Our team has an extensive history of success in ecommerce, loyalty marketing, direct response, social media, and technology development at senior leadership roles at Accertify, Adobe, Amazon.com, Buy.com, Digitas, HP, Richrelevance, StrongMail, and Webloyalty.

Senior Management

  • Justin Yoshimura

    Co-founder & Chief Executive Officer

    Justin is responsible for the overall vision and strategic direction of 500friends. Justin's infatuation with ecommerce began at age 14, when he opened an eBay account and quickly became one of Ebay's top PowerSellers. Since then, he has founded several successful ecommerce companies, including CellsWholesale.com, which was acquired by private investors in 2009 and he was recently named to Forbes prestigious 30 under 30 list for Social Media and Mobile.
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  • Matt Gilbert

    Chief Operating Officer

    Matt is responsible for the operational leadership of 500friends, including sales, business development, customer success, marketing, and general company operations. Prior to joining 500friends, Matt served as SVP/CRO of Webloyalty.com where he was responsible for the company's revenue generation activities and customer relationships. Previously, he was a co-founder and SVP of IAC/InterActive Corp's Advertising Solutions Group and SVP and member of the management team credited with orchestrating the turnaround of Ask.com. Matt has also held key roles at Excite@Home and Narrative Communications. Matt holds a B.A. in Politics from Brandeis University.
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  • Steve Katz

    SVP Business Development

    Prior to joining 500friends, Steve served as SVP of Strategic Partnerships for Accertify, where his creation and management of new channel partnerships was instrumental in driving the company's growth and subsequent acquisition by American Express. Previously he was Regional Vice President of Business Development at Webloyalty. Prior to Webloyalty, he was Vice President of National Sales at Chase Paymentech. Steve holds a B.A. in Marketing from the State University of New York.
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  • Hong Hu

    Co-founder

    Hong is a technology and social media buff who dropped out of getting his master's degree in computer science at UC Berkeley to co-found 500friends. Prior to 500friends, Hong was a senior developer at Fotoflexer, where he played an instrumental role in building and scaling a photo-editing application that saw user growth scale from 10k to 30M. Previously, he was a technology analyst at Goldman Sachs, where he developed advanced trading software. Hong earned a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley.
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  • Kristine Jacobs

    VP Customer Success

    Kristine leads the team responsible for the implementation and optimization of the 500friends solution. Her primary focus is the overall satisfaction of 500friends' client base. Acting as their trusted advisors from kickoff through implementation, Kristine's team is dedicated to ensuring that each client realizes the full potential of 500friends' market-leading solution. In her prior roles as a Strategic Relationship Manager at RichRelevance and VP of Strategy and Analysis at Digitas, she has managed key accounts including Sears.com, Overstock.com, and American Express. Kristine holds an M.S. in Direct and Interactive Marketing from New York University.
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Advisory Board

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  • Brian Beck

    Brian is a distinguished ecommerce executive with a long track record of achievement. Most recently he served as VP of ecommerce at Harbor Freight Tools, where he played an instrumental role in their explosive revenue growth. Previously, he was COO of OvernightPrints.com, a leading provider of quick turnaround, high quality printing of business cards, letterhead, and other custom printed products with over $70 million in annual sales. Prior to this, he was COO at Costume Super Center, the industry's fastest growing internet retailer of costumes, where he led efforts which increased year-over-year revenues by 90%.

  • Siva Kumar

    Siva is a seasoned technology entrepreneur with a history of building successful information technology and software companies. He is currently the CEO of TheFind.com, a leading shopping search engine. Prior to this, he cofounded eight venture-funded start-ups including Onebox (acquired by Openwave), BridgeSpan (acquired by Hall Settlement Systems), Impresse (acquired by PrintCafe/Creo Systems), Seven, Vialto (acquired by Cisco Systems), Scalent Systems and Telera (acquired by Alcatel).

  • Chad Epling

    Chad is a Vice President of Worldwide Sales for Onestop Internet responsible for overseeing the global new business development efforts. Before joining Onestop Internet, he was the Global Director of Sales for Webtrends Optimize, an enterprise digital optimization platform. Chad was responsible for the global deployment of the Webtrends Optimize technology and services offering. Prior to joining Webtrends, he was the Director of Marketing Solutions for Optimost, introducing digital optimization to simply everybody. Optimost was acquired by Interwoven for $52 million in 2007. Prior to joining Optimost, Chad worked for WebSideStory, a pioneering web analytics technology. WebSideStory was taken public in 2004 and then acquired by Omniture for $395 million.

  • Shaun Schooley

    Shaun was most recently Vice President of Client Services at MyBuys. Prior to MyBuys, he was Vice President of Strategic Marketing at Naehas, a web-based marketing solution to create customized and personalized web pages, where he maintained major client relationships and led follow-up programs for Fortune 500 firms. Prior to Naehas, Shaun spent over 19 years in financial services and technology marketing with companies such as Charles Schwab, Amazon.com, and Wells Fargo. Shaun is a frequent industry speaker at 1:1 marketing events sponsored by the DMA, U.S. Postal Service, and the National Center for Database Marketers.

  • Dwight Foster

    Dwight has a long history of highly aggressive, ROI-based sales in technology. He has held various successful strategic sales roles at companies such as Registria, ServiceSource, Reliance Infocom, LivePerson, NetPerceptions, and Careerbuilder. In addition, Dwight has consulted and/or provided seed funding for BazaarVoice, Jigsaw (acquired by Salesforce), Coremetrics (acquired by IBM), and Dialpad (acquired by Yahoo).

  • David Selinger

    David is the CEO of Rich Relevance, first garnered international recognition as an expert in the field of ecommerce data analytics and personalization with his groundbreaking work leading the research and development arm of Amazon's Data Mining and Personalization team. In that role, David increased Amazon's annual profit by over $50 million (25% of US profit, 2003) setting the industry standard for recommendation services.

  • Karl Jacob

    Karl is a serial entrepreneur who has founded companies including Dimension X (acquired by Microsoft) and Keen (acquired by At&T). He has raised over $200 million from investors including Amerindo, Microsoft, eBay, Integral Partners, Norwest Ventures, Bay Partners, Benchmark Capital, Deutsche Bank, Ignition Partners, and Vulcan Ventures, to whom he has generated over $300 million in returns.

  • Jeff Fluhr

    Jeff was the founder and CEO of StubHub.com, the largest secondary ticket marketplace in the world. Jeff founded StubHub in 2000 and led its rapid growth and expansion until it was generating hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue annually and was acquired by eBay for $310 Million in 2007.