We are currently looking to fill a bunch of positions listed below. 
Chances are, you do, too. Our 23-year-old entrepreneur-in-chief, Ben, has launched two successful companies based on this premise, with write-ups in Reader's Digest, Businessweek, Entrepreneur, and other mainstream media - including more than one primetime appearance on CNBC.
Among other things, mophie and kluster made him something of a posterboy for aspiring inventors. Over the past few years, he's received literally thousands of emails from people all around the world looking for the same answer: I have this idea for a product and saw your article/tv show/website and want your help getting 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 directly. They did, however, uncover the solution to bringing virtually any product idea to life and putting it into the hands of consumers. Part process, part platform...we're pretty sure quirky will change the way people think about product development forever.
After starting mophie at the tender age of 18 and taking home a “Best of Show” at MacWorld in 2006, Ben started brainstorming ways to engage his customers in the product design and development process. In August of 2007, Ben sold mophie to mStation so he could focus on expanding the collaborative process to areas outside of iPod accessories. After spending two years building a team and extensively researching, building, and testing technology platforms, Ben was finally ready to open the floodgates and get quirky going. Ben is happy to lead the quirky team through the trials and tribulations of social product development, in an effort to assure that all ideas and inventors have the ability to reach their full potential.
Jason Port is the brave soul who first saw 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, business development, and accretive acquisitions pepper his CV, and with those terms come serious companies like the NBA, CBS Sportsline, and Wicks Sports Group. Jason's first entrepreneurial stint was in college, where he founded Port-O-Dog, the Hot Dog King, 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 possesses an extensive contact network. 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 the quirky office, he greets us with a big smile and a fierce, "What did we sell today?" -- and that's why we love him. Mitch is quirky's guardian angel -- a super-involved planner, operator, and adviser, who brings years of prior start-up experience, and always a ton of snacks, to the quirky team. Before his dive into quirktown, Mitch 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 here to stay at quirky, while maintaining partnerships in businesses 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.
"YEAH Mike Lacy!" is Ben's battle cry. Which is fair enough, afterall, Lacy drops the logic bombs and spins the sweet tunes that make the quirky work. You might not be reading this very blurb if not for his mad coding skills, but it's not his only superhero strength. He's reproductively gifted (2 girls ... quick shout-outs to 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 4pm wine - Malbec, if you must know - and spends much of his spare time lurking around NYC on his bike, photographing graffiti (if you can't do it, shoot it...or so they say). Though sometimes said lurkery leads to biking-on-sidewalk-type citations. And then he sometimes misses court appearances for said citations. (Say, like today...but worst comes to worst, sure they must have wifi in jails by now, right?)
Nikki runs Quirky's operations. Operations here at quirky means a whole lot. Things like inventory, orders, shipping, sourcing, and warehousing relationships are just in a day's work. She's rarely seen not rockin' a hoodie (but the same could really be said for the whole team) . Oh and we wouldn't recommend messing with her on NYC restaurant recommendations or ice cream discussions... 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 graduated from University Of Phoenix Online in 2007. Just kidding, she actually went to Princeton and was a member of Princeton's Varsity Swim Team. She still wears her College ring, and her giant smile wherever she goes.
Even though he's gone from two of the most despised social classes of the rest of the quirky team (he's gone from Hippie to Hipster (New Hampshire --> Brooklyn))... we are super happy to have scooped Brian Kerr out from the quirky community. He studied painting and design at UNH and received his masters in Industrial Design from Pratt. Brian is enamored by folding bicycles, tea, coffee, and all of their overly designed brewing paraphernalia. BK from BK spends his days and nights knee deep in styrofoam prototypes-- and often sprays the shavings everywhere when he taps violently on the table because he misses his snare drum. This episode of meet the team brought to you by Designers like Brian and viewers like you... (read: Brian loves NPR)
Tiffany entered the scene by scoring a spot for Ben on CNBC Power lunch before having even met ben, or watching power lunch (true story). The goodwill of a single national broadcast landed her a full time gig at Quirky. It's that easy. Tiffany has no real "contacts" in the media world, no rag subscriptions, nor a TV which makes her the perfect candidate to head up our communications team. She does bring a forgiving manner, an awesome daughter (Sasha), and upwards of fifteen pieces of flare at all times....guilty pleasures include George Michael, tequila, and steamed pork buns.
He's not in a band, he just looks like he is. He's actually one of our favorite web developers, making all sorts of great tools to enable quirky members to collaborate / design awesome stuff. With that, chris is our resident Pete Doherty expert and current holder of the Quirky title for tightest jeans in the 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.
Janet went to MIT...and well, I guess you can say that's a good school. As our resident solidworkser/engineer, Janet has shown the quirks that this is most certainly true. Janet is a lover of building and constructing all types of things. In fact, her tool collection is only dwarfed by her clothing collection and of course the amount of songs she can sing. She's been known to belt out a few tunes during office hours (and she has an impressive voice, we might add!). Janet claims the best NY deli is in Jersey (WHAAA?!) but, who can blame her, really? She is proud of her Jersey girl heritage and will admit to always feeling at home in a mall - oh and of course at her current residence in Brooklyn, NY.
Checks, numbers, community payouts, filing cabinets, paperclips, envelopes....these are all things Robert Presar. Thats right he's our number crunching controller, and he helps make sure that every one of our quirky influencers gets paid the amount they deserve - so we bet you all like Robert. Well, we do too..he reminds us that he is "not a dork" and never fails to keep us entertained and full with excitement and conversation...even if it means making fun of a lunch time waiter directly to their face. Robert is NYC born and raised, a proud graduate of NYU, and a passionate start-up guy. He is a lover of lots of things including his 2 cats and finding special deals at Macy's on kick ass new sneaks.
Jess was born in San Francisco and raised on the Pacific island of Guam, where she caught the travel bug in the steamy tropical jungle. Subsequently, she made a mission of delaying the real world, one passport stamp at a time, by spending the year and a half after college graduation hiking on glaciers in Patagonia, teaching Italian at Oxford, exploring the pyramids in Egypt, covering Fashion Weeks in Paris and Milan, practicing Ashtanga yoga in Goa, scuba diving in Vietnam, and Tarzan-swinging (actually) through the Amazon rain forest in Ecuador, among other adventures. Now, Jess has finally found a home that rivals the excitement of non-stop travel -- Manhattan's Lower East Side. As our resident Community Ambassador, her job is to make you, quirky's rock star user community, happy. Hit her up anytime, anywhere at jess@quirky.com.
Gui is a technologist who likes to build good things. Before joining the Quirky team, he built the virology database at Princeton University, a secure online solution for a popular liquor shop, and a sales management platform for eBay, but he insists that none of these experiences was as cool as the time he worked for P. Diddy. Gui graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and has never been to Asia, the Middle East, or Antarctica -- yet! He speaks three spoken and innumerable programming languages. He loves his wife, all his nieces and nephews, and cycling. He thinks the best ideas are the quirky ones.
Wines, cars, racing, art, real estate and entrepreneurship: these are just some of Jeff’s interests. And well, the list of companies that he has been influential in moving forward is just as long: trustme.com, phonetag, cloudsponge, broker payment systems, grid.com, brightsquid, proplayerconnect.com, jumpstart digital marketing, neteller, and quirky fall among his reputable list. But when Jeff’s not drinking wine, hiking or investing, he keeps busy as a partner at Arizona Bay’s consulting firm and venture fund. Oh and we can’t forget to mention that Jeff personally developed the initial prototype for a sponge counting system for what is now Patient Safety Technologies which is used to make surgeries safer. I think we can all agree that quirky is lucky to have Jeff on board.
Jon is the CEO and co-owner of Brillstein Entertainment Partners. This agency is a powerful Hollywood management firm with a roster of some 200 clients, including Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston, Adam Sandler, and Ben Kaufman/quirky (lol) . Brillstein also produces TV shows and films that showcase the talents of its clients.
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, say...basically everything new media. In addition to 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, Flair Italy, Chicago Tribune, Inc., and many other major media outlets. He's also a member of the Global Agenda Council at The World Economic Forum, and was recently nominated a Young Global Leader. And with his obvious glut of downtime, he signed up for some team quirky action, too...
Philip Erdoes is founder and CEO of Bear Ventures...yet he still chooses to hang out and advise the quirky crew. Makes sense though, the guy's a serial entrepreneur with over 15 years experience in creating new enterprises...so when he talks, we listen. He's also a member of the Young President's Organization (YPO) and is engaged in a number of charitable activities and foundations (good man). Before all of this went down, Philip practiced law at Texas-based national law firm, Andrews and Kurth, where he specialized in corporate finance/M&A. He holds a BS in Biology/Bio-medicine from Oklahoma State University, a JD with Honors from the University of Oklahoma, College Of Law, and an MBA from Harvard University, Graduate School of Business. Yeah, top that.
Charlie Walk is currently the President and CEO of CWE Media, a multimedia entertainment company developing projects for TV, music and online platforms. Just before that, Charlie was the President of Epic Records, and you know what that means...indeed, after-work happy hours involved folks like Jennifer Lopez, Shakira, Ozzy Osbourne [our devil horns are thrown up thusly], Good Charlotte, George Michael, The Fray, Natasha Bedingfield, Sean Kingston and Sara Bareilles. But more about CWE - under Charlie's leadership, they've exclusively partnered with Endemol USA, a leading producer of television programming, where he'll executive produce and develop new scripted and unscripted television shows.You think he'd be into one about a group of quirky staffers....?
Belsky has committed his professional life to help organize the creative world. Scott is the founder and CEO of Behance, a company that develops products and services to organize the creative world. He also the author of Making Ideas Happen (Portfolio Imprint, Penguin Books, April, 2010). Behance's first product, the Behance Network, has become the leading online platform for creative professionals. In addition, Behance's Action Method an action management system has replaced traditional project management practices throughout the creative world. Belsky and Behance have also developed the Action Method product line - a series of organizational products that are sold around the world. Scott is featured as a small business expert on American Express' Open Forum and oversees Behance's Think Tank and annual conference, The 99%, featuring interviews and tips on productivity and execution in the creative world. Scott attended Cornell University as an undergraduate and received his MBA from Harvard Busines 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.
