Xenios Thrasyvoulou
Xenios started his career as an Engineer working for a big FTSE 100 company where 6 months in he realized he was intensely allergic to large companies and the bureaucracy that governs them (the company did also drop out of the FTSE 100 in that period which clearly was a sign!)
Inexperienced and utterly unemployable at the age of 23 he decided to pursue his dream of being an entrepreneur, starting a service that allowed time-starved individuals to outsource work and tasks on a ‘per hour’ basis to a multi-skilled remote team. Three years later, this led to the creation of PeoplePerHour.com.
Xenios is responsible for the overall vision and direction of PeoplePerHour.com.His passion for Product, relentless pursuit of innovation and his deep obsession for customer service and user experience are very much defining points of the company’s culture and ethos.
Xenios holds an MA/MEng from Cambridge University and attended executive education at Harvard Business School. He has been featured in numerous publications, been interviewed by - amongst others - BBC News, CNN, Bloomberg TV, ABC News and spoken publicly on entrepreneurship at business schools.
When not working (which is not very often!) Xenios enjoys sport including martial arts, football, running and skiing, dabbles at cooking and doing art.
Simos KitirisSimos is primarily responsible for managing the technical team and deciding what should not get done in PPH. He is well-known for shooting new ideas down and identifying problems in everything. Occasionally he does come up with a few ideas of his own and some solutions to problems. Prior to PPH, Simos has worked as a software developer and management consultant for far too long and is a graduate of the University of Cambridge, where he obtained his MA/MEng with first-class honours after a fair amount of luck.
When not working, Simos can be found freediving in lakes or climbing up rocks while attempts to do both at the same have so far been unsuccessful (but fun!).
Michael van SwaaijA technology leader and eBay veteran, Michael used to run the AOL and CompuServe businesses in several countries as Managing Director before joining eBay in 1999 when it was still a small team.
At eBay Michael started up and run their European operations through green-field start-ups as well as acquisitions. eBay Europe is now the largest ecommerce business in Europe operating in 9 countries with over 10 Billion Euros per year in trade.
In Dec 2005 Michael became Chief Strategy Officer for eBay Inc responsible for defining the strategic direction for the eBay Inc group of companies (eBay, PayPal, Skype) reporting to then CEO Meg Whitman. In 2007 Michael took on the interim CEO position at Skype and remained Chairman until Dec 2009.
Michael holds a master degree from the Technical University of Twente, a PhD from the Catholic University in Leuven and a MBA from INSEAD.
Michael is an investor in PeoplePerHour.com and an active advisor on operation and strategic issues.
Danny RimerDanny Rimer joined Index Ventures in 2002 and established the firm's London office. His investment interests include Internet infrastructure software and services.
He currently serves on a number of boards including Astley Clarke, Boku, FON, Oanda, Sky (BSY), Stardoll, Rightscale, Trialpay and Viagogo. He is also a director of Maggie's Cancer Caring Centers. He previously was a director of KVS (Symantec), Last.fm (CBS), Lovefilm, MySQL (Sun), Neoteris (Juniper) and Skype (eBay).
Prior to joining Index, Danny was a general partner of The Barksdale Group, where he invested in a dozen companies including CrossGain (BEA), Ofoto (Kodak) and TellMe (Microsoft). Prior to joining The Barksdale Group, Danny was Managing Director in Hambrecht & Quist's (JP Morgan) Equity Research Group and was responsible for the firm's Internet practice. At H&Q, Danny was the underwriting analyst for companies including Amazon, Netscape, and Verisign. He also sponsored direct investments in over 20 companies.
He holds an A.B from Harvard College.
Fabrice GrindaIn March of 2006, Fabrice Grinda co-founded OLX, Inc. in the hopes of building the largest free local classified site in the world. As co-founder and co-CEO, Mr. Grinda drives the company's business development, oversees an organization of over 80 employees and negotiates acquisitions with global partners.
Prior to OLX, Grinda was the founder and CEO of Zingy Inc., which he built into one of the largest wireless media companies in the Americas. Within four years, Grinda successfully grew the business to $200 million in content sales before selling the business in 2004 for $80 million.
In 1998, Grinda co-founded Aucland S.A., one of the top three auction sites in Europe. In just over a year, Aucland S.A. launched in five countries and grew to 750,000 registered users.
In addition to these achievements, Grinda worked as a business consultant for McKinsey & Company, where he conducted financial and economic analysis for large financial institutions.
Grinda graduated Summa Cum Laude from Princeton University and was awarded the Halbert White prize, given to the most distinguished economics student, as well as The Wolfe Balleisen memorial prize, awarded for best thesis.
Fabrice is an investor and advisor in PeoplePerHour.com
Doug MonroDoug Monro is currently Co-Founder at Adzuna, a new search engine for classified ads. Adzuna searches thousands of sites so you don't have to, bring together millions of ads so you can find them all in one place, and organizes them with useful features so that you can easily find what you need.
Doug was most recently COO of property portal Zoopla. From 2008 he led the growth of the team from 5 to 75 people and the site to number 2 in UK property with 5M visitors a month, organically and through acquisitions. Previously he was MD of Gumtree.com, the UK's largest classified ads site, where he built the team and business through a phenomenal period of growth after acquisition by eBay in 2005.
Previously, Doug has worked at eBay UK, Bain & Company, Unilever and also as an entrepreneur. Doug has a BA in English from Cambridge and an MBA from Kellogg where he was a Fulbright and Siebel scholar. He is also a CIMA-qualified accountant.
Doug got involved with PeoplePerHour.com as an investor and an advisor on operating and strategic issues.
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