Meet the Team
Beat Knecht is co-founder, President, and CEO of Zattoo. In an earlier life Beat was the co-creator of UBS OpenLAN, SAP xRPM, and Levanta. Before joining Zattoo, Beat was vice president of marketing at Linuxcare (now Levanta) in San Francisco and experienced the consulting world as associate partner at McKinsey & Company. Beat holds a BA in Computer Science from the University of California (Berkeley) and received his MBA at IMD in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Nick Brambring is Vice President Advertising and Regional Manager CEE (Central and Eastern Europe). Before he joined Zattoo, Nick worked for the Boston Consulting Group, where he did strategic consulting for companies in the consumer goods industry. His industry expertise includes the TV and music business. Nick is a qualified lawyer and holds a PHD in law from the University of Cologne and an MBA from Insead in France and Singapore.
Nick on TV:
“I’m not a TV junky, I always preferred reality – spending time with my dear friends Heathcliff Huxtable, Homer Simpson and Colt Sivas. Ironically, now that Zattoo enables them to visit me even during office hours, I’m too busy working because of Zattoo. Most games of German Bundesliga are shown on the week-ends though and fortunately my favourite team 1. FC Koeln is back again.”
Benoit Henry is our CFO. He’s got plenty of experience growing young, innovative companies, which is why it’s excellent to have him on board. Over the past six years, he has been CFO at various companies where he developed and led several M&A exit strategies. One of his latest assignments was the sale of Musiwave to Openwave, a leading provider of software solutions. Benoit has spent the first six years of his career in Asia working in the multimedia and publishing industry. He holds a master of science in management from HEC, Paris.
Benoit on TV:
"We have no TV set at home. Our family relies 100% on Zattoo for TV!!! We even put Zattoo on a beamer in the evening.
We do stay true to my programs: mainly American series. I love watching The Sopranos, Seinfeld, Rome, The Office (US and UK versions), Prison Break 1 & 2... I love the idea of having a weekly meeting with the characters of these series. It has more than once happened that we turned down invitations not to miss a show ...
As a child, I might have spent too much time watching TV ... Japanese stuff mainly. That might explain why I ended up living in Japan for 3 years and did 15 years of martial arts ..."
Dug Song is Vice President of Engineering at Zattoo. He has over 10 years of experience leading commercial software development for products in global enterprise and service provider markets. Dug joined Zattoo after 7 years as the founding engineer and chief architect at Arbor Networks, and author of several of its patents. Prior to Arbor, Dug was the architect of a network anomaly detection system at Anzen Computing (acquired by NFR Security). Dug has made a name for himself in the open-source community, and serves on the program committees for various academic and industry computer security conferences and technical advisory boards. He holds a bachelor of science in Computer Science from the University of Michigan.
Dug on TV:
“I own only one TV, but several computers and laptops, and wait patiently for Zattoo to finally come to the States! In the US, TV really defined pop culture in the 80's, eventually kicking off a global youth culture that blossomed and was remixed all over the world. As a latchkey kid during this time, I grew up on TV, microwavable meals, computers, and skateboarding. I'm definitely of the MTV generation: I first learned to surf channels, then BBSs, then websites ...
My TV history
Elementary school: Mr. Wizard's World, The A-Team, Danger Mouse, Transformers, You Can't Do That On Television!
Middle school: Robotech, French in Action
High school: The Simpsons, 120 Minutes, Jeopardy
College: The Adventures of Pete-n-Pete, Ranma, Space Ghost Coast to Coast
Post-college: Law & Order, X-Files, The Daily Show, Frontline
Today: Pancake Mountain, Heroes, Pororo, and various Korean dramas (I won't call them soap operas!)”
Andre Thalmann is our General Counsel. Before joining Zattoo, André worked for 10 years in law firms and gained extensive experience in the various areas of business law, with a strong focus on all matters related to the Internet, IT and Media industries. André was admitted to the bar in 1997. André holds a PhD in law from the University of Lausanne, an LL.M. from the College of Europe, Bruges, and an MBA from the University of St. Gallen (HSG).
Andre on TV:
"I watch TV!
fave shows and programs:
- let me think...
Francesco Vass is Vice President of Marketing and Content. Before joining Zattoo Francesco worked as consultant at McKinsey & Company, where he advised clients in the telecom and media industries on strategic issues. Previously, Francesco was deputy head of product development at Sunrise, Switzerland's largest new telecom operator. Francesco holds a master of science in Electrical Engineering from the ETH Zurich and received his MBA from INSEAD in France and Singapore.
Francesco on TV:
"I own one single, old TV set. Along with that a PVR of the wave.
My tv consumption is very focused: mostly news and tv series, occasionally a sport event or moviefave shows and programs:
- teenage-hood: "The Dukes of Hazzard", with Daisy Duke (Catherine Bach) as the incarnation of my wildest dreams. Also watched "Mork & Mindy", "The Jeffersons", and "Diff'rent Strokes" - all of which I found exhilarating
- In my mid-twenties I fell victim of "Friends"
- More recently, I can't live without my weekly shot of "24", "Lost", "Prison Break" and "Dr. House".
- I gave "Six feet under" a try but didn't make it past episode 3 of the first series"
Wenjie Wang is co-founder and CTO of Zattoo. Wenjie holds a Ph.D. degree from the University of Michigan. He has over eight years of experience in Internet protocol design, system performance analysis, and P2P application implementation. He built the prototype of the Zattoo streaming protocol as part of his Ph.D. thesis. Wenjie has also worked at Microsoft Research Asia and Oracle China.
Wenjie on TV:
"I spend most of my home time either in front of a TV or a laptop. My TV consumption became more sporadic in recent years, thanks to broadband and Internet video. I cannot throw away my TV yet because a lot of content is not available on the Internet. I hope we can make a difference there.
My favorite channels are discovery (HD) and history, Fox/CBS during NFL season."
That’s not all respectively everybody we’ve got. Other team members are working on developing the software even further, acquiring hot new content for viewers all over the world, setting up new servers, taking care of our users, and and and. The techie side is based in Ann Arbor, Michigan/USA, while the business geeks experts operate from Zurich, Switzerland.