About Plinky

• Who we are

• Plinky is made by Thing Labs, a small internet startup founded in May 2008 (originally called Plinky, Inc.) We work hard and laugh a lot. We have a modest but swanky office in beautiful San Francisco, Calif. We aim to make Plinky a fun, useful service that helps you create and share interesting content.

• Staff

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  Jason Shellen

  CEO & Founder

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  Zachary Taylor

  Engineering Manager

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  Grant Shellen

  Community Manager

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  Corinna Psomadakis

  Utility Player

• Investors

• Mike Hirshland, Polaris Venture Partners
• Mike Hirshland is a general partner with Polaris, where he focuses on information technology, internet, and digital media. Before becoming a technology investor, Hirshland served as counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, practiced law, and clerked for Justice Anthony Kennedy at the U.S. Supreme Court and The Hon. J. Michael Luttig on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.
• Jeff Clavier, SoftTech VC
• Based in Palo Alto, California, Jean-Francois “Jeff” Clavier is the founder and managing partner of SoftTech VC, one of the most active seed stage investors in Web 2.0 startups. Since 2004, Clavier has invested in more than 40 consumer Internet companies in areas like social media, communities, search, gaming or consumer infrastructure, almost exclusively in Silicon Valley. In 2007, Clavier was recognized as one of the 13 “Web 2.0 King Makers” by Business 2.0 magazine, and in 2008, BusinessWeek magazine named him one of "The 25 Most Influential People on the Web."
• Michael Jones
• A serial Internet entrepreneur, Michael Jones has founded and sold numerous businesses, including PBJ Digital, Userplane (sold to AOL) and Investing.com. He is currently CEO of Tsavo Media, sits on several boards and serves as a adviser to private startups. Michael also continues to serve AOL as a strategic advisor to Userplane.

• Advisers

• Vanessa Fox
• Vanessa Fox is a noted expert in understanding customer acquisition from organic search and the founder of ninebyblue.com. Vanessa provides search-friendly design patterns for developers at janeandrobot.com. She's also an entrepreneur-in-residence with Ignition Partners and Features Editor at Search Engine Land. She previously created Google's Webmaster Central, which provides tools and community to help website owners improve their sites to gain more customers from search. She was recently named one of Seattle's 2008 top 25 innovators and entrepreneurs.
• Maggie Mason
• Margaret Mason is author of No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog (a major source of inspiration for Plinky). She publishes the shopping blogs Mighty Junior and Mighty Goods, which was one of Time Magazine’s Top 50 Cool Sites of the Year. Her personal site Mighty Girl has been awesome since 2000. Mason lives in San Francisco with her husband and son.
• Biz Stone
• Biz Stone is co-founder of Twitter, Inc and also helped make Xanga, Blogger, Odeo, and Obvious. Stone is the author of Blogging: Genius Strategies for Instant Web Content and Who Let The Blogs Out? A Hyperconnected Peek At The World of Weblogs. He Twitters, naturally.