Darren is the Vice President of Marketing and Product Management at MerchantCircle, bringing over eight years of marketing experience in the retail, internet and software industries. Prior leadership roles include leading Outbound Marketing for VeriSign’s SSL Division and heading up marketing at Offermatica, the marketing optimization platform acquired by Omniture. Darren has also held senior management roles at venture-backed internet companies and at market research firm Gartner, Inc. Darren is passionate about the evolution of internet marketing and aims to accelerate the adoption of the internet as a means of connecting businesses and people everywhere. Darren holds an MBA from Santa Clara University and a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of California, Davis.
Darren’s favorite local merchants include Rainbow Pizza, Talbots Toyland and Gator Games in San Mateo, Calif., Sneaker’s Pub & Grill in San Carlos, Calif., Watercourse Way in Palo Alto, Calif.
Ray serves as Vice President of Business Development for MerchantCircle. He is responsible for sourcing, negotiating and implementing partnerships that bring value to the millions of businesses and consumers that utilize the MerchantCircle network each month. Prior to joining MerchantCircle, Ray held positions at Viking Asset Management, a private equity firm headquartered in San Francisco, and Fisher Investments, an asset management firm based in the Bay Area. Ray graduated from the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California with a B.S. in Business, emphasis in Corporate Finance.
Ray’s favorite local merchants include Frascati Restaurant in San Francisco, Cobras & Matadors in Los Angeles and Porters Sports in Tahoe City.
David is the Program Manager for MerchantCircle. Prior to joining MerchantCircle, David worked in residential Real Estate, representing clients from all sectors of business in Silicon Valley. His local background and passion for helping people allows him to effectively manage MerchantCircle’s paid programs. David is committed to helping local merchants by finding the right program for each individual business owner. David’s goal is to create an online presence for all local businesses and help them be more visible to customers through better placement in search engines. David is a graduate from Northern Arizona University with a BS in Business Management.
David’s favorite local merchants include Los Altos Grill, Akane Japanese Restaurant, The Village Pub, and Zibibbo Restaurant.
Rick is a Senior Member of the Technical Staff for MerchantCircle. Rick has a broad background designing and developing large-scale information retrieval systems at IBM, Verity, Versant, and Krugle where he has been a key contributor to several mission-critical search technologies. Rick is a graduate of U.C. San Diego, Revelle College and has continued graduate coursework at Stanford University.
Some of Rick's favorite merchants are Uncle Frank's in Mountain View, Bell's Books in Palo Alto, and The Coin Broker in Palo Alto.
Grace Chan, Director of Merchant Monetization, is responsible for all activities related to merchant revenue growth including direct sales, ecommerce and paid product launches. Prior to MerchantCircle, Grace was sr. manager, channel strategy and product marketing at Yahoo! where she was responsible for creating and managing business opportunities and strategies for small medium business channel in HotJobs. Prior to Yahoo!, she spent eight years at Intel in various positions including program manager for test equipment development, design lead for Xeon processor, and product marketing manager for Intel flash products on mobile platforms. While at Intel, Grace released the first multi-chip-module Xeon design to market and launched Intel® Turbo Memory product line, as well as global marketing plans for the company’s first mobile Internet devices.
Grace is a UCLA alumna, graduating with B.S. and M.S. in Chemical Engineering. She completed the Executive MBA Program at Santa Clara University in 2005.
A Milpitas resident, Grace’s favorite local merchants include Sendai Japanese restaurant and Lisa’s Skincare.
Andy is the VP and GM of MerchantCircle’s Local Content Studio platform which he has architected to bring short-format information and expert articles onto MerchantCircle that capture the “local tail” of consumer interest while rewarding contributors for submitting.
A seasoned technology entrepreneur, Halliday brings with him a long history of taking product visions to reality. He was the founder of OurStory.com and Tribbit.com, and most recently worked on several startup initiatives, including the founding of Tagvault.org, an industry member organization formed to provide tools and technology for software ID tags for enterprise software asset management, and a novel cardio-biometric technology.
Early in his career, Halliday played strategic roles as Entertainment Group President for Edison Brothers Stores and as Co-Founder and President of Simon Brand Ventures, a division of Simon Property Group (the nation’s largest retail mall developer). In 1998 he crossed the divide from brick-and-mortar to the Internet, joining Excite@Home as its first VP and GM of the Electronic Commerce Group. Andy was recruited to become the CEO of Contact.com (Accel and Polaris), and then to become the first COO of In-Q-Tel (IQT), the CIA-funded venture capital entity, providing technology to the IC. After leaving IQT in 2003, he co-founded Open Field Software and then was tapped by eventual MerchantCircle founder Ben Smith IV to lead business development for the company he then led, Spoke Software. Halliday’s academic experience boasts an MBA from Harvard Business School along with a Bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College.
Residing in Soquel, Andy claims The Ugly Mug in Soquel, and Gayle's Bakery & Rosticceria in Capitola as his favorite local area merchants.
