Executive Bios
David Mason
Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder
David has been involved in the technology industry for over eleven years. He co-founded with his brother, Michael Mason, an Internet retail company, SpeedServe Inc, in 1994 and successfully grew the business from a two-person start-up into a 40-person organization selling Books, Videos, DVDs and Video Game hardware and software with customers in over 60 different countries. The company merged with BuyComp Inc. in 1998 to become Buy.com creating the 2nd largest Internet retailer behind Amazon.com. In its first year of business, Buy.com generated $115 million in revenue setting a new record for the most revenue in the first year of business for a U.S. company. Buy.com completed a successful IPO in February of 2000 through Merrill Lynch after raising over $300 million in capital and was listed on the NASDAQ as BUYX.
David was the CEO of Buy.com Europe, a joint venture between Buy.com, Softbank, NewsCorp and Vivendi, and developed and launched the French and German businesses. David was a featured guest on CNNfn and CNN, was a featured speaker addressing Fortune 500 business leaders at the Business Week E-Business Forum, appeared in several NY Times articles and presented E-Commerce experiences to IBM executives at the IBM Global Sales Conference.
David's experience ranges from developing start-ups into publicly listed companies, Venture Capital Investments, M&A transactions, Large Investments in public securities, shareholder relations and other investment banking activities within the U.S., Asia and Europe (total transaction size of approximately $500 million).
Adam Solesby
Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder
Adam has extensive experience in managing diverse team environments and complex software engineering projects ranging from startups to publicly traded companies. He has been a pioneer in developing electronic commerce applications since the advent of the web as well as architecting, managing and implementing large scale systems.
In 1997, Adam was one of the first hired developers for SpeedServe Inc. an Internet retail company selling Books, DVDs, Video Games and Music. He managed and designed all of the front-end applications as well as the back-end integration with multiple fulfillment centers across the country creating one of the first web-based, real time inventory, ordering and delivery systems. SpeedServe grew to be one of the top 5 Internet retail companies and merged with BuyComp to create Buy.com in 1999. At Buy.com, Adam managed over 70 technical employees and helped design and implement a robust financial system, integrated technology platforms from acquired companies, supported the front-end content system which displayed and updated millions of products each day and created the applications and integration to support additional product line launches.
In 2005, Adam was recognized by Microsoft for creating the largest SQL server OLTP database while working as Chief Architect and Director of Development for AIM Healthcare. Adam was the founder of FloraBuy.com, an e-commerce portal for wholesale imported cut flowers and was also the Chief Architect for uMogul, a financial services company pioneering a profitable niche sector of affinity funds focused on the entertainment industry. Adam graduated from Vanderbilt University in 1997 with a B.S. in Computer Science.