The Giftly Story

Before founding Giftly, Tim was the first employee at Aardvark, managing operations and the early product prototype for the groundbreaking social search engine acquired by Google in 2010. Aardvark had acquired Tim because of his first startup, 1(800) KNOW-NOW, a real time search company based in New York, which Tim founded in 2006.

Before entering the world of technology, Tim was an investment banker at Cowen and Company. He has a BS in Engineering and Physics from Brown University.

When Dan heard about Giftly from Tim, he dropped everything -darting out like a thief in the night from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business- to be part of it. From his time working at TechCrunch on business development and operations, Dan knows a compelling startup when he sees one. In addition to studying mathematical finance, accounting, and statistics as a Booth scholar, Dan also worked at Microsoft on product strategy.

During his few hours outside the office, Dan is a serious foodie, and because of that he has been obliged to become a gym rat, too.

Mike found his way to San Francisco in 2008, and the start-up world in January 2011 after a handful of years slaving away for The Man in Washington, DC. Over the years, he’s spent time developing apps in a variety of programming languages from Visual Basic 6 and Classic ASP to Java to Ruby.

Mike received his undergraduate degree at James Madison University and, since that apparently wasn't enough, a graduate degree at American University; both in Computer Science. In the off hours, he and his wife try and take in their new city and the natural beauty surrounding the San Francisco Bay, and getting in some relaxation when and if possible.

Balen comes to Giftly after six years at Google, where he honed his geek street cred as well as his love for all things gadget and G-related. He is a little bit more than excited to unleash his coding prowess to help Giftly revolutionize the gifting experience.

Pre-Giftly, Balen grew up in Eugene, Oregon and thus has an immense and consuming love for the Oregon Ducks. In his spare time, he enjoys exploring San Francisco, playing soccer, and expanding his tie-dye t-shirt collection.

After growing increasingly bored with college and finally dropping out, Matt decided to cut his teeth at a marketing and design startup. Without a clear job description, nor specialty, he took on any project or task that came his way. This continually pushed his understanding of design, back end development, and everything in between. Since then, he's worked with numerous clients, both large and small, and has finally meandered his way into the welcoming embrace of Giftly.

In his free time, Matt has been known to arrange various noises (meant to resemble music), steal the affections of people's cats, and get lost while running in Golden Gate Park.

Vince has been in QA since 95 and has worked at startups and huge companies. He found his way into Quality Assurance out of a natural love for breaking all things that require electricity or batteries. He's supported, deployed and tested websites, tested devices large and small, familiar and unfamiliar, tested and maintained labs full of components and peripherals, employing all manners of test modalities, all while remaining the champion of the customer. Glad to be Giftly.

Cori comes to Giftly from the Sony Creative Center's UI Platform Design Studio, where she helped develop the design language for a new, unified UX for all Sony devices and services, from tablets to PlayStation, cameras to phones. Before Sony, she spent many years in the digital agency world, designing for clients such as Intel, PlayStation, Bank of America, Dodge, Mitsubishi, Guitar Center, Warner Brothers, Sprint, and many others.

When she's not thinking about better user experiences (actually, that never happens), she's playing with the cutest puppy in the world, Olive, and wishing for more time in the day so she can start playing her bass again.