Crowdynews Adds Silicon Valley Veterans to Board and Advisors

CROWDYNEWS ADDS NEW BOARD MEMBERS AND CREATES ADVISORY BOARD
Seasoned tech and media industry executives appointed from the US and Europe

GRONINGEN, NL – 16 February 2016 – Crowdynews, the world’s largest social media curation platform, today announced that it has expanded the membership of its Board of Directors, appointing both Roeland Boonstoppel and Tim UngerNeal Dempsey and Dr. Mario Garcia join the company’s newly formed Advisory Board.

“The addition of Boonstoppel, Unger, Dempsey, and Garcia represents an important milestone in the maturity of Crowdynews’ business,” said Jeroen Zanen, co-CEO, Crowdynews. “Their experience growing and advising companies will help guide us into the next stage of growth, which includes unlocking the potential in key markets like the US and UK, and bringing the Crowdynews solution to new users and new verticals.”

Roeland Boonstoppel, owner of Amber Venture Partners and newly appointed Chairman of the Board. Boonstoppel is a venture capital and angel investor with 25+ years of international technology investing and board experience in Europe, the US, and China. He has worked many years between London and Silicon Valley, with a long list of successful exits. Boonstoppel has been an active angel investor since 2004. Roeland was a partner at Crescendo Ventures and Kennet Capital in London and started his venture career at Atlas Venture in Amsterdam and Boston. Most recently, Boonstoppel served as a Non-Exec, Angel Investor and Advisor to Coresonic AB (acquired by Mediatek), The Fab Shoes (acquired by JustFab), BundleTech Ltd (aka DutyCalculator – acquired by Borderfree), iBOOD (acquired by Media Markt), and IDchecker (acquired by Mitek).

Tim Unger, founder and owner of Consulting in Human Capital, and newly appointed Board Member, brings more than 20 years of general management operating experience in a wide variety of leading-edge technology markets. As CEO, he has taken a number of Silicon Valley start-ups through the process of funding and scaling while accelerating the launch of new strategies and dynamic businesses leading to compelling liquidity and funding events for company stakeholders. Additionally, Unger has served as advisor to numerous companies including Skybox Security ($96M Investment – Providence Equity), Crowd Factory (acquired by Marketo), Coresonic (acquired by Mediatek), and Tropian (acquired by Panasonic).

Neal Dempsey, General Partner at Bay Partners, is the first member of the company’s newly formed Advisory Board. Based in Menlo Park, California, Dempsey has been an investor in Silicon Valley for over 25 years.  His investments include companies that achieved some of the most successful exits of the past decade, including Eloqua, Guidewire, DropCam, and many others. Currently, Dempsey sits on 9 board seats mostly with Silicon Valley-based companies and actively works with mentoring entrepreneurs at all stages of company growth. Dempsey was named to the Forbes Midas List in 2013.

Dr. Mario Garcia brings more than 40 years’ experience as a visual journalist, designer, consultant and academic; he is also the author of 13 books, including his first digital book, The iPad Lab: Storytelling in the Age of the Tablet. Garcia has consulted with over 700 news organizations around the globe such as the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, South China Morning Post, Aftenposten, De Telegraaf and El Tiempo. He is Senior Adviser on News Design/Adjunct Professor at Columbia University’s School of Journalism.  He founded the Graphics and Design Program at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies. He has the University of Missouri’s Medal of Honor for Service in Journalism, was appointed the Hearst Digital Media Professional-in-Residence for 2013-2014 at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, and has received over 300 Society for News Design Awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award and People Magazine en Español – 100 Most Influential.

“Traditional news and social media are intersecting fast and furiously these days and the lines will continue to blur,” said Roeland Boonstoppel from Amber Venture Partners. “Crowdynews’ social media curation technology has the potential to play a transformative role in how these two media interact and react to each other online, as well as extend the possibilities into other verticals like brand marketing & online retailing, and I’m excited to be a part of shaping what’s next.”

About Crowdynews
Crowdynews is the world’s largest social media curation platform, delivering social content to the news media market worldwide. We are the definitive one-stop shop for automating the inclusion of relevant, real-time, and safe social content from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Vimeo, and more alongside editorial content. Using artificial intelligence & natural language processing, we enable our customers to tell “the whole story” by augmenting their own content with photos, videos, eyewitness reports, and opinions shared through social media. For more information, please visit www.crowdynews.com or follow us on Twitter @Crowdynews.

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(photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/mcaven/)