About the Company

Tapioca Mobile is America’s most direct way to send video, sound and text messages to mobile phones.

Tapioca Mobile provides the most efficient, direct way to get rich media (videos, pictures and more) into the hands of mobile phone users. We help advertisers reach a whole new base of eyes and ears, as well as allowing those users to interact with advertisers’ content. We specialize in video delivery to mobile phones via the SMS/MMS messaging channel. Content is delivered directly to the end consumer's phone and optimized for the vast majority of US-based handsets.

Founders

Sachin Deshpande

CEO and Co-Founder

Sachin has 15 years of business and technical experience. Most recently, Sachin was Head of BREW Developer Relations at QUALCOMM where he built and led business relationships with leading media companies, content providers, and cutting-edge mobile developers. He has also held various product marketing and management roles at Openwave, Cisco, and Banyan Systems. Sachin holds an MBA from Wharton and a BS Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from UC Berkeley.

Chas Wurster

CTO and Co-Founder

Chas has 10 years of technical experience. Most recently, Chas was a Co-founder and VP Engineering of Tourmaline Networks, which was sold to Nokia/Intellisync. Prior to Nokia, he was a video software engineer at Tiernan Communications (a leading digital video compression startup). Chas holds an MS in Computer Science from UCSD and a BS in Computer Science from Harvey Mudd.

The Board

David Siminoff

General Partner

David joined Venrock in 2007. His entrepreneurial, operational and investment knowledge and experience makes him an invaluable asset to the entrepreneur. He founded and later sold EastNet, a syndicate barter company, enabling television stations in Eastern Europe to trade American TV programs for advertising time from major brands. David spent nearly a decade in investment research analysis and portfolio management at Capital Research, making early investments in Yahoo!, AOL, Amazon, eBay and x.com (PayPal). He later funded and co-founded 4INFO, a leading mobile search service. Most recently, he served as chairman, president and CEO of Spark Networks, a provider of on-line personals services and the parent company to JDate. David currently also serves on the boards of 4INFO, Green Dimes, Spark Networks and Shmoop. Shmoop is an online study guide for literature, history, and poetry.

"Siminoff is an artsy guy in a suit who puts the literature of what sites do above anything else, even though he's trained as a finance guy. He was a great advisor for us as we scaled - he has a really clear vision for what's coming in the world. Entrepreneurs are clearly at the top of his pyramid."
- Chris DeWolfe, founder, MySpace

Neeraj Choubey

Vice-President

Neeraj joined Venrock in 2006. Previously, he was an Associate at Bay Partners advising portfolio companies Capella Photonics, Staccato Communications and Pulsewave RF and helped complete investments in Wallop and TVHead. Prior, Neeraj was a Senior Product Manager at Yahoo! Mobile where he was responsible for launching mobile search and was a Senior Consultant at inCode Wireless. At inCode, he provided business strategy and consulting services to handset and infrastructure OEMs, wireless carriers and enterprise customers. Neeraj began his professional career in the CDMA infrastructure division at Motorola. His operational and strategy experience helps portfolio companies navigate a complex selling market in a continuously changing landscape where telecom, media and internet are all converging.

Sachin Deshpande

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Chas Wurster

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Investment Team

Venrock

Venrock is a premier venture capital firm with offices in Menlo Park, New York, Cambridge, MA, and Israel. Originally established as the venture capital arm of the Rockefeller family, Venrock continues a seven-decade tradition of partnering with entrepreneurs to establish successful, enduring companies. Having invested $1.9 billion in 400 companies resulting in over 120 IPOs over the past 38 years, Venrock's investment returns place it among the top tier venture capital firms that have achieved consistently superior performance. With a primary focus on technology, healthcare, and energy, portfolio companies have included Apple Computer, Centocor, Check Point Software, DoubleClick, Gilead Sciences, Idec Pharmaceuticals, Illumina, Intel, Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Sirna Therapeutics, and StrataCom. For more information, please visit Venrock's website at www.venrock.com.