The m-Qube Mafia: Mobile Execs Lead Efforts at BuyWithMe, Clovr Media, Paydiant, and More

Silicon Valley has the PayPal mafia. Seattle has the Qpass mafia. Boston, for its part, has many interesting and influential tech company/family trees—DEC, PTC, and iRobot come to mind—but one of the more underrated ones is the m-Qube mafia.

For those who don’t know, m-Qube is the Boston-area mobile marketing and applications company that started in 2001 and was bought by VeriSign for $250 million in 2006. That deal was the first of a series of big mobile software acquisitions around town in the past five years—including Third Screen Media, Enpocket, Quattro Wireless, and most recently, Where (bought by eBay/PayPal last week).

The executives from m-Qube have gone on to lead companies like Quattro, Turbine, Unbound Commerce, and a few new projects around town and around the country. So let’s do a “where are they now” for the m-Qube mafia—or at least the ones we could track down. (This is a work in progress, so please send additions and we’ll update it.)

After compiling this list, I saw that BostInnovation published a similar piece last fall. The table below includes a few updates and additions to that list.

Employee Role at m-Qube Current position
Lars Albright VP, Business Development Director, Apple (Quattro co-founder)
JonMichael Bukosky VP, Content; GM, Los Angeles Founder and CEO, Frag’D Entertainment
David Chang Director, Product Marketing VP Product, Where (now PayPal/eBay)
David Chapman CFO CFO, Clovr Media
Jim Crowley COO CEO, BuyWithMe
Rob DeMillo VP, Engineering CTO, 4INFO
Christine Fiske Director, Business Development Head of Marketing, MeYou Health
Chris Gardner SVP, Products & Marketing Co-founder, Paydiant
Dan Gill VP, Sales SVP, Sales, BuyWithMe
Jeff Glass President and CEO Managing Director, Bain Capital Ventures
Mark Grindeland Co-founder and EVP Co-founder, ShesConnected Multimedia
Gerald Hewes VP, Architecture, Product Co-founder, Unbound Commerce
Jennifer Lum Chief of Staff Co-founder, Apricot Capital
Andy Miller SVP, Business Development VP, Apple (Quattro co-founder)
Srinivasarao Nandiwada VP, Professional Services Co-founder, Unbound Commerce
Joe Paratore VP, Operations Co-founder, Paydiant
Eswar Priyadarshan CTO and Co-founder Product management, Apple (Quattro co-founder)
Michael Schreck Co-founder and Director CEO, Zmags
Mike Troiano General Manager Principal, Holland-Mark
Thi Linh Wernau Senior Account Manager VP, Mobile Messaging Solutions

Author: Gregory T. Huang

Greg is a veteran journalist who has covered a wide range of science, technology, and business. As former editor in chief, he overaw daily news, features, and events across Xconomy's national network. Before joining Xconomy, he was a features editor at New Scientist magazine, where he edited and wrote articles on physics, technology, and neuroscience. Previously he was senior writer at Technology Review, where he reported on emerging technologies, R&D, and advances in computing, robotics, and applied physics. His writing has also appeared in Wired, Nature, and The Atlantic Monthly’s website. He was named a New York Times professional fellow in 2003. Greg is the co-author of Guanxi (Simon & Schuster, 2006), about Microsoft in China and the global competition for talent and technology. Before becoming a journalist, he did research at MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Lab. He has published 20 papers in scientific journals and conferences and spoken on innovation at Adobe, Amazon, eBay, Google, HP, Microsoft, Yahoo, and other organizations. He has a Master’s and Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT, and a B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.