Gurbaksh Chahal
Founder and CEO
Gurbaksh is a die-hard internet entrepreneur. In January 1999, he started his first company, ClickAgents at the age of 16. It was one of the first ad networks focused around performance based advertising. Eighteen months later he sold it for $40 million to ValueClick
In January 2004, he launched his second company, BlueLithium. The company was focused on data, optimization, and analytics and became a pioneer of behavioral targeting. BlueLithium was named one of the top 100 private companies in America three years in a row by AlwaysOn, and in 2006, it received highest honor as Top Innovator of the Year. (Previous winners included Google, Skype, and Salesforce.com.) On September 4th, 2007, Yahoo! announced that it was acquiring BlueLithium for $300 million in cash.
He has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Bonnie Hunt, EXTRA, Neil Cavuto, among others, and has been profiled in such publications as The New York Times, Entrepreneur magazine, and The San Francisco Chronicle.
Chahal is also an international best selling author of "The Dream," the true to life inspirational tale of his entrepreneurial journey. In September 2009, Chahal launched, gWallet, a virtual currency platform for social media.
On April 29, 2010, Chahal was awarded the Leaders In Management Award and an Honorary Doctorate degree in Commercial Science from Pace University for his career achievements as an entrepreneur.
Mike Werner
Senior Vice President, Sales
Mike is responsible for gWallet's sales and messaging to agencies and brand advertisers and will be an integral part in the company's next phase of growth - the introduction of creative solutions that enable advertising agencies to effectively promote their brands in this new advertising medium. In addition, he is charged with growing the company's sales force throughout the United States and equipping it with the tools necessary to meet the company's aggressive growth plans.
Prior to joining gWallet, Mike served as VP of Sales and co-founder of BlueLithium, an industry pioneer in Behavioral Targeting. Mike built the BlueLithium sales team and was responsible for bringing in several large advertisers to help launch the company. Prior to BlueLithium, Mike served as the Director of Sales at ClickAgents, where he had success building a sales team and bringing brand advertisers to the ad network fold for the first time. Mike brings over 10 years of online advertising industry experience to gWallet. He has handled strategic accounts, launched new products with advertisers, and built sales teams from the ground up. In the process, he has proven himself to be an accomplished manager, skilled in executing integrated sales programs.
Mike holds a BS degree in Political Science from University of California, Berkeley.
Alex Gove
Vice President, Corporate Development
Alex comes to gWallet from Walden Venture Capital, which he joined in October, 1999. At Walden, he sourced numerous investments in Digital Media and other sectors and represented Walden as both a Board Member and Observer. Before Walden, Alex was a Senior Editor and Senior Columnist at Red Herring magazine, a monthly publication focusing on the business of technology. From April, 1995, until his departure, he was responsible for the magazine's venture capital and Digital Media coverage and wrote numerous features and cover stories about leading companies and players in Silicon Valley. Alex began his career in entertainment production and investment banking.
Alex graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College.
Eugene Kislyi
Vice President of Engineering
Eugene is responsible for research and development to establish gWallet as a technology leader in the social media advertising marketplace.
Eugene co-founded AdRevolver, one of the first ad servers engineered to take advantage of today's rich media ads and high bandwidth consumer environment. He led the company into a strategic partnership with BlueLithium in 2004, where he oversaw research and development activities as well as operations and support. In October 2007 Eugene joined Yahoo! Inc through its acquisition of BlueLithium. At Yahoo, he managed development of TAO, a next-generation analytics and optimization engine.
Eugene holds a MS degree in computer science from Belorussian State University.
Rebecca Watson
Vice President of Business Development
With nine years of experience leveraging trends and resources in the interactive media industry, Rebecca Watson is passionate about people, partners and new platforms. Previously, Rebecca was the director of business development at Real Girls Media where she helped launch the company's owned and operated site DivineCaroline.com and led all syndication, licensing, content sourcing and partnership development. Additionally, she founded the Real Girls Network, a premium advertising network connecting women's blogs and communities with Fortune 500 brands. Rebecca serves on the Social Media Advertising Consortium's Best Practices Committee and regularly speaks at conferences including CES, Ad-Tech, We Media, BlogWorldExpo, and Digital Hollywood. She's written over 85 articles for iMediaConnection and is a regular columnist on Vator.tv. Prior to Real Girls Media, Rebecca was director of content for iMedia Communications and, before that, an investment banking analyst.
