About Us >
Don Zereski
Chief Executive Officer
Don joined the company as an independent director in August of 2005 and stepped into the CEO role in February of 2009. Previously, Don served as VP of Products for Lycos, where he was responsible for revenue and product strategy of the company’s U.S. properties, including its search sites, Matchmaker, and Quote.com. Don was instrumental in overhauling the go-to-market model by focusing on e-commerce to complement the ad sales business, growing paid subscriptions 70% and outsourcing the bulk of the search business. The result was positive EBITDA and a sale of the company to Korean portal Daum.
Don originally joined Lycos through the acquisition of Tripod in February of 1997, where he was VP of Technology. Don led Tripod’s product development , helping drive it to become one of the web’s ten most visited sites. Don served as COO of Streetmail, a pioneering SMB online marketing company backed by AOL Ventures, Rho Ventures and Allen & Company, that merged with Waterfront Media in late 2002. He also led the creation of Intellicast, the web’s first commercial weather site that became a top 10 news and information property. Don is a graduate of Worcester Polytechnic Institute and received the school’s prestigious Washburn award in 2002.
John Frank
Founder and Chief Technology Officer
John founded MetaCarta in 1999 while beginning work on his Ph.D. in physics as a Hertz Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. While studying the microclimates of forests, John encountered a need for a new way to view collections of documents: geographically. John's vision and leadership have carried MetaCarta to its current position as the pioneer of geographic text search. At MetaCarta, he focuses on new technology explorations and partnerships. He speaks to technical audiences and advises on implementation strategies.
John holds a B.S. in physics with distinction from Yale University where he led Yale's first solar car team to the top rookie seat of Sunrayce 97. In addition to his role as CTO at MetaCarta, John is continuing his graduate studies in condensed matter theory at MIT.
Doug Brenhouse
Co-Founder, Vice President, Operations and Finance
Doug is responsible for managing the day-to-day operations of the business, including finance, human resources and business operations. Doug focuses on developing MetaCarta's internal strengths, and plays a key role in shaping the company's strategic business direction. As such, Doug was recognized as one of the area's "40 Under 40" business leaders and innovators by the Boston Business Journal. Prior to MetaCarta, he helped grow and manage the multi-million dollar composite material operation of Massachusetts Institute of Technology start-up Active Control eXperts, before the company was acquired by Cymer (CYMI).
Doug holds a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering, with a minor in management from McGill University in Montreal Canada, and a Master of Business Administration, Magna Cum Laude, from Babson College, MA.
Josiah Strandberg
Vice President, Engineering
Prior to joining MetaCarta, Josiah was VP, Engineering at Synopia, a startup focusing on product definition software. Before Synopia, Josiah was a co-founder and Vice President of Software Development at Mission Critical Technologies, a company focused on developing newspaper advertising applications. After the company was acquired by FutureTense 1997, he stayed on and served in a variety of senior engineering management positions at Open Market, divine and Fatwire. Prior to founding Mission Critical, Josiah held multiple senior technical positions at Raytheon, Atex, and XyQuest.
Josiah holds a PhD in philosophy from Brown University.