About Nanigans
Founded by veteran entrepreneurs with specialties in performance and social marketing, Nanigans was formed to help advertisers maximize the effectiveness of Facebook advertising. Nanigans is the only real-time bidding platform for the Facebook ads marketplace that optimizes for downstream actions and lifetime customervalue. Nanigans’ Ad Engine enables marketers to automate the labor-intensive process of delivering social ads at scale and overcome the challenges involved in optimizing for revenue generating customers and return on ad spend.
One of the first Official Facebook Ads API Partners, Nanigans drives tens of billions of social ad impressions each month for over 200 companies including Bonobos, CrowdStar, EA, Gilt Groupe, PopCap Games, RockYou and T-Mobile.
Management Team
Ric Calvillo, CEO
Ric Calvillo is Nanigan's CEO. Ric has over 20 years of startup experience, having founded and led three technology companies. Prior to co-founding Nanigans, Ric was Founder & CEO of Incipient, Inc., a venture-backed data storage infrastructure software company. Prior to Incipient, Ric founded and led Conley Corporation, which was acquired by EMC Corporation in 1998. Conley Corp. developed enterprise data storage software including the award-winning EMC PowerPath. Ric spent three years at EMC Corporation as General Manager of the EMC Cambridge Software Center. Ric holds a B.A. in economics from the University of Pennsylvania.
Claude Denton, CTO
Claude Denton leads the technology team at Nanigans. Prior to Nanigans, Claude was Co-Founder and CTO of CourseAdvisor, a data-driven, online lead generator serving the education industry. CourseAdvisor was acquired by The Washington Post Company in 2008 and was subsequently renamed Avenue100. Claude continued as CTO of Avenue100 until joining Nanigans in 2010. Previously, Claude led product development for Network Elements, a provider of access network solutions for optical networks. At Network Elements, Claude was responsible for several industry firsts, including the first 10 Gb/s multi-protocol IC and module and the first fully integrated single-mode optical transceiver for 10 Gb/s. Prior to Network Elements, Claude developed pioneering high-definition video subsystems for Intergraph Corporation. Claude holds 13 patents and four applications in the areas of communications and video processing architecture. Claude has BS and MS degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT.
David C. Parkes, Advisor
David C. Parkes is Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University and a global authority on auction theory. Dr. Parkes received his Ph.D. degree in Computer and Information Science from the University of Pennsylvania in 2001, and an M.Eng. (first class) in Engineering and Computing Science from Oxford University in 1995. At Harvard, Dr. Parkes founded the Economics and Computer Science research group, and teaches classes in artificial intelligence, machine learning, optimization, and topics at the intersection between computer science and economics. Dr. Parkes serves as Editor of Games and Economic Behavior, the Chair of the ACM SIG on Electronic commerce, and on the boards of the Journal of Autonomous Agents and Multi-agent Systems, the ACM Transactions on Economics and Computation, and the INFORMS Journal of Computing. Previously, Dr. Parkes served on the editorial board of the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research.
Investors
Avalon Ventures
Avalon Ventures is a San Diego, Calif. and Cambridge, Mass. based venture capital firm focusing on seed and early stage companies in life sciences and information technology. Its managing directors are former entrepreneurs driven by passionate people pursuing disruptive ideas in ever-changing market environments.
Managing Director Rich Levandov, early lead investor in social gaming company Zynga and behavioral ad targeting company Tacoda (sold to AOL in 2007), sits on Nanigans' Board. Rich has over 25 years of experience as an entrepreneur, operator, angel investor and venture capitalist involving a variety of cutting-edge, high growth, early-stage technology companies. It was after he co-founded Phoenix Technologies (PTEC), a company that helped launch the PC revolution, and served as an early Vice President at America Online, Inc. that he started his venture capital career.
