Management

Rodrigo Sales, Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer

Rodrigo Sales is responsible for taking Vendio from a concept to a profitable enterprise. He is widely regarded as one of the leading authorities on online marketplaces and eCommerce. Rodrigo has been featured and quoted in several prominent publications including The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and Forbes. Entrepreneur Magazine named Vendio one of the "Hottest Businesses in 2003". 
Rodrigo's professional background is in strategic analysis and supplier management with investment bank Credit Suisse First Boston (CSFB) Technology Group and Quantum Corporation, a leading provider of data protection and network storage systems. As a Research Associate at CSFB, Rodrigo prepared comprehensive reports on key players in the telecom equipment segment. As a Commodity Manager at Quantum, Rodrigo performed strategic analysis of the hard disk market, and managed an international portfolio of suppliers that provided Quantum with over $800 million 
worth of material each year.

Rodrigo received his BBA from the University of San Diego and earned his MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.



Mike Effle, EVP, Sales Management

Mike Effle joined Vendio in 1999 as one of the first 10 employees. He initially directed business development and strategy efforts, and quickly gained more responsibility over his six years at Vendio. Mike is now responsible for Vendio's Sales Management business, overseeing product development, customer support, sales, and marketing. 

Prior to Vendio, Mike spent five years serving his country as an officer in the United States Air Force, where he was responsible for developing and producing classified defensive systems for the F-16 that still defends our pilots today. He also held various roles at MCI, Boston Consulting Group, and Raytheon.

Mike graduated Summa Cum Laude from Georgetown University with a BS in Finance and Management and a minor in Government. He also has an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business.



Phil Steffora, Vice President, Technical Operations

Phil Steffora joined Vendio in 2006 and brings over 20 years of information technology and management experience that ensures a scalable, robust and reliable architecture for Vendio's customers. As an expert in scaling emerging technology from incubation through enterprise growth, Phil has held key operations positions with many global technology companies including Digital Equipment Corporation, AltaVista, Metromedia Fiber Network, and America Online. He was co-founder of MIBH Inc., which was later acquired by Metromedia Fiber Network. 

Most recently, Phil served as CIO and VP of technical operations for Andale before joining Vendio. Throughout his career, Phil has proven his ability to design, deploy and scale mission-critical network operations to support both the enterprise and the consumer. His teams have been recognized with ISO-9001 certifications for operational excellence. 



Timothy Vago, Director of Finance

Timothy Vago joined Vendio as its Controller in 2005 and now serves as Director of Finance, in charge of the company's financial management. Prior to joining Vendio, Tim led the finance team as Controller at Veltec Sports, a distributor of premium bicycle components and accessories, and his previous position was Director of Finance for Automated Power Exchange (APX), a privately held technology company engaged in providing online scheduling and settlement services to businesses in the energy industry. Tim also held positions at Edison Mission Energy and The Sumitomo Bank, Ltd. following his postgraduate studies. 

Tim is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) holder, earned his Bachelor of Sciences in Economics with honors from San Jose State University, and completed his MBA from Thunderbird, The Garvin School of International Management. 



George Brad, General Manager, Vendio Romania, Director of Product Development

George Brad joined Vendio in 2000 as one of the first employees of Vendio Romania. In his six years with Vendio, he has been instrumental in helping to develop the software behind Vendio's award-winning Sales Management products and services, rising quickly from developer to technical lead, manager, general manager and director. George is now responsible for leading the Vendio Romania team as it grows and expands its capabilities as a world-class development organization. 

George received his Masters and BS in Computer Science from "Politehnica", University of Bucharest, Romania, whose prominent engineering alumni have helped to build some of the most well-regarded commercial and scientific organizations in the world. 



Ravi Garikipati. Senior Vice President, Managing Director India Operations

Ravi Garikipati has been with Vendio’s Andale service since mid-2000 and has served as Vice President & General Manager of Andale's India operations. Ravi's prior responsibilities have included managing the growth and development of Andale's India operations in addition to his position as Head of Engineering at Andale. His duties included oversight of Andale's product development, quality assurance and release activities for its e-commerce products and services. Ravi has over 18 years experience in building teams to deliver high quality products and services in database, middleware and enterprise application areas.

Prior to Vendio, Ravi was an Architect at Arzoo, where he lead architecture design and development of a large P2P commerce platform. Ravi also held various senior engineering management positions at Oracle, IBM and Covansys, where he gained extensive experience in building scalable enterprise application architectures and services. During his time at Oracle, he was part of Oracle Global Alliances, responsible for building and managing a highly specialized technical service practice to evangelize Oracle Technology adoption amongst global SIs and ISVs.

Ravi received Masters degrees in Software Engineering and in Management from Birla Institute of Technology and Science in Pilani, India