Overview
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About Swarmcast
Swarmcast is dedicated to transforming the Internet into a reliable medium for distributing high-quality video. The company mission is to enable content providers to engage global audiences through high-quality viewing experiences.
Swarmcast's multi-source streaming platform enables the richest user experience for the streaming of high definition live and on-demand internet television services while optimizing delivery costs. We are currently powering some of the most demanding media destinations on the Internet. Enabling content providers to scale to millions of simultaneous users, Swarmcast offers the most reliable distribution of high quality live and on-demand video over the Internet.
- Headquartered in both Minneapolis and Tokyo. Swarmcast is privately held and funded by:
- Bridge Capital Fund L.P.
- Nippon Venture Capital Co., Ltd.
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Management
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Christian Wilhelm, Chairman
Christian Wilhelm is Chairman of Onion Networks KK (parent company of Swarmcast) and is actively involved in guiding the strategic growth of the company. In addition to his role at Swarmcast, he is President of CG Capital, a privately held investment bank/venture capital firm specializing in high-growth Asian companies. Christian has successfully built and sold a number of businesses in Switzerland, the US and Japan and continues to actively invest and participate on the board of five companies. He has an MBA from the Saint-Gall Graduate School, Switzerland and is a Chartered Financial Analyst as well as Certified Public Accountant.
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Justin Chapweske, Founder & CEO
Justin is the original inventor of "file swarming," a content delivery method that breaks large files into smaller data packets to efficiently deliver them over the Internet. In 2001, Justin founded Swarmcast to develop and market this technology and in 2007, he was awarded the patent for file swarming which includes peer-to-peer, grid content delivery and multi-source streaming technologies. With more than 20 years experience in software engineering, Justin oversees the technical and business strategy of Swarmcast. He pursued studies in Computer Science and Mathematics at the University of Minnesota.
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Ry4an Brase, Co-Founder & CTO
Ry4an co-founded Swarmcast with Justin Chapweske in 2001. He is an expert in file transfer and content delivery technologies and played an integral role in the development of mutli-source streaming technology. As CTO, Ry4an is responsible for all aspects of the company's technical direction including operations and software development. With more than a decade of software engineering experience, Ry4an's previous experience includes OpenCola, which developed one of the Web's very first social aggregation sites. Ry4an attended the University of Minnesota, where he studied Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
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Tomohito Suga, CFO
Before joining Swarmcast in 2007, Tomohito headed finance and accounting at Rakuten, Inc., was an auditor at Price Waterhouse Coopers and served as the Corporate Planning General Manager of Seiko Giken Co., leading the company through a $3 billion IPO. He holds a CPA of Japan, a Bachelor of Economics from Keio University in Japan and an MBA from the Ross School of Business at University of Michigan.
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Chad Tippin, VP of Engineering
An expert in video delivery technologies, Chad brings nearly 20 years of leadership experience in engineering and software development to his role as VP of Engineering at Swarmcast. In his current position, Chad is responsible for leading the company's software engineering operations. Before joining Swarmcast in 2004, Chad led software development teams and spearheaded engineering initiatives at Perot Systems, and Nayna Networks as well as served as CTO of Jibe, Inc., a peer-to-peer Internet TV company. Chad holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Louisiana State University.
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Kelly Egan, Sr. VP of Business Dev./Sales
Kelly brings over 15 years of entertainment and technology industry experience to Swarmcast and is responsible for the company's sales and marketing efforts. Kelly was previously the Director of Entertainment Business Development and Strategy at Best Buy. His prior experience includes global entertainment strategy at IBM Global Services and international film distribution at Kegan Entertainment, a movie distribution company he founded. He holds an MBA from the Thunderbird School of Global Management.
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Ralph Jenson, VP of Network Operations
As VP of Network Operations, Ralph creates and manages Swarmcast's servers and network infrastructure. Ralph garnered more than 25 years of experience in network engineering at organizations including Honeywell Solid State Electronics, Cray Research, LogLogic and NextNet Wireless. He was the co-founder and CTO of gofast.net and CTO of Aravox Technologies, the inventors of the Session Border Controller. Ralph attended the University of Wisconsin and Northwestern University, where he pursued his Masters degree in Computer Science.
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Osamu Saito, Head of Business Dev. - Japan
Before joining Swarmcast in 2007, Osamu headed Sales at ClubIT Japan, the second largest and most profitable content delivery network in Japan. He also held various senior marketing and sales positions at Softbank. Osamu holds a degree in Business Administration from Waseda University in Japan.