Management

Hans Peter Brøndmo — CEO & co-founder

Hans Peter is passionate about inventing new applications and building businesses that help people better communicate and connect. He is a successful technology entrepreneur and innovator. Prior to co-founding Plum, Hans Peter started Post Communications in 1996. Post was a pioneering email marketing software-as-a-service (SAS) company in the B2B2C space. As CEO and Chairman of Post he led the company to a successful acquisition by Netcentives in 2000. Prior to Post, Hans Peter co-founded DiVA which brought digital video editing to consumers in the early 90s. DiVA was acquired by Avid Technology in 1993. He has written a New York Times best selling book on Email Relationship Marketing and has testified at US Senate and FCC hearings on Internet privacy and spam.

Hans Peter wrote his first commercial software program as a 17 year old high-school student in Norway in the late 70s and after a detour north of the polar circle in the Norwegian Army, came to MIT to study computer science. He went on to do his graduate work at the MIT Media Lab and in the MIT Technology and Policy Program. While at MIT he was awarded a patent for "micons" - movie icons – as a novel way to provide contextual links in video. He has also worked at the Center for European Nuclear Research (CERN) and at Apple Japan.

Hans Peter has been featured broadly in national media and has addressed more than 50 conferences in the past several years on topics ranging from the new models of sharing and social collaboration on the Internet, to privacy, to entrepreneurship, to the broader impact and influence of technology on individuals.

Margaret Olson — CTO & co-founder
Margaret is a outstanding systems architect who designs large scalable systems and writes the code that brings them to life. She spent the first part of her 25 year career in various key positions in the distributed systems groups at DEC and Apollo, and continued as an architect at Fidelity when they built their first Internet consumer trading application. Later, as the co-founder and CTO of Constant Contact--which today forms the foundation for how more than 250,000 small business owners communicate with and market to their customers — she architected and implemented the product that is now the undisputed leader in self-serve email marketing for small business. As the CTO and co-founder of Plum, Margaret has architected the Plum Groups service, which utilizes the very latest applicable technologies and software development methodologies. Margaret has played leadership roles in several technology industry standards organizations, most recently as the chair of the Email Service Provider Coalition Technology Working Group (2001-2005) where she led the industry towards implementing stronger authentication and accountability at the email infrastructure level. She is also a member of the Boston CTO council.

Margaret received her BS degree from Wellesley College and has continued her formal education at both MIT and Harvard.

Mike Sitrin — VP of Business Development
Mike is an experienced business development executive and entrepreneur with over 15 years experience in both early start-ups and large public companies.

Prior to Plum, Mike co-founded Grouper a pioneer in the online groups and user generated video space. Grouper (now called Crackle) was sold to Sony Pictures in 2006 where Mike became Vice President of Partnerships. At Crackle, Mike worked closely with the Sony Pictures Televisions and with Sony Electronics on ad sales and new product extensions.

Mike was part of the early team at Spinner.com, the first streaming radio company, sold to AOL in 1999. At AOL Mike became Director of Marketing for AOL Music where he worked on the monetization of Spinner, Winamp, and AOL Music. Before moving to the web Mike was General Manager of VeloPress where he successfully launched a book publishing division and merchandise catalog for bicycle enthusiasts.

Tom Wang — VP of Product
Tom is a seasoned consumer Internet product specialist with 13 years of experience and success in early stage Internet start-ups and large public companies. Tom has broad experience having brought a wide range of products to market in the online media, community and communication sectors.

Prior to Plum, Tom was Vice President of Product for Break, an online video company with 16mm+ monthly unique users. Before Break, he worked with United Online, where he oversaw product management for the Juno/NetZero desktop software. Prior to United, Tom held responsibilities at AOL for unified messaging, voicemail, AOLbyPhone and Call Alert (totaling nearly a million paid subscriptions). Tom was also part of the management team for two Internet pioneers: Spinner and Organic Online.

Tom received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania, with coursework in Marketing from the Wharton School of Business. He also attended Northwestern’s Medill Graduate School of Journalism, where he holds a Masters of Science.