Peter Offringa
Executive Committee Member at Bridge Investor Investors
Peter Offringa
Executive Committee Member at Bridge Investor Investors
Sarasota, Florida
Overview
Work Experience
Founder and Chief Analyst
2019 - Current
Investment research firm with focus on software infrastructure sector. Regularly publish deep analysis on trends in software development, cloud hosting, data storage and security operations. Conduct expert calls with analysts at capital funds, including several of the largest hedge funds. Regularly tapped for presentations to industry events, investment conferences and popular podcasts. Research citations have been included in sell-side research reports. Guest lecturer at the London Business School. softwarestackinvesting.com
Executive Committee Member
2021
BRIDGE Angel Investors is a group of experienced private, accredited investors located in Sarasota, FL, committed to supporting entrepreneurship on a local, state and national level by providing capital and mentoring to assist early-stage businesses achieve high growth. As part of the Executive Committee, lead due diligence for companies in the software and technology space.
CTO
2017 - 2019
Boatsetter is applying technology to disrupt the boating industry. We connect renters, owners and captains directly on our software platform, allowing renters to easily schedule a boating trip, while offering owners a way to monetize their boats when not in use. We have often been described as the “Airbnb of boating.” Boatsetter represents over 5,000 boats in several hundred locations in the U.S. and recently expanded overseas through our partnership with Luxury Retreats, a division of Airbnb. After acquiring a competitor in 2017 (Boatbound), the combined entity is now the largest boat-sharing marketplace in the U.S. https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/17/peer-to-peer-boat-rental/ https://www.economist.com/business/2018/06/23/yacht-sharing-startups-vie-to-rule-the-waves As CTO, led the technology team, including software development, testing and DevOps. Responsible for system architecture, tooling, development processes and organizational structure. Support the executive team in development of the technology roadmap and building out a world-class transactional platform.
VP of Technology
2016 - 2017
Led application development for Catalina, a premier targeted marketing services company that creates one-to-one interactions with consumers through omni-channel digital media platforms. Over 500 CPG brands and 37,000 retailers utilize Catalina to create personalized ad offers through mobile, online and in-store networks targeted at 350 million shoppers in the U.S., Europe and Japan. As VP of Technology, directed multiple development teams in the creation of applications to schedule advertiser campaigns, collect transaction data and deliver targeted offers to individual consumers in real-time. Consumer-facing applications span web, mobile and in-store IoT devices. Systems supported are extremely high-scale, responsive and resilient, built on a modern technology stack using agile development principles. The platform processes over 800 million events per day and utilizes advanced machine learning models to generate personalized targeting recommendations. Back-end infrastructure centers around an event-based architecture, built on a Kafka message bus for high transaction processing. Other system components include HBase, HDFS, Hive, Tomcat, Zookeeper, node.js and zeromq. Application logic is written in Java. Infrastructure is fully configured in Puppet and hosted on multiple regions within Microsoft Azure.
SVP Engineering
2010 - 2015
Led engineering through rapid growth period for one of the world’s largest online dating platforms. With over 35 million active monthly users, Zoosk is translated into 26 languages and accepts payment in over 60 currencies. iOS app is consistently a top 10 grossing app in the App Store. Rapidly grew small start-up team to over 100 engineers, including structuring organization into dynamic teams and mentoring young leaders to run them. Oversaw development, testing and release of Zoosk applications to deliver cutting-edge user experiences across disparate platforms, including the primary web site, social networks, mobile devices (iOS, Android, mobile web) and a stand-alone desktop client. Designed and delivered many highly scalable, encapsulated back-end services to support all user-facing functionality, fronted by a performant, RESTful API layer. Service highlights included real-time chat (XMPP), data access, multiple search capabilities, photos, content management, payment processing, email communications, messaging and fraud/abuse. Also responsible for quality assurance, automated testing, build/release and site operations. Built a Hadoop-based data analytics platform that uses machine learning to process over 100 million daily events and form recommendations for user matches. Managed two redundant data centers, in addition to a significant presence on AWS, to deliver highly available production, testing and development environments. Oversaw compliance and governance issues, including IPO preparations. Extensive focus on security matters, covering PCI, DDOS mitigation, intrusion detection, data isolation and incident response. Established agile software development processes for the organization that supported rapid feature iterations through multiple, reliable releases per day. Started Appium project, the most popular open-source mobile test automation framework. Built strong engineering culture that attracted top talent and maintained high retention.
VP Engineering
2008 - 2010
As a member of the executive team, responsible for all engineering activities within the largest business unit of CBS Interactive. Delivered the highly-trafficked consumer sites of CNET.com and CBSNews.com, serving over 100MM unique users a month. The CNET properties represented a top 50 Internet destination. Delivered all content and functionality for these sites from a consolidated API-driven platform, backed by a sophisticated content management system. Drove development of advanced enterprise tools, including catalog management, dynamic product pricing, big data processing, business intelligence and syndication operations. Also, managed the engineering team that supported the generation and distribution of the largest technology product catalog in the world, consumed by hundreds of corporate customers. Led organization of over 120 engineers in 6 locations. Established scrum-based development processes, with frequent, coordinated releases across multiple applications. Built cross-functional QA organization that provided testing support to all properties from a single team, including automated testing capabilities that drove significant leverage. Architected major re-platforming effort, migrating from monolithic back-end application to suite of microservices with dynamic API's consumed by both internal applications and external developers. Led technology and organizational consolidation efforts between CNET and CBS properties following acquisition. Contributed individually to the design of several advanced systems, including services for targeting CNET users with custom content offerings. Work generated 3 patent applications.
VP Engineering
2005 - 2008
Developed the highly trafficked sites of Download.com, News.com, Shopper.com and CNET Reviews, serving over 4MM unique users daily. Organized and led multiple development teams (about 70 staff) in the design, coding, testing and release of feature-rich web applications. Drove overall architecture, scalability and performance of application infrastructure, as well as managed data ingestion, transformation, caching and indexing systems. Built content management systems to support the creation, transcoding and delivery of millions of video, music and software files on a daily basis. Enhanced content findability through multiple search mechanisms, including full text search, faceted search, tagging, recommenders and taxonomy/ontology structures. Managed enterprise tool development for editorial content entry and customer service applications. Led development efforts for complex systems that ingested and categorized product and pricing feeds from hundreds of individual consumer technology product distributors. Launched first-ever SOLR index and supported open-sourcing this popular search technology going forward. Devised systems, best practices and agile processes to maximize developer productivity and code reuse. Promoted strong engineering culture through hackathons, internal knowledge sharing and team-building events.
CTO
2001 - 2005
Led team of 33 personnel in all product management, UI design, software development, data center operations and quality assurance for Vehix.com, one of the largest automotive web sites. Through its network of sites, Vehix.com serviced millions of internet visitors, 1,500 car dealerships and almost 1,000 employees at 7 major cable television companies. Vehix.com was owned by Comcast Corporation. Team conceived, designed, built, tested and maintained best of breed Internet-based software products for car buyers, auto dealers and cable television companies. Was member of senior executive team, responsible for all technology, product and support operations. Also, managed all internal IT infrastructure. Developed ancillary product offerings like vehicle history reports and auto loan referrals, generating $2.1MM in incremental revenue. Conceived and developed a Private Label program that resulted in Vehix.com being selected to power the auto channels for Comcast.net and Wells Fargo Bank. Completely rebuilt back-end system for uploading and categorizing dealer vehicle inventory, which allowed Vehix.com to promote over 300,000 vehicles daily with a 99.9% accuracy rate. Built and launched an online enterprise reporting application for cable companies to track automotive ad revenue, budget and market penetration. Product reached 500 corporate accounts within 4 months.
VP Engineering
2000 - 2001
Responsible for all engineering, product and operations functions at this CMGI backed start-up that delivered a B2B marketplace for the advertising industry. Rapidly scaled the product development organization to over 25 personnel. Developed front-end web applications and back-end services that powered thousands of continuous auctions, reverse auctions and two-way negotiations between media buyers and sellers for advertising contracts across online, print, out-of-home, radio and television mediums. Company grew to 110 employees and $75 million in VC funding at its height. OneMediaPlace eventually shut down, but represented one of the earliest forays into the automation of advertising purchases, which is commonplace today.
Director of Engineering
1998 - 2000
Part of founding team. Led 12 software developers and testers in the creation and maintenance of the company's sophisticated auction software for liquidating expiring online advertising contracts. Web site ran scheduled English, Dutch and reverse auctions for media buyers and sellers. Company became OneMediaPlace after $60 million VC investment led by CMGI @ventures.