A natural leader and vehement believer in design-led product development, Simon was the driving force behind the creation of the original Ceros platform in 2007 within its parent agency Group FMG. Simon's direction and innate ability to unite teams and instill collective belief was key to the platform attracting clients such as Sears, Staples, IBM, Conde Nast and Peugeot within just 18 months of launch.
During his 19 years at Group FMG, an agency he joined as gofer, he completely reinvented the business, eventually becoming CEO before successfully selling the agency to one of India's most respected private equity firms. The investment house went on to capitalise the business to the tune of $100M.
Having spun Ceros out of its parent agency in 2011, Simon quickly attracted the attention of several VC's including Greycroft, investors in CMS technology company Crowd Fusion Inc.
The subsequent acquisition of Ceros Ltd. by Crowd Fusion Inc resulted in a highly focussed, highly talented company set on revolutionizing the way brands use technology to communicate with and mobilize customers.
In 1995, Brian designed the first TV Guide web site and helped Business Week move from AOL to the web. Since then he has created or co-created many successful brands including Engadget, Autoblog, Joystiq, Cinematical, TUAW.com, Obsessable, Super Eco, ComicMix, Meet The Makers, Crowd Fusion and Blogstakes -- and built all of the platforms that powered them.
Brian has also built software platforms for brands he didn't personally create such as Capgemini, Intel, JD Edwards, Deloitte & Touche, The Kansas City Chiefs, Dow Jones Venture Reporter, Warner Bros, TMZ, MySpace and Netscape.
Can you tell that Brian loves building platforms?
A coder since he was 10, a commercial software writer at 16 and a pioneer of the search engine marketing industry soon after that, Craig is an avid technology enthusiast with a wealth of R&D and product development experience.
Craig’s technical expertise was instrumental in building Netscape's social news platform as well as the Blogsmith platform for Engadget, Autoblog, Joystiq and dozens of other category leading blogs. Prior to that, Craig was the architect of the Did-it.com Detective, a tool used by tens of thousands in the early days of search engine marketing.
A founder of Crowd Fusion, Craig’s startup experience, his inherent ability to predict outcomes, his talent for converting data to information and his aptitude for delivering results makes him the perfect choice for COO of Ceros.
At the age of 24, in the dotcom boom of 2000, Paul opted out of the last year of his Computer Science degree and joined the team of a fashion and entertainment startup. He never completed his degree as the business quickly morphed into an online video production company and went on to pioneer brand funded short-form entertainment in the UK. The agency grew to over $5M in annual revenues working for brands such as Sky, MSN, Yahoo and Wrigleys developing content across online, mobile and TV.
The agency merged with Group FMG in 2007 and Paul went on to become Commercial Director of the $15M combined business with joint responsibility for over 250 people. He then grew a $3M digital marketing agency within Group FMG in just 18 months — leveraging the firm's internal technology Ceros, winning clients across the US and UK in the process.
Alongside Simon Berg, Group FMG's CEO, Paul sold the company to a PE firm which capitalised the business to the tune of $100M. As part of that transaction, Paul successfully spun out Ceros, secured $1.5M in seed funding and launched the business as an independent subscription-based technology company in January 2011.
Paul has overall responsibility for sales, client services and strategic partnerships.
Dominic graduated with inventors of the integrated circuit, Texas Instruments, in 1989, having been selected to join the firm's exclusive scholarship scheme. In 1990, Dominic joined pioneers of graphic arts computing, Scitex Corp, managing a team of London-based engineers and helping establish the world's largest graphic arts technology company of the period.
1998 saw Dominic move to the Scitex European HQ in Brussels, Belgium to take up the role of European Product Manager and, with that move, responsibility for the logistics, engineer training, performance monitoring and beta-testing of the firm's database-driven server products.
Two years and 15 successfully launched products later, a move back to his native UK coincided with his joining his largest beta client, Group FMG, with a remit of creating new products to consolidate the firm's position as visionaries in technical prepress industry. It was here that the seeds for what became Ceros were sown.
A forthright speaker and commentator on technology and its application in content marketing, Dominic is a founding member of the Ceros team.
A gifted, self-taught software developer with over 14 years of experience, Ryan began his career building Java e-commerce solutions for the likes of L.L. Bean and IBM when he was just 16.
He founded his own company at the age of 22, building custom web applications for small businesses in his hometown in Pennsylvania, and quickly grew to support customers throuought the US, Canada and UK before joining Crowd Fusion in 2008 as VP Engineering.
Having architected the development of the Crowd Fusion CMS, the cloud-native technology fueling sites such as TMZ — one of the most popular sites in the world — and News Corp's iPad-only magazine The Daily, Ryan’s knowledge and experience of cloud computing applied to high-volume content management is truly impressive.
When he’s not exercising on his Olympic rings, Ryan leads the talented development team at Ceros, pioneering the next generation of interactive content management and distribution platforms.