We are currently looking to fill a bunch of positions listed below. 
Chances are, you do too. Several years ago, our entrepreneur-in-chief, Ben, launched two successful businesses based on this premise: mophie, an iPod/iPhone accessories line, and kluster, an online group decision-making platform.
While running these companies, he received literally thousands of emails from people all over the world asking the same question: I have an idea for a product and think you can help me get it out of my head and into the marketplace. How do I start?
The truth is, neither mophie nor kluster were created to answer that question. They did, however, uncover the solution to bringing virtually any product idea to life. Part platform, part process, Quirky is rapidly changing the way people think about product development by using a unique method to harness the power of creativity.
Ben is the 23-year-old founder and CEO of Quirky. His entrepreneurial journey started during his senior year of high school with a second mortgage on his parent’s house and the founding of an iPod accessory company called mophie. Shortly after mophie won “Best in Show” at MacWorld 2006, Ben discovered his passion for involving people around the world in the development of new consumer products. The rapid growth of the mophie brand led to its acquisition in August of 2007, which allowed Ben to focus his efforts on bringing his idea of ‘social product development’ to the next level. After two years of research and development on the unique technology platform that became the foundation of his future work, Ben publicly launched Quirky in June of 2009. A passionate and opinionated speaker, Ben talks Quirky, products, and design to audiences around the world. His work has landed him in hundreds of newspapers (New York Times, USA Today, New York Observer), magazines (Business Week, Entrepreneur, WIRED), and TV networks (CNBC, FOX Business News, The Today Show). In 2007, Inc Magazine named Ben the top entrepreneur in the country under the age of 30. He was 20 at the time. Other than participating in the development of awesome new products, Ben’s favorite things include his niece Lily, Jay-Z, cool kicks, and black t-shirts.
Jason is the brave soul who first saw the potential in Ben's quirky vision and stepped up to help make it a reality. Go Jason! This is a man with a serious background. Words like vice president, strategic development, and accretive acquisitions pepper his CV, and with those terms come serious companies like CBS Sportsline, the NBA, and Wicks Sports Group. Jason's first entrepreneurial stint was in college, where he founded Port-O-Dog, which sold late night hot dogs to inebriated college students. From Port-O-Dog through to Quirky, Jason has had a hand in countless companies and seems to know just about everyone. Seriously, mention a name, and there's sure to be a Jason connection. He happily resides in Miami with his wife, Lisi, and three boys, Stevie, Michael, and Jonathan.
Every time Mitch steps into Quirky HQ, he greets the team with a big smile and a fierce, "How much did we sell today?" That’s why we love him. Mitch is Quirky's guardian angel -- a super-involved planner, operator, and adviser who packs years of prior start-up experience. He started a direct marketing firm at age 23, was employee number two at a consumer Internet start-up, and founded Jumpstart Automotive Media, growing it to more than 100 employees and over $50 million in annual revenue before it sold. Now he's all about Quirky, while also maintaining relationships with businesses in industries as varied as wine making, music publishing, and organic food distributing. Mitch is a Chicago native (go Bulls!), Arizona State business major, and lover of sailing, surfing, and guitar.
Lacy drops the logic bombs and spins the sweet tunes that make the Quirky machine work. You might not be reading this very blurb if not for his mad coding skills, but that’s not his only strength. He's a super-dad to two girls, Jordan and Ella; never loses at Wii tennis, which is the bane of at least some of our existences; and fully believes in his own awesomeness. He's persnickety about his wine -- Malbec, if you must know -- and spends much of his spare time lurking around the city on his bike, photographing street art. Sometimes said lurkery leads to biking-on-sidewalk citations… and then he sometimes misses court appearances for said citations… but if worst comes to worst, surely they have WiFi in jail by now, right?
Nikki runs operations, which here at Quirky means a heckuva lot: orders, inventory, shipping, sourcing, warehousing relationships... and that's just the beginning! She's our in-house go-to gal for NYC restaurant recommendations, and we recommend that you don’t mess with her ice cream addiction. She knows where to find the best cones and has been known to eat them regardless of how much snow is on the ground. Nikki went to Princeton, where she studied public policy at the Woodrow Wilson School and swam with the Varsity Swim Team. Although her Ivy League pedigree earns her constant grief from the rest of the staff, she continues to wear her college ring, along with her giant smile, wherever she goes.
Brian's the "quiet one" in the office, but don’t let that fool you. This guy brings some serious expertise and experience to the Quirky Design Staff. Brian studied painting and design at the University of New Hampshire and received his Masters degree in Industrial Design from Pratt. Before coming to Quirky, he worked for an award-winning furniture designer, an industrial design consultancy specializing in housewares, several Boston-based architecture firms, and a technology startup whose work was recently acquired by MoMA. His personal design work has also been exhibited internationally. Baller! Brian is enamored by tea, coffee, and overly-designed brewing devices -- don’t even get him started on the simplistic beauty of his French Press. He also loves running, drumming, NPR, and Brooklyn.
Tiffany gets the Quirky word out. With 15 years of agency experience representing consumer brands and international corporations and a background in investor relations, Tiffany has the perfect blend of corporate and product PR know-how needed to head up Quirky’s media communications effort. She was introduced to Quirky through her last agency gig, where she led the mophie account and was responsible for the launch of mophie’s first collaboratively-developed products. It was a super success, and she and Ben have been working together ever since. She loves the sunshine and splits her time between New York and Miami. Guilty pleasures include George Michael, tequila, and steamed pork buns. Unabashed pleasure? Her baby daughter Sasha.
C. France isn't in a band... he just looks like he's in one. As a web developer at Quirky, he comes up with all sorts of great tools that enable community members to collaborate and design awesome stuff. He is also the founder of Fashism.com, a website dedicated to helping people dress better through "constructive" criticism. Chris is our resident Pete Doherty expert and currently holds the Quirky title for Tightest Jeans in Office... yet, he doesn't live in Brooklyn. Most nights he can be found wandering the streets of SoHo getting sensible people to make terrible decisions. We hope he doesn't get a haircut, but he just might to keep us on our toes.
Jovena loves all things green: eco-friendly products, renewable energy, recycling, dollar bills… which makes her the perfect person to head up Quirky’s finance department. She brings 15 years of accounting and human resources management experience to the team, with a background that includes running her own consulting practice, facilitating business skills workshops for executives, and serving as a Principal/Director for a Seattle tech consulting firm, Atlas Accelerator. At Atlas, she developed auditable financial systems for about a dozen companies, including Citrix (now public), Coffee Equipment Company (acquired by Starbucks), and Tri-State Biodiesel. Jovena holds a BSBA degree from American University and is SPHR-certified. An outdoors gal, she spends her weekends biking the length of Manhattan and traipsing through neighborhood parks in Inwood, where she makes her home.
Jessica grew up on the Pacific island of Guam, where she caught the travel bug in the steamy tropical jungle at an early age. After graduating from Princeton with a B.A. in History, she traveled to almost 30 countries, where she wandered, wrote, ate, read, and picked up her fair share of random gigs. She’s previously worked as a freelance writer and media producer, a web marketing assistant in Buenos Aires, a high school Italian instructor in England, an AmeriCorps fellow in Guam, a glorified nanny in Paris, and a magazine intern at In Style and CosmoGirl in New York City. At Quirky, she heads up the Community team and spends her days littering copy and correspondence with exclamation points. Keys to her heart? Old movies, new ideas, adventures, color-coding, and green tea Kit-Kat.
Designer Jordan, as you may know him, hails from the Carnegie Mellon School of Design and before that, glorious New Jersey. He has worked as a product design consultant for a wide range of products (mostly in the housewares and technology realms) and has dabbled in fashion and athletic footwear design. Besides being super particular about design, he is also surprisingly particular about his daily sandwich: turkey, provolone, and LTO with oil and vinegar. Sandwich aside, Jordan considers himself a culinary explorer, much like his hero Andrew Zimmern. Also like the Bizarre Foods host, Jordan loves traveling. He's done the backpacking-through-Europe thing, and has traveled to places as cold as Iceland, as hot as Israel and as far south as Buenos Aires. Jordan also loves cheap wine, Futurama, and riding his bike.
Matt hails from the mountain hamlet of Boulder, Colorado, where he was born and raised amongst altitude and granola. Since graduating from the University of Colorado with a degree in Astronomy, he's been pretty seriously on the move, taking planes, trains, and automobiles across a fairly generous swath of the known world. He recently settled in Brooklyn, where he's been honing his skills as an e-commerce renaissance man in the leafy, stroller-packed wilds of Park Slope. Matt brings four years of online marketing experience to the Quirky sales team and previously spent a year and a half as the head of the SEM/SEO department at Market Maker Interactive. His current projects include compiling a comprehensive free concert schedule for the greater New York area, learning how to cook curry, and cultivating a fairly promising Tom Waits impersonation.
Ben is a real Vermonter, hailing from a town with only one gas pump and 1.5 paved roads. He’s very picky about his cheese and won't touch maple syrup from anywhere else. His pre-Quirky work experience is full of variety. He’s filmed everywhere from the subtropics of China to the easternmost point of Newfoundland and has gotten involved in projects as varied as rally car racing, curriculum development for law enforcement, and documentary work for non- profits. Now, he’s the guy behind the scenes, capturing photo and video for ideator interviews, educational content, and more as Quirky’s in-house media producer. His favorite pastimes are best suited for life in the mountains of Vermont; he’s a mountain biker, skier, and connoisseur of firearms.
Nathan is a California native who has spent the last four years living and working in San Francisco. A programmer by trade, he’s come to Quirky to help build up the existing platform, and to develop fun new ways for community members to participate in the Quirky experience. He has previously worked at Google and Jumpstart Auto Group, and has experience building applications with Objective C, Java, and Ruby. Nathan studied English at the University of California--Davis, which he’ll be the first to admit is a weird major for a programmer. He plays and collects guitars (he has 8), but that’s far from his only unhealthy obsession. Nathan is also nuts for baseball, cars, fancy restaurants (he once waited for three hours in a hail storm to meet Thomas Keller), and not-so-fancy bars.
Shirley is a study in contrasts. Despite having been an early morning baby, she is quite staunchly an urban night owl. English is the essence of her life, even though she did not learn the language until several months into first grade. She loves technology but continues to write the old fashioned way with pen and paper, often sporting ink-stained hands to prove it. The key to these contrasts lies in Shirley’s love of learning. She graduated from Binghamton University with a B.A. in English and dove right into the world of writing and publishing. She has worked in supervisory roles at Penguin and Random House, and has been published in countless print and online publications, including the New York Post and Woman Around Town. Shirley views the world as an endless source of inspiration and is excited to interact with the inspiring denizens of the Quirky world as a resident Community Ambassador.
Garret is here to get your products into stores around the world. He is excited to be in New York by way of California and even more excited to travel internationally and distribute Quirky products wherever he goes. He previously worked at Jumpstart Automotive Media, where he worked with leading in-market automotive publishers to maximize revenue and advertiser results through innovative products and services. On the side, he loves helping small literary publishers create remarkable marketing campaigns (shout out to http://flatmancrooked.com). Garret promises to incessantly push products that will sell well in areas that have beaches so he can continue his pursuit of surfing in as many countries as possible. He’s only kinda kidding. Garret also loves to give himself nicknames and likes it even more when they stick, so send the sobriquets his way.
Gaz has racked up more than a decade of experience launching new brands with vigorous and compelling industrial design, which has fully equipped him for his role as a senior product designer at Quirky. His past work experience includes stints as the lead designer at Prepara Housewares and Pollen Design in New York City, as well as time spent designing sportswear and footwear in London. A slightly feral kid, Gaz grew up among the sheep and cows of Malvern, England. After winning Design and Technology prizes at ages 9 and 10, he made his design bones at university party-town Newcastle-upon-Tyne before hot-footing it across the Atlantic. Now a proud resident of Jersey City, Gaz loves his wife, two cats, and tearing apart his new home on weekends (he then rebuilds, obviously).
Diana joined the Quirky team to help keep those financials in order (read: she’s one of the reasons y’all get paid). She brings more than five years of experience in business and financial management to Quirky. Although she graduated from New York University with a degree in marketing and management, she somehow found herself diving into the world of accounting –- and loves it! This girl keeps her eye on the prize and is always up for a challenge. Aside from crunching numbers and handling bills, she enjoys taking long walks around the city, reading mystery novels, and hitting the spa. Diana loves life and always has a smile on her face –- even while attacking the books. Now that's skill.
Wines, cars, racing, art, real estate, and entrepreneurship are just some of Jeff’s interests, and the list of companies that he has been influential in moving forward is just as long. Among the big names are: PhoneTag, CloudSponge, BrightSquid, Neteller, TrustMe.com, Grid.com, Jumpstart Digital Marketing, Pro Player Connect, and now Quirky. When Jeff’s not investing, hiking, or drinking wine, he stays busy as a partner at Arizona Bay venture capital fund and consulting firm. Oh, and we can’t forget to mention that Jeff personally developed the initial prototype for a sponge-counting system that makes surgeries safer, for what is now Patient Safety Technologies. We can all agree: Quirky’s lucky to have Jeff on board.
Jon is the CEO and co-owner of Brillstein Entertainment Partners, a powerful Hollywood entertainment management firm with a roster of some 200 clients, including Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston, Adam Sandler, and Ben Kaufman/Quirky. Brillstein also produces television shows and films that showcase the talents of its clients. Does that mean you’ll be seeing Ben’s name in lights in the near future? You’ll just have to wait and see. Liebman is an active member of both the Los Angeles Committee on Foreign Relations and the Pacific Council on International Policy, and he serves as a Member of the Board of Directors at the LA Sports & Entertainment Commission.
At 25, Josh Spear is one of the youngest marketing strategists in the world. He's regularly sought out for his fresh perspective and no-holds-barred style of consulting on, oh, just about everything new media. In addition to running JoshSpear.com, his internationally recognized trend-spotting blog, he's a founding partner of Undercurrent, a digital think tank focused on exploring new ways to reach young people without interrupting them. Josh has appeared in Time Magazine, the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, Flair Italy, Inc., and countless other major media outlets. He's also a member of the Global Agenda Council at The World Economic Forum and was recently nominated as a Young Global Leader. With his obvious glut of downtime, he's also signed on for some team Quirky action.
Philip is the founder and CEO of Bear Ventures, but he still finds time to hang out with the Quirky crew. This guy's a serial entrepreneur with more than 15 years of experience creating new enterprises, so when he talks, we listen. He's also a member of the Young Presidents’ Organization and participates in a number of charitable activities -- good man. Before all of this went down, Philip practiced law at a Texas-based national law firm, Andrews and Kurth, where he specialized in corporate finance and mergers and acquisitions. He holds a B.S. in Biology and Biomedicine from Oklahoma State University, a J.D. with Honors from the University of Oklahoma, and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. Yeah, top that.
Charlie is the president and CEO of Charlie Walk Entertainment Media, a multimedia entertainment company dedicated to developing projects for television, music and online platforms. Under his leadership, CWE Media recently partnered exclusively with Endemol USA, a leading producer of television programming. Under this agreement, Charlie will executive produce and develop new scripted and unscripted television shows. Hmm… wonder if he’d be interested in a pilot about a group of quirky tech start-up staffers? Before starting CWE Media, Charlie was the president of Epic Records, where after-work happy hours included folks like Jennifer Lopez, Shakira, Ozzy Osbourne (throw up the devil horns!), and George Michael. We’re happy to be a part of this elite group.
Belsky has committed his professional life to organizing the creative world. He is the founder and CEO of Behance, which develops products and services for this purpose, and he is the author of Making Ideas Happen, which will be published by Penguin Books in April 2010. Behance's first product, the Behance Network, has become the leading online platform for creative professionals, and Behance's Action Method has replaced traditional project management practices in the creative world. Belsky and Behance have also developed the Action Method product line, a series of organizational products sold around the world. Scott is featured as a small business expert on the American Express Open Forum and oversees Behance's Think Tank and annual conference, The 99%, which features interviews and tips on productivity and execution in the creative world. He attended Cornell University and received his MBA from Harvard Business School.
In high school, while other students were spending their free time playing sports and joining clubs, Andre spent every spare moment analyzing companies and trading financial markets. So it's no surprise that he continues to trade and raise assets for privately held companies today -- and he's quite talented at it, we might add. Andre graduated from the Long Island University, C.W. Post campus, with a B.S. in International Business, and he currently holds Series 7, 24, and 63 licenses. He occasionally contributes to WPIX Channel 11 in New York and has appeared on FOX Channel 5 as well. In January 2009, Andre joined Charles Vista, LLC, in an effort to merge his greatest career passions: business development and financial markets.
