Toni.org

Resume

Toni Schneider

I’m an entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience in technology startups. I’ve worked with outstanding teams in areas including online publishing, web-based email, digital music, audio chip design, virtual reality, and digital signal processing.

Highlights of my career include operating one of the top 10 web sites in the world; helping start one of the leading venture capital firms in Silicon Valley; running an exciting startup that got acquired by Yahoo; being voted Silicon Valley’s best startup CEO; starting the Yahoo Developer Network; helping invent 3D audio software for NASA; and giving Bill Gates a Virtual Reality demo a few months into my first job.

True Ventures
Partner / 2005 – now
True is a leading venture capital firm focused on supporting technology entrepreneurs at the beginning stages of creating companies. True’s portfolio includes many super talented entrepreneurs and rapidly growing companies like Fitbit, Automattic, Peloton, Duo, Bandcamp, and Blue Bottle Coffee.

Automattic
CEO / 2006 – 2014 / Tinker Team Lead 2014 – now
Automattic runs WordPress.com and a network of online publishing services that together reach an audience of close to a billion people.

Yahoo
VP Yahoo Developer Network / 2004 – 2006
Yahoo needs no introduction. It’s a top destination on the web.

  • Joined Yahoo through their acquisition of Oddpost.
  • Helped integrate Oddpost’s team and technology into Yahoo which later led to the launch of a new version of Yahoo Mail which Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal called “a major breakthrough”, “radically easier to use” and “far superior to Gmail”.
  • Created the Yahoo Developer Network which allows third party software developers to use Yahoo as a platform for creating Yahoo-powered applications. Helped create open web services APIs for dozens of Yahoo properties including Search, Maps, Shopping, and Mail. Signed up thousands of third party developers to start an ecosystem around the Yahoo platform.

Oddpost (acquired by Yahoo)
CEO / 2002 – 2004
Oddpost blazed the trail for AJAX web applications by creating an award winning webmail service that offered a desktop-quality user experience inside a regular web browser. Yahoo acquired Oddpost to bring its technology to over 200 million Yahoo Mail users.

  • Launched the company at DEMO 2003, getting coverage in over 150 newspapers worldwide.
  • Raised VC funding from Venture Strategy Partners and Draper Associates and grew company to profitability (during the post dotcom crash).
  • Helped build a product that ushered in a new generation of faster and more usable web-based email services.
  • Negotiated Oddpost’s sale to Yahoo (which landed us on the cover of Business 2.0).

Uplister
CEO / 2000 – 2002
Uplister was a popular community-based music discovery and recommendation system. It allowed music fans to upload and annotate their favorite playlists and share them with other fans. A community of music lovers emerged, writing about their lives and the personal soundtracks that accompanied them. Their playlists were followed by hundreds of thousands of fans looking to discover new music. Despite having lots of users and a great team that worked very hard, Uplister went out of business because we were unable to generate enough revenues from online music sales.

  • Raised VC funding from August Capital and brought together a team of engineers from Silicon Valley and marketers from record labels.
  • Launched online playlist sharing and digital music subscription service and attracted over 500,000 users based on grass roots marketing. The service generated average user sessions (30 minutes) and retention rates (40%) that were 3-4 times higher than competing music services.
  • Signed up over 50 celebrity contributors, including well known writers and musicians like Nick Hornby, Radiohead, Joey Ramone, Ice-T, Nelly Furtado, Tricky, and Paul Oakenfold. Secured high-profile PR coverage including CNN, the Wall Street Journal, LA Times, USA Today, Billboard Magazine, and Time Magazine.
  • Negotiated industry first distribution agreements for digital music subscriptions with 10 leading independent record labels (including TVT Records, Matador Records, and Beggars Banquet).

Aureal Semiconductor (acquired by Creative Labs)
VP Technology / 1996 – 1998 / VP Marketing / 1998 – 2000
Aureal’s audio chips significantly raised the bar for sound quality on PCs. Using 3D audio technology acquired from Crystal River, Aureal challenged the dominant, but aging Soundblaster standard with a new interactive surround sound standard called A3D. Aureal’s A3D chips and sound cards became standard equipment in millions of PCs from Dell to Compaq and Sony. Driving A3D’s adoption was its selection as the audio engine of choice by a series of highly popular video games. After rising to #2 in its market, Aureal was acquired by Creative Labs in early 2000.

  • Joined Aureal through their acquisition of Crystal River Engineering and served on their executive staff during growth from 30 to 140 employees.
  • Created the A3D API and got leading game developers to adopt it in over 100 video games, including a string of #1 hits: Jedi Knight from Lucas Arts, Quake III from id Software/Activision, Unreal from Epic Games and Half-Life from Valve. Worked with Microsoft who used A3D as the blueprint for DirectSound3D in Windows.
  • Helped define Vortex, a line of advanced PCI audio chips and soundcards that brought HiFi-quality A3D sound to PCs. Implemented national and international Vortex product launches and supported sales growth to $12 million per quarter. Vortex based soundcards like the Diamond Monster Sound won dozens of editor’s choice awards and product shootouts.
  • Closed multi-million dollar A3D licensing deals with ATI, Cirrus Logic, Diamond Multimedia, Oak Technology, Rockwell and S3, and helped close Vortex chip sales with Compaq, Dell, HP, Micron, NEC and Sony.
  • Created Aureal’s marketing department, including Marcom, PR, developer support and application development teams. Represented Aureal as the primary spokesperson to technology analysts and media, as a speaker at gaming and technology conferences, and as a lead witness in a patent defense trial.

Crystal River Engineering (acquired by Aureal Semiconductor)
Software Engineer / 1993 -1996
Crystal River Engineering (CRE) was one of the pioneers of Virtual Reality and the inventor of 3D sound, a new type of audio technology that allowed users inside virtual environments to hear sounds the way we hear them in real life. This technology, called Audio Reality, could process sounds in real-time to make them appear above, behind or anywhere around a person, zooming past them, being muffled by walls and echoing around corners. The result was so life-like that it enabled blind people to navigate virtual environments using only their ears. CRE was acquired by Aureal to bring this technology from the world of million-dollar NASA simulators into PCs and video games.

  • Joined CRE founder Scott Foster to help advance the development of the NASA-commissioned Convolvotron, the world’s first real-time binaural audio rendering system. The Convolvotron’s massively parallel DSP engine was capable of digitally processing sounds in the exact way humans perceive them in the real world, including modeling of sound waves as they travel through walls, the atmosphere and the outer ear structure.
  • Co-developed 3D audio API and real-time geometry processing engine (C/C++, Windows/UNIX) that allowed 3D simulation developers to synchronize interactive audio events with 3D graphics rendering engines.
  • Co-developed client/server software (C/C++, Windows/UNIX) to integrate 3D audio rendering into over a hundred high-end virtual reality and visual simulation systems, including NASA and Air Force training simulators, Disneyland VR rides and digital art installations at the New York MoMA.
  • Helped expand CRE technology and products into various vertical markets including pro audio, game consoles, government contracts and amusement parks to grow the company to 14 people and $3 million in annual sales.

College
1989 -1993
I went to Santa Barbara City College (I’m flattered to be one of their featured alumni) and Stanford University. My initial idea was to move to California for a year to learn English. I ended up staying and studying computer science, playing tennis for SBCC, starting a car exporting business, and generally greatly enjoying myself. I got a BS degree in Computer Science from Stanford and almost finished a Masters degree, but the siren song of Silicon Valley startups was too tempting and I dropped out to join Crystal River Engineering (and never looked back).

Other
Pre-historic times
I grew up in Switzerland on beautiful Lake Zurich, in the towns of Meilen and Staefa (if you happen to be over there and in need of a truck or a great meal, I’ve got a couple of cousins who will take good care of you). After high school I spent a year working as a DJ at Radio Zuerisee and doing my mandatory military service as a Motorfahrer in the Swiss army. Then I set off for California.