Executive Team & Board
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David Hyman
Founder, CEO
A.K.A. "the MOG-father," David started MOG with the desire to exceed his previous accomplishments at Gracenote, SonicNet and Addicted to Noise by creating the ultimate tool for discovering new music. His earliest music memories are hearing "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" by the Beatles; singing "Billie Don't Be a Hero" in the backseat of a family road trip; and listening to his grandfather, who got his chops playing speakeasies during the depression, kill it on the piano. Since then, the majority of his thoughts and actions have been dictated by his obsession to music. This obsession extends to the tools used to access it, hence the advent of MOG (and a borderline insane obsession with audio equipment). Sometimes he worries that he's more into the tools to access the music than the music itself, and it's in those moments that he reaches for some Bob, Neil, Joni or Radiohead to set him straight.
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T. Jay Fowler
Product Lead
T. Jay is a huge music fan with a huge music collection that spans back to his days working at record stores, writing reviews, and seeing shows. His mom, while responsible for the start of his life, was not responsible for his taste in music (she liked Richard Clayderman and Frank Mills), though his dad did have a big influence. His desert island picks range from Pinback and Radiohead to Harry Nilsson and Echo & the Bunnymen. His new media life started at suck.com where he was the resident butt of jokes, and most recently he led teams at Yahoo! News. He spends his days creating specs, drawing wireframes and coming up with new ideas.
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Lucas Carlson
Lead Developer
Obsessed with web development since 1996, Lucas has seen it all. Soon after graduating from Reed College with a degree in Physics, Lucas became one of the world's first Rails gurus and wrote a 900-page book about Ruby called the Ruby Cookbook with O'Reilly. In his free time, he is a 2 Kyu Go player, and an iPhone programmer. When coding, he listens to Radiohead, Mozart, Man· and Jeff Buckley. Had he been born a bit earlier, Lucas would undoubtedly have invented the interwebs.
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Alex Brough
SVP, Sales
Alex joined MOG last year and currently runs the sales office out of Venice, CA. Alex ran the West Coast ad sales for eight years at MTV Online, handling the business first as a solo act, then building a team that delivered over $25 million in revenues. As a young boy, custom-painted guitars in the spirit of Eddie Van Halen's axes were common at his house... except these were made of plywood and rubberbands. Alex's calling in sales began in high school, selling knives door-to-door, which helped to pay for his Phish concerts attending college in Vermont, and seeing them coast to coast. No Lie: Seen over 230 Phish shows and counting!
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Andrei Marinescu
VP, Business Development and Marketing
Andrei joined MOG to help other music buffs feed their passion more readily, and to get away from the typical post-MBA cubicle destiny. His earliest music memories include hearing "Ring of Fire" by Johnny Cash, "El Condor Pasa" by Simon and Garfunkel, and Ray Charles. He can often be found listening to the likes of Jay Electronica, Alice Russell, and Mulatu Astatqe while poring over Excel spreadsheets.
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Sonja Hoel Perkins
Board Director
Sonja started her music career at an early age where she sang in the high school choir and was briefly a back-up singer for a neighborhood band. Unable to secure her dream job with the Rolling Stones, she persued a career in venture capital. Sonja is passionate about early stage companies, having spent over 20 years investing in and helping build great technology companies. Sonja loves live music and still can recall most lyrics of hit songs of the 1960's, 1970's and 1980's.
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Scott Jones
Board Director
As close to Bruce Wayne/Batman as one could possibly be in this world, Scott walked away with MTV’s “Best Crib” Award (of the decade) in 2009. As Gracenote’s founding Chairman, Scott brought together the people and technologies to forge the company that dominates the world of music identification and discovery, which was sold to Sony in 2008 for $260 million. Before that, he invented the voicemail that is most used around the world today, and he built a company to deliver it. Scott’s new passion is ChaCha (text 242242), which is like having a smart friend to answer all your questions for free from any mobile phone. For fun, he likes building jeep-sized robots that drive across the desert by themselves and inventing never-been-seen-before holiday light displays on steroids. Interesting factoid: When Scott goes to restaurants, he will often order every single dessert on the menu.
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Rex Ishibashi
Board Director
Rex’s entrepreneurial endeavors are as varied as his musical tastes, having been involved with Wired, Kontiki, Motricity, Originator Media, and most recently for his second stint at Electronic Arts, this time as President of EA Japan. His musical journey started with the R&B/Soul leanings of Parliament/Funkadelic, Sly and War, took a left turn the moment he saw Pete Townshend mishandling his already trashed Gibson Les Paul, and before spinning into a permanent state off musical promiscuity when he heard the Clash debut. At the moment, Tom Waits, Bill Frisell, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club are getting regular play, and he is still searching for a really good Japanese band amidst the concrete sprawl of Tokyo.
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Rick Rubin
Board Director
The Grammy-winning Rubin has produced albums for some of music's biggest names, including the Dixie Chicks, Neil Diamond, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Metallica, Tom Petty, the Beastie Boys, Johnny Cash, System of a Down, and Run DMC. In May, 2007, Rubin joined Columbia Records in a unique executive and creative partnership with Rob Stringer and Steve Barnett. Rubin is also the co-founder of Def Jam Recordings.
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Steve Simon
Patron Saint
In an effort to flee the ho-hum real estate business, Steve found solace by investing in cool businesses such as Gracenote, Method, Yes to Carrots and Pinkberry. He hit the mother lode when his mother dumped her entire record (yes, vinyl!) collection on him at age 13. Thus the Dead, Beatles, Stones, Coltrane, Traffic and Dylan were his life and breath growing up.
