Bob was the only investor in Recommind prior to Kennet and has been CEO from the early formation of the business in 2001. Prior to Recommind, Bob was the co-founder and CEO of Beduin Communication, a developer of web browsers for smart phones that was acquired by Sun Microsystems in 1998. At Sun, he held senior positions in the Java Software division, where he led the marketing of the Java platform into consumer electronics. Bob is a board member of several young companies and a graduate of the University of Victoria, the University of California at Berkeley, and Columbia University, from which he has an MBA.
Previously, Rechtman was Head of Non-Linear Media Networks at The Walt Disney Company. He joined Disney through its acquisition of Maker Studios in 2014, where he served as president of International.
Prior to that, he was CEO of AOL BeOn, and SVP of AOL International. He joined AOL when Goviral, where he was CEO, was acquired in 2011. Earlier, he spent eight years at TradeDoubler, where he was instrumental in leading the company to a successful IPO in 2005.
Rechtman is an angel investor in several disruptive media, game, and tech businesses and holds several board positions. He has twice been listed on the Wired Europe Top 100 most influential list.
Michael has had an extensive career in building and leading successful venture-backed software companies in Silicon Valley and London. For seven years he was the COO of Traiana, a financial network company, based in San Francisco and London. Traiana was backed by Sequoia and acquired by ICAP, a UK brokerage, in 2008. He has been the CEO of venture backed companies in London (Iris Financial, KWI) and Silicon Valley (Cohera, Infinity Financial & Coronet).
Michael has also assisted a number of technology companies as a Board member or Advisor including Almonde (Paris), EasySoft (Lisbon) & and Fog City Capital (San Francisco).
In his early career, Michael spent six years in Asia working for the United Nations and aid organizations. He has a B.A. in Anthropology from Wesleyan University, a M.A. in International Affairs from The School for International Training and a M.Ed. from Harvard University.
Kevin has a history of successful software exits with an emphasis on sales and marketing leadership and operations. Kevin joined BeyondTrust by way of the company’s acquisition of eEye Digital Security, where he served as CEO and Chairman. Prior to joining eEye, Kevin was CEO of NetPro (a Kennet II Portfolio company), a leading vendor of Microsoft infrastructure optimization software. NetPro had struggled for a number of years in the $5 million revenue range. Kevin along with his team of executives assumed leadership of NetPro and grew revenues to $30 million, prior to selling the company to Quest Software for $79 million in 2008. Kennet’s investment in 2005 was part of a shareholder recapitalization and the team achieved the exit to Quest without raising outside capital. Kevin also served as the president and CEO of Homebid.com, where he secured funding and eventually sold the business to industry leader HomeStore.com. Earlier, Kevin spent seven years as president and COO at Viasoft, where he led the company through a successful initial public offering prior to its sale. Kevin started his IT career at IBM, serving in several key marketing and executive business management roles. Kevin has a BSc from Niagara University.
Since early 2007, Simon Guild has been working as a non-executive Director of a wide portfolio of early and later stage technology businesses in various countries, who have the ambition to create international market leaders in their segments. His experience includes marketplaces (he is Chair of both Boilerjuice, a platform for buying domestic heating oil and Get Licensed which connects people wanting occupational licenses with trainers); ecommerce (he was Chair of The Idle Man, a men’s fashion business and is on the board of Leipzig-based Kennet III Portfolio company Spreadshirt); subscription businesses (he is a director of Babbel, the language learning company and is Chair of 8Fit, a Berlin-based fitness app and of Yogaia, a Finnish online yoga business); social networks (he was on the board of Xing and was Chair of WAYN, a travel network); B2B (he was Chair of Vonq, a Dutch platform for recruiters and was on the board of Eyeka, a Paris-based engagement marketing company); SAAS (he is Chair of Picfair which creates virtual shops for photographers); games (he was Chair of Bigpoint, a games company, where he assisted the private equity investors in selling their shares for a significant multiple of their investment)
From 1993 to 2007 he was at MTV Networks Europe, latterly as President & CEO, where he was responsible for transforming the company from a single TV channel to a diversified multimedia business with over 60 TV channels and a portfolio of online and offline businesses. Simon studied Modern Languages at Cambridge and holds an MBA from INSEAD.
Alex is an Investment Director at Kennet, responsible for sourcing and supporting technology companies across the UK and Europe. He works with and is a board observer at Nudge (financial well-being platform), Codility (platform for hiring software engineers at scale), Eloomi (LMS platform), Provar (SaaS platform for test automation and DevOps), and LoyaltyLion (customer loyalty SaaS platform). He is also on the board of RealityMine (SaaS platform for passive cross-media measurement) and Jiminny (sales intelligence platform).
Prior to working at Kennet, Alex worked at Silicon Valley Bank's London office in the debt team, providing financing to high-growth SaaS and fintech businesses across the UK, Europe, Israel, and the US.
Alex holds a BEng in Chemical Engineering from the University of Bath (first-class honors).