Founder and CEO at NotchUp, Inc.
San Francisco Bay Area
- Current
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- Founder and CEO at NotchUp
- Advisor at ZeeSource
- Past
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- VP Engineering at Peerflix
- VP of Products and Services at OnStation Corporation
- VP Engineering at AltaVista
- VP Engineering at Zip2
- Engineering Director at Silicon Graphics
- Engineering Manager at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories
- Education
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- Syracuse University
- Stanford University
- Connections
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244
connections
- Industry
- Internet
- Websites
Jim Ambras’s Summary
Held executive product development and technology positions at a range of startups as well as AltaVista, SGI and HP. Responsible for management, product strategy, product management, engineering and operations for leading Silicon Valley companies.
Jim Ambras’s Experience
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Founder and CEO
NotchUp
(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Internet industry)
February 2007 — Present (2 years 6 months)
Founder and CEO of NotchUp. NotchUp is a new Internet-based recruiting service that connects hiring companies with in-demand professionals who are not actively seeking new employment, but open to hearing about career advancement opportunties. Forbes recently published a great overview on NotchUp:
http://www.forbes.com/entrepreneurs/forbes/2008/0929/062.html
Membership is by application or invitation only. Professionals can go to http://www.notchup.com and apply to join. Hiring managers and staffing professionals can sign up for a corporate account by going to http://www.notchup.com/corporate. -
Advisor
ZeeSource
(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Internet industry)
January 2004 — Present (5 years 7 months)
Advisor to ZeeSource, a technology startup developing a suite of Web services for consumers as well as businesses.
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VP Engineering
Peerflix
(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Internet industry)
March 2006 — January 2007 (11 months)
Peerflix provided a P2P trading platform for digital media, initially DVDs. Responsible for recruiting a new engineering team and replacing the initial Peerflix product offering with a new web site based upon a new technology platform.
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VP of Products and Services
OnStation Corporation
(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Computer Software industry)
2002 — 2004 (2 years)
Initially hired as the VP of Engineering to help restart the former Carstation after investors recapitalized the company. Built engineering, product management, customer implementation and support teams. Overhauled the existing company product strategy that led to a successful acquisition by the Cobalt Group.
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VP Engineering
AltaVista
(Public Company; 201-500 employees; CPQ; Computer Software industry)
April 1999 — October 2000 (1 year 7 months)
AltaVista acquired Zip2, the startup where I was the VP of Engineering. Expanded AltaVista from a search engine to a fully personalized portal. Created AltaVista's European R&D operation and launched country-specific AltaVista sites through Europe.
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VP Engineering
Zip2
(Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Computer Software industry)
April 1996 — April 1999 (3 years 1 month)
Joined Zip2 after series A funding as VP of Engineering. Recruited a world class engineering team and developed enterprise CMS software delivered as a Web-based service. Target customers were media companies, primarily newspapers. Signed over 200 of the largest media companies in North America and Europe within three years.
Compaq/AltaVista acquired Zip2 for $307M in cash in 1999, the largest cash acquisition of any Internet startup at that point in time. -
Engineering Director
Silicon Graphics
(Public Company; 1001-5000 employees; SGI; Computer Hardware industry)
April 1990 — April 1996 (6 years 1 month)
Recruited the initial team and led the development of the award winning CaseVision family of software development products for the SGI platform.
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Engineering Manager
Hewlett-Packard Laboratories
(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; HPQ; Computer Software industry)
January 1984 — April 1990 (6 years 4 months)
Responsible for applied research in the area of software engineering and expert systems technology.
Jim Ambras’s Education
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Syracuse University
B.S. , Computer Science , 1974 — 1978
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Stanford University
Graduate Study , Computer Science
Did graduate studies in Computer Science at Stanford while working at HP.
Additional Information
Jim Ambras’s Websites:
Jim Ambras’s Interests:
Skiing, photography, video production.
