Rypple Management Team

Daniel Debow

Co-CEO, Co-Founder

Daniel is co-founder and co-CEO of Rypple, where he drives marketing, engineering and product development initiatives. Before Rypple, Daniel co-founded Workbrain, a workforce management software company that listed Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy, Citigroup, and British Airways amongst its more than 250 global clients. Daniel led Workbrain’s sale to Infor for $227m in 2007. Daniel is a regular contributor to Fortune.com and the Huffington Post, and has been widely quoted in the Financial Times, the Economist and Bloomberg Businessweek. He holds a JD/MBA from the University of Toronto and an LLM in Law, Science and Technology from Stanford University. He lives in Toronto with his wife and children.

David Stein

Co-CEO, Co-Founder

David is co-founder and co-CEO of Rypple, where he focuses on business development, sales and customer success. Before co-founding Rypple, David was a co-founder of Workbrain, an enterprise software company, where he served as an Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer. Overseeing business development, sales, and marketing, David established key partnerships with Accenture, IBM, and Fidelity. He led Workbrain's expansion into America, UK, and Australia. David is a globally recognized HCM strategist and has been a featured speaker at many industry events in the retail, payroll, and HCM spaces. He is active in the HR community and serves on the advisory board of HR.com’s Virtual Institute on Employee Communication. He holds his BSc in Computer Science from McGill University. He lives in Toronto with his wife and two young sons.

George Babu

VP, Finance and Operations, Co-Founder

George is responsible for finance and operations at Rypple. Prior to joining Rypple, George spent the last several years working on a variety of technology and intellectual property-related projects with both Research in Motion (RIM) and Bereskin & Parr, one of Canada's leading IP law firms. George holds B.A.Sc degree in Electrical Engineering and a JD/MBA degrees, both from the University of Toronto.

Bohdan Zabawskyj

CTO

Bohdan is the Chief Technology Officer at Rypple where he has overall responsibility for the engineering, quality assurance, support and IT teams. Bohdan has over 20 years of experience in leading engineering/research, strategic planning, and product/project management initiatives. He holds a BS from the University of Toronto, a MS in Engineering from McGill University, and an MBA from Athabasca University. Previously, Bohdan was the CTO at Redknee where he contributed to Redknee's growth from a start-up to a publicly traded and profitable entity. He is also a named inventor in more than 25 patents and pending patent applications world-wide and an advisor to a number of mobile/media companies in the Toronto and Waterloo region including Kik Interactive, Fixmo, iBundle.net, and realSociable.

Maksim Ovsyannikov

VP of Product Management

Maksim is widely recognized as a thought leader and as an innovative strategist in the area of Human Capital Management. He is a frequent speaker and has published numerous articles related to next generation thinking in the areas of People Management, Human Capital Management, Social Networking and Collaboration. Maksim holds a BA in Economics from Stanford University, a MS in Engineering Management from Santa Clara University and an MBA from the Leavy School of Business at Santa Clara University. As an innovative product evangelist in the software industry, Maksim has a passion for making social software business relevant, and an aspiration for beautifully simple SaaS products. His past roles included product management and product strategy positions at Zendesk, IBM, ADP and Saba.

Marcus Gosling

VP of User Experience

Marcus is focused on making Rypple simple, valuable and easy to use. Prior to joining Rypple, he co-founded IMVU, a vibrant 3D avatar social network, and worked for four years as a design consultant at IDEO. Marcus holds a masters degree in computer related design from the Royal College of Art, London. Originally from Ireland, Marcus enjoys building and riding bicycles, and lives in the foggy redwoods above Palo Alto with his family and 2 felines.

Jesse Goldman

VP of Customer Success

Jesse is responsible for customer success at Rypple. Jesse was one of the early team members at Endeca where he contributed to its growth in a variety of ways, including as co-founder of the EMEA operation and head of retail industry marketing. Jesse plays piano, is an aspiring golfer, and used to play lots of baseball, including for the Canadian Junior champions. Jesse holds a BA from Harvard.

Steve DeBacco

EVP of Global Business Development

Steve heads up business development and strategic partnerships for Rypple. Prior to joining Rypple, Steve served in key executive roles at several successful technology start-ups including Workbrain and Ariba. Steve is a graduate of Northwestern University and Washington University. He lives in Atlanta with his wife and daughter where he enjoys golfing, running and playing tennis.

David Priemer

VP of Sales

David heads up the sales team at Rypple. Previously David served as the Director of Solutions Consulting at Workbrain and as a Sales and Services Director at Varicent Software. David holds a B.Sc in Chemistry and Atmospheric Science from York University and a MS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Toronto. He is an avid ice hockey player, amateur chef, and lives in Toronto with his wife and children.

Helen Yu Kuo

VP of Marketing

Helen leads all marketing efforts including launches, product messaging and the communications strategy at Rypple. She has more than a decade of high-growth technology marketing experience including roles at Symantec and Xilinx. Prior to joining Rypple, Helen drove product marketing at Zendesk and managed IT security and compliance marketing at Vontu, which was acquired by Symantec in 2007. Helen earned both her BS and MS in Electrical Engineering at University of California, Los Angeles. In her spare time, Helen enjoys traveling with her husband, exploring new restaurants with friends and choosing outfits for her fashion blog.