Joseph Essas
Founder of Ascend Healthcare
Joseph Essas
Founder of Ascend Healthcare
Los Angeles Metropolitan Area
Overview
Work Experience
Co-Founder and Managing Director
2022 - Current
Ascend Healthcare provides individualize treatment plans and discharge recommendations to ensure every client has a care plan.
Board Member
2019
Compensation committee
Venture Partner
2011
FirstMark Capital is an early-stage venture capital firm that partners with exceptional entrepreneurs making their mark on the world.
President and Chief Technology Officer
2020 - 2022
Chief Technology Officer
2012 - 2022
Leading Engineering, Product, Design, Operations and Data Science teams - connecting diners and restaurateurs. Teams focus on innovative software solutions for restaurants including table management and CRM, which in turn exposes real time availability to diners for online reservations. Realtime APIs power Google, Apple, Tripadvisor and hundreds of other partners. Operating real time software for 60k+ restaurants in 9 countries, and seating 35mm+ diners per month. Driving very diversified technology stack - developing software in Node.js, Java and C#. Enabling huge growth in native mobile apps on all platforms - translating into 50+% of all diners booking reservations on mobile devices.
OpenTable operates as an online restaurant booking service that enables guests to discover and book tables.
Raised $48,000,000.00 from Comdisco Ventures, France Telecom (now Orange S.A.), Upstart Capital, Impact Venture Partners, Integral Capital Partners and Benchmark.
Board Member
2017 - 2020
Real founders. Real success. Over 180,000 entrepreneurs have trusted Volusion's all-in-one ecommerce software to build better businesses.
Raised $90,000,000.00 from Main Street Capital.
Board Member
2014 - 2019
Board Member
2015 - 2017
Zen Planner's all-in-one fitness business software provides everything you need to turn your passion into a successful business.
Raised $11,150,000.00 from Mainsail Partners.
Chief Technology Officer
2010 - 2012
Responsible for building a 100 person team, including engineering, machine learning, operations, data analytics. Transformed core matching technologies of eHarmony into machine learning modeling and Hadoop driven stack, using graph optimization algorithms for optimizing most efficient relationships among participants of the network. Nurtured relationships with premier CS faculties in the world (Harvard, Brown etc) - to guide and advise on topics of linear programming, graph optimization and machine learning. Drove operational efficiency by streamlining budgeting, prioritization and agile development.
Vice President, Engineering and Operations
2008 - 2010
Ran all product development, production operations, deployment and long term architecture. Key improvements in reliability of service, matching quality and precision, and speed of development. Focused on simple, scalable solutions for SOA, reflected with APIs widely used internally and with mobile apps. Launched datacenters with DR capabilities, monitoring systems, and introduced performance management.
EHarmony is an online dating website that matches compatible singles with each other.
Raised $113,000,000.00 from Millennium Technology Value Partners.
Vice President, Engineering
2002 - 2008
Led sponsored search and content monetization engineering teams. Launched several new products and was responsible for over $1B in total revenue flowing through small transactions. Transformed old technologies and systems into Yahoo software stack and was a key member of the leadership team that undertook one of the most ambitious and complex projects in Yahoo's history involving over 1000 people.
Yahoo is a technology and media company that serves users through its portfolio of digital platforms, products, and services.
Raised $6,800,000.00 from Visa, SoftBank Capital, Sequoia Capital and Reuters Venture Capital.
Principal
2001 - 2002
One of five investment professionals managing over $200 million in committed equity capital. Member of the Investing Committee. Active involvement in all portfolio company matters including directly recruiting senior management (CEO, CFO, etc.), leading and managing additional financing efforts, and technological roadmaps. Member of the Board of Directors of two portfolio companies. Negotiated the sale of a portfolio company to a publicly traded competitor, resulting in a profit on initial investment to the fund, as well as led successful capital and operational restructuring of two legacy portfolio companies. Actively worked with co-investors in portfolio companies including: Mellon Ventures, JAFCO, Clearstone Venture Partners, DFJ and others.