Family Builder

Andrew Merkatz Co-Founder & Chairman

Andrew Merkatz brings to Familybuilder over 17 years experience in private and public equity investing, mergers and acquisitions and entrepreneurial management. Andrew is currently the Director of Investments at Vision Capital Advisors, a NYC based registered investment adviser to institutional investors with over $700 Million of assets under management.

Andrew's personal technology investments have included include Majestic Research, SocialMedia.com and iWin, Inc.  Andrew was President and CEO of Predict It Inc., a publicly traded digital media company. Previously, Mr. Merkatz was the Chief Operating Officer and co-founder of SiteSpecific, one of the first internet advertising agencies. SiteSpecific was featured on the front page of the Wall Street Journal in September, 1996, and later served as the subject of the first Harvard Business School case study on internet marketing. Andrew led the sale of SiteSpecific to Silicon Valley-based CKS Group (Nasdaq: CKSG).

Andrew began his career at Interlaken Capital, a middle market private equity firm. Andrew received his B.A. in Economics with Distinction from the University of Pennsylvania and his M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.

Ilya NikolayevCo-Founder & CEO

Prior to launching Familybuilder, Ilya Nikolayev worked at JP Morgan Chase in their finance group. There he computed and mitigated credit risk for large derivative transactions. Before joining JP Morgan, Ilya worked on projects within the automotive aftermarket field and is the holder of several innovative patents. Ilya graduated cum laude with his B.A. in Economics and Politics from New York University. He also received a certificate in Intellectual Property Law from NYU.

David BlinderCTO

Over 16 years developing Internet content and Internet commerce within companies and in entrepreneurial ventures. As one of the early adopters of dynamic content development and Internet networking, he brings his broad range of experience and knowledge to the company. He brings over 18 years experience in large corporate settings and small startup companies. He has been managing and working with offshore code resources for over 15 years.

For the last 4 years he has developed Blinder Entities, Inc. a small software startup specializing in the development of real estate search software for various housing markets nationwide. Software developed by Blinder Entities, Inc. has lead to the sale and purchase of hundreds of millions of dollars in real estate from San Diego to South Florida.

Steve SchlenkerBoard Member

Steve Schlenker has more than 17 years of venture capital and private equity investment experience. Steve serves as Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer for DN Capital. Prior to co-founding DN Capital, Steve was chief investment officer for SUN Technology Investors, and prior to SUN was with Interlaken Capital. Selected technology investments include Cyberview Technologies (AIM: CYBV), Datanomic, Digital Chocolate, Endeca Technologies, IGA Worldwide, Lagan Technologies, PlanetAll (sold to Amazon), PlasmaNet.

Steve received a BS in Economics, summa cum laude, from the Wharton School of Finance with dual concentrations in Finance and Entrepreneurial Management, and an MBA, with high distinction, from Harvard Business School, where he was a Baker Scholar.

Ben GolubBoard Member

Ben Golub is the President and Chief Executive Officer for Plaxo, a leading social and business network, which he has led from shortly after its founding through its successful sale to Comcast Interactive Media. Prior to joining Plaxo, Ben was Senior Vice President of Marketing and Corporate Affairs for VeriSign, Inc. In his eight years at VeriSign, he also served as Senior Vice President of the security and payments business and General Manager of VeriSign's managed security services business. In these roles, Ben managed worldwide sales, marketing, product development, support, operations, and business development activities. Prior to VeriSign, Ben held a number of product development, operations, and business development roles at companies such as Avid Technology, Inc., and Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Ben holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, and a Masters in Public Administration from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. He graduated with a B.A. in Public Policy from Princeton University, and holds a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) accreditation.

Scott HeifermanAdvisor

Scott Heiferman is CEO and co-founder of Meetup, dedicated to revitalizing local community everywhere. Scott also co-founded Fotolog, the #1 social network website in six South American and European countries. Fotolog was recently acquired by Hi Media, a Paris-based interactive media company. Scott founded i-traffic (a top online ad agency in the 90s) after working at Sony, and graduated from The University of Iowa. Scott received the Jane Addams Award from the National Conference on Citizenship in 2005 and was named the 2004 M.I.T. Technology Review "Innovator of the Year". He's the Organizer of the NY Tech Meetup, New York's top tech community group, and has posted a photo on his Fotolog every day since early 2001

Dick EastmanAdvisor

For some 30+ years, Dick Eastman has been honing his vision of the future to improve our picture of the past. In the mid-1980s, Dick actually went knocking on the door of a rising online star called CompuServe to propose a genealogy forum: a move by which he built a community of family historians over the next 14 years. At the same time, he preached the benefits of technology to an even wider audience of genealogists, including national and international genealogical organizations, and of course, GENTECH, an organization that helped him to spread his message. For the last 12-plus years, Dick has pursued his mission through an online periodical he writes everyday, simply called "Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter."

John FinlayAdvisor

John Finlay graduated from BYU with a degree in Computer Engineering. He is currently a full-time faculty instructor at Neumont University teaching computer science courses. Each quarter John leads teams of Neumont students who work on Family History related open source projects. In 2002, John founded the PhpGedView open source genealogy project which quickly grew to be the largest open source genealogy application worldwide.

Richard KivelAdvisor

Richard Kivel has a 20 year track record leading high tech and biotech organizations, taking companies through the full life cycle from licensing technology, raising initial capital, hiring management as well as acquisitions and public offerings. Rich is a frequent guest lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Sloan School of Management and has been a Judge for the MIT $50K/$100K Entrepreneurship Competition since 1998. Rich also serves on the Global Board of Directors of the MIT Enterprise Forum and serves as a Lead Catalyst for the MIT Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation and is a founding board member of Biolink USA-Ireland. Rich is currently the CEO of TheraGenetics and a member of the Board since April 2006 when the company was formed.

Rich earned an M.S. in Management from Boston College, a B.A. from American International College and has completed the Advanced Course in Genomics, Drug Discovery, Therapeutics and New Innovations at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also a graduate of the prestigious MIT Executive Management Program, Birthing of Giants.

Dr. Peristera Paschou Advisor

Dr. Peristera Paschou is a Lecturer in Population Genetics at the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics at Democritus University in Greece. Dr. Paschou has extensive experience in the analysis of the genetic structure of human populations and the identification of individual ancestry with the use of genetic markers. She did her PhD at the University of Athens, and she was a EURODIAB TIGER scholar at the "Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics" at the University of Oxford. As a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Genetics at Yale University, she studied the patterns of genetic diversity in worldwide human populations. At Yale University she also trained in Clinical Molecular Genetics and obtained certification from the American Board of Medical Genetics.

Dr. Jamie Wilson Advisor

Dr. Jamie Wilson is a Research Director for the Roots Project at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell and a faculty member in the Biotechnology and Forensic DNA Science Program at Massachusetts Bay Community College in Wellesley Massachusetts. Dr. Wilson earned his PhD at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell (UML) where he studied mitochondrial DNA haplotypes in human populations from Sierra Leone and Cameroon. Currently, he has been studying the genetic ancestry of the Haitian population and other African Diaspora.