Management Team

Pascal Lorne
CEO, Chairman & Co-Founder

Pascal Lorne is the Chairman and CEO of Miyowa, serving in this position since he co-founded the company in 2003.  He has been a true innovator and pioneer in the Internet and wireless industries for 15 years.  Early on, Pascal saw the potential of converging wireless technology, instant communications, and emerging mobile applications to form rich user experiences, and this vision drove the creation of Miyowa’s products.

Under Pascal’s leadership, Miyowa has rapidly grown and become the industry leader in providing a seamless social network experience on mobile phones.  Miyowa's innovative products are in use by millions of worldwide users the company has blue chip partners that span the industry:  major carriers, networks providers and handset manufacturers.  Miyowa is a trusted partner to companies such as Vodafone, Orange, Telefonica, Singtel, MetroPCS, Nokia, Samsung, LG, Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, Facebook, and Twitter. 

Miyowa has earned numerous industry accolades, including being ranked in the top 20 of Deloitte Technology’s Fast 500 EMEA in 2009, receiving "Company of the Future's award from Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year® in 2008, and being awarded "Red Herring 100" in 2007.  Miyowa  also attracted million in venture capital, strengthened its management team with proven executives from throughout the technology and wireless industries, and has grown to more than 90 employees.

Prior to co-founding Miyowa, Pascal was CEO at Ismap, a technology start-up that Pascal turned around and sold to Benefon (BNF, Helsinki Stock Exchange) in 2002.  Pascal then took a 6-month break to backpack across 20 countries. It was during these travels that he listened to and elicited end-user experiences with their mobiles.  Armed with this in-depth end-user knowledge, Pascal formed his vision and co-launched Miyowa in 2003.

Pascal is an active, sought after speaker and thought leader in the mobile wireless industry.   His passion and energy as an entrepreneur extend to his hobbies that include running marathons and extreme mountain skiing. 

He holds a Diplom-Ingenior Degree from the University of Konstanz and an MBA from EM Lyon.  He currently resides in San Francisco with his wife and 3 children.

Jos De Kruijf
COO & President

Jos, an expert in entrepreneurial leadership, infrastructure development, and organizational change, uses his more than 20 years of international executive leadership to drive the development and growth of Miyowa. He brings Miyowa his International software experience gained at leading firms including Openwave Systems (NASDAQ: OPWV), where he successfully established the European operations and grew business to 250 million Euros in just three years. He also led organizations in similar capacities at Seven Networks, Nortel Networks (NYSE:NT) and Adobe Systems (NASDAQ100: ADBE). More recently, he was Managing Director European Operations of Desktop Standard. Previously, he was President and Chief Executive Officer of Contarra Systems. Prior to joining Miyowa, Jos held the position of Senior Vice President and General Manager at Seven Networks International, a specialist in mobile email.

Francois Colon
CTO & Co-Founder

François has some of the most in-depth knowledge of the convergent web and mobile phone industries coupled with a true sense of entrepreneurship. He started his career in 1996 founding two dotcom companies in the very early ages of the Internet, Ctrouve.com and Photomania. In 2001, François became the CTO of Outdoor Attitude, a leading outdoor products website. Following this he joined Ismap where as the CTO, he managed the development of the mobile geolocalization platform and supervised the marketing and pre-sales operations of the company. Post the sale to Benefon, François became the Managing Director of the newly created French business unit. He co-founded Miyowa in 2003 with Pascal Lorne where as CTO, he leads the product vision and drives innovation and delivery. François holds a Masters Degree in Algorithmic and DNA Sequencing.

Mike Kaul
CMO

Mike Kaul has 30 years of software industry experience.  His background includes large and small companies, internet and enterprise applications, software as a service, and jobs ranging from engineering to marketing, general manager, and eventually CEO of several venture-backed startups.
Most recently, he was President and CEO of diCarta, the leader in Contract Management software.  He recapped this company and re-started it by raising new funding, re-engineering the product, building a new team, and rapidly growing revenues.  He led a merger to position the product within a suite strategy and to accelerate progress towards an IPO. Prior to diCarta, Mike was Chairman of BuildPoint, CEO of HotDispatch and Vice president and General Manager of Attachmate Corporation's Business Solutions Group. Mike spent four years at Oracle Corporation, first as Vice President of U.S. marketing, then as Vice President of Advanced Technologies, and finally as Vice President and General Manager of Oracle's New Technologies division.
Earlier in his career, Mike was a U.S. Air Force a pilot. He holds a bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and a master's degree in systems management from the University of Southern California.

Grégory Ducongé
CFO & Head of Administration

Grégory, 33 years old, has been appointed Chief Financial Officer and Head of Administration in September 2009. Grégory started his career in 1999 as Cost Controller for Bakery Chef, a US Kentucky-based industrial pastry company of 1000 employee and 150M$ revenues. He joined the Valeo Group in 2000 as Senior Controller for a North American Joint Venture and quickly moved to CFO positions in France, Poland and more recently Spain as CFO of the Lighting Systems Division (320M€, 1600 employees, recognized by the "Competitiveness Award" from Principe Felipe). Grégory holds a Master of Business Administration from Texas A&M University (United States) and a Master Degree from Montpellier Business School. He also regularly shares his large cost control experience with students from french Business Schools.

Martin Nappert
Vice President Engineering

Martin Nappert has 22 years of experience in the field of Telecommunications with in depth expertise of Carrier networks, their architectures, services, and the financial fundamentals of profit making services and organisations. A visionary and an out of the box approach of innovation, as an enabler of Carrier network transformation in the age of TELCO 2.0 where Charging, Mobile Commerce, Location Based Services and Social networks meet.  Martin also has a successful track record of corporate merger and integration of companies with different cultures, methods and objectives.  Past assignments include CTO of eServGlobal, CTO of FERMA, VP of Business Development at Maple Optical Networks, Director of Cross-Product solutions at Nortel Networks.

Stephane Hareng
Vice President Customer Operations & Business Development

As VP Customer Operations & Business Development, Stéphane is responsible for Miyowa's business intelligence and positioning. He also drives Miyowa's product road map, CRM value proposition and manages operators' recurring revenue. He has over twelve years experience in marketing for entertainment companies, including seven years in the wireless industry. He started his career at La Française des Jeux, where he built a solid expertise in promotion and advertising. He then joined In-Fusio, the mobile games pioneer, in 2000 as Marketing and CRM Director. He managed In-Fusio's players community, reaching over 24 million users worldwide in 2004 and developed a deep knowledge and expertise in community management and ARPU-generator mechanisms. He also played a key role in the company's business development expansion. Stéphane has an MBA of Toulouse Superior Business School in France.

Trevor Goldberg
Vice President Strategic Partnerships

In early 2008, he joined Miyowa to manage the strategic partnerships. Trevor has over 20 years' experience in high technology businesses.  After studying Mechanical Engineering, he joined Cambridge Instruments to develop applications for semiconductor processing equipment. He spent three years in the USA establishing their North American base. He then joined Smallworld Systems, where he was responsible for Business Development activities in Southern Europe, the Middle East and Africa.  The company listed on NASDAQ in 1996 and were acquired by GE in 2000.  Trevor then co-founded Reciva, a wireless Internet Radio company, which led to a role at a Cambridge VC and technology incubator organisation. More recently, Trevor joined Bango in 2005 to develop and deploy their global channel business.