotic Manipulators", thus proving he is truly a geek at heart.
  • KIM ORUMCHIAN

    VP of the Rafter Platform
    Kim has over 24 years of experience building businesses and growing companies. Prior to Rafter, Kim was co-Founder and CEO of Right90, where he took the company from inception to acquisition. Before Right90, Kim co-founded and was EVP Products for Fatbrain, an eCommerce provider of books and training materials to businesses. Fatbrain grew to $100M a year in revenue in 5 years, went public and was acquired by Barnes and Noble. Kim has held a variety of software
    engineering, product, marketing and business development roles at notable technology companies including General Magic and NeXT Computer where he worked for Steve Jobs. Kim advises technology startups and does what he can to help fellow entrepreneurs. Kim has two degrees in physics, which he never uses (one from Reed College and the other from Columbia University), and loves to ski and play squash and soccer.
  • SOPHIE KITSON

    VP of Human Resources
    Sophie is a secret quantum physicist who never actually got to be a physicist because she couldn't afford the textbooks. Instead she started her career (over 20 years ago) as a programmer working at Andersen Consulting. After failing to be the worlds best programmer - she didn't even get close she quickly realized that her passion was for helping people get through changes and grow within companies and organizations. Moving into HR, she began her career leading HR and Recruiting teams across the US and the globe. From starting her own
    business, to implementing maniacal technical recruiting at Mercury Interactive, growing the global recruiting and HR development strategies at salesforce.com. (EMEA, Japan, Singapore), taking Nimsoft from a small newly acquired start-up to an established global IT Service Management gold standard company. Originally from England, she loves soccer, science, running long distance, cooking exotic foods (bugs not included), kayaking, and hiking with her teenage sons.
  • GREG WHARTON

    VP of Legal Affairs
    Greg joins the Rafter team with eighteen years of corporate and commercial practice under his belt. As a corporate attorney with Sullivan & Worcester in Boston and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich and Rosati in Palo Alto, Greg specialized in LBOs, M&A and venture financings. After leaving large firm law practice Greg went 'in-house' - consulting for, and serving as a General Counsel of a variety of consumer Silicon Valley internet, enterprise software, and technology companies, and in many cases building legal departments from scratch. Greg has more than five years
    experience as the General Counsel of prominent public companies - McAfee.com (MCAF) and Plumtree Software, Inc. (PLUM) - leading each of their IPOs. Greg has a B.S. (summa cum laude) from Boston University and a J.D. from Yale Law School. A member of the bar in CA, NY and MA, Greg doubles, in his spare time, as a crime fighting machine, working patrol shifts as a police officer on the San Jose, CA, Police Force, where he has served since 1999.

Directors

ALEX MENDEZ

Founding managing director of Storm Ventures

GEORGE UGRAS

General Partner, Adams Capital Management

KEVIN J. MCQUILLAN

General Partner, Focus Ventures

MARC RANDOLPH

Founder, Netflix

SERGIO MONSALVE

Partner, Norwest Venture Partners


Strategic Advisors

WALTER KORTSCHAK

Former managing partner, Summit Partners.

KEN GOLDMAN

CFO Yahoo!