John Wehr

As CTO I scaled HiiDef from a bootstrapped startup into a thriving company. During my time with HiiDef, Flavors.me grew from zero to one million active users, with 142% growth in 2011. Goodsie.com launched in April of 2011 and hosted thousands of storefronts a year later. It sustained a 20% month over month growth in paid subscribers, and was one of Business Insider's top startups of 2011. While always an active code contributor, much of my time was spent working small groups through challenges, identifying bottlenecks, and setting milestones. Projects included growth drivers like internal funnel tracking, A/B testing frameworks, and social analytics tools. I designed core technologies, managed day-to-day development, led company meetings, and established a unique hiring process for remote workers that brings candidates to real world problems. I introduced systems redundancy, emphasized unit tests and static analysis, accelerated deployments, and released technologies into the public domain. In late 2010 I led a complete rebuild of the Goodsie codebase. Nearly all components of the site were redesigned. The new version launched in April 2011 as an unmatched e-commerce experience, built in a matter of months. A year later I helped build a second version of Flavors.me, redefining the crowded space. I was responsible for the core technology behind innovative new features like real time stream processing, extracting non-linear updates from dozens of third-party services. I also developed tools to build a composite social graph spanning these same services, uniting users of disparate services on the Flavors.me platform.

Before becoming CTO of HiiDef, I worked as a consultant for the company. I built the lauded front end experience and high performance spidering back end infrastructure using proven Python and Javascript technologies. Dozens of third party APIs were integrated, updating content in real time for hundreds of thousands of enthusiastic users. Flavors.me has experienced sustained growth of its paid subscriber base, spawned countless imitators and remains a flagshop of the HiiDef portfolio.

Advised the company on general technology issues. * Helped set up a development environment and automated deployment mechanisms * Deployed multi-tiered file and database backups * Reviewed legacy application code * Guided static website design and development * Advised on SEO strategy

Developed a system to generate a customized travel guide in seconds. Guides are hundreds of pages long and incorporate dozens of data sources parsed in real-time. Decentralized and hosted on Amazon's Web Service stack, the cluster of machines is capable of producing tens of thousands of books per day at low cost. * Twisted Python based web services that interface with dozens of data sources * Highly redundant, AWS based cluster * Parsing mechanisms for a broad variety of user-generated content * Translation between several output formats

Who's Going helps you meet new people through events and activities. * Seamlessly integrated geocoding and geolocation localize interaction * Cutting edge social software features enable new methods of communication * Analytical tools help consistently refine the site and push viral expansion * Integration with a number of third party APIs help users post rich content * Development and design best practices ensure a consistent, high-quality experience

Widely heralded web identity management tool allows user to "tag" each other by email address. Combined with geolocation data, Tagalag becomes a literal map of meta-information about people.

Advised the company on general technology issues and helped coordinate an international team of developers. * Helped set up a development environment and automated deployment mechanisms * Recommended designers and assisted in design reviews * Evaluated candidates as they joined the development team Implemented broad Memcached based caching of SOAP web services * Debugged and improved established PHP codebase

Developed and marketed a ZIP Code boundary database and related software for use with mapping applications.

Boredat is an anonymous real-time communication application targeted at students. Popular at dozens of universities and content rich with millions of posts. Developed the entire technology stack, including: * Innovative low-latency comet architecture * Automated controls over scalable Amazon EC2 hosting * Spam and abuse prevention tools * Analytical tools to reveal usage patterns

Consulting the prominent political advertising group on e-commerce initiatives.

Periodically assist the rapidly expanding casual gaming advertising network with a variety of technological and marketing concerns.

Authored a Flash based iPod emulator for Talking Panda's iLingo translation products. Assisted with editing marketing materials. Maintained the company's online presence. Worked with Zondervan to port religious materials onto the iPod platform.

Assisted with the leading internet meme-tracker's information architecture and design.

Worked with the team at Bobby McFerrin, Inc to shift their Macromedia Flash based site to an open, community driven portal.

Developed and maintained a highly customized, Movable Type based CMS for Contactless News, CR80 News, RFID News and Secure ID News, each a leading publication in the automatic identification industry. Developed advertising inventory management systems, user management systems, and paid subscription services. Oversaw a massive architecture overhaul that sparked a substantial growth in traffic, with over 250,000 unique visitors in January of 2006.

Founded the leading RFID publication with more than 85,000 unique visitors in December of 2005. RFID News is an established thought-leader in the expanding and controversial industry. Affiliated with Avisian, Inc in March of 2004.

Worked with Blue River Interactive Group to develop Calchamber.com content.

Worked with Blue River Interactive Group to develop Apple's internal "Information Systems and Technology" website.

Conceptualized and developed a PEAR and Smarty based PHP based advertising and billing system for a leading RSS and weblog advertising system.

Worked with Blue River Interactive Group to develop a PEAR and Smarty based PHP based real estate listing system linking prospective leads with agents. The system includes Authorize.net billing and authorization functionality.

Developed and maintained the Spring, Fall and Winter 2003 "New York Stories" dkny.com websites as well as the Spring and Fall 2003 donnakaran.com websites. Built a PHP/MySQL based sweepstakes management system and produced all Flash content.

Developed online applications to assist in the manual and automated classification of weblogs. Created an aggregator that tracks linking patterns in political weblog communities.

Developed and designed the widely cited, Python based multi-language weblog aggregator. Memeufacture uses a combination of editorial selection and bi-hourly spidering to monitor topics from distinct online communities: * Conservative Politics * Liberal Politics * Law * Apple Computers * Design * Top Weblogs * Persian Language

Developed Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) applications in Python, Visual Studio and Macromedia Flash for Fortune 50 companies. Installed and demonstrated RFID systems at Wal-Mart headquarters, as well as being a member of the installation group for the first ever live RFID smart shelf. Represented Masters of Branding at the June 2003 RFID summit in Chicago, Illinois. Created media and applications for L'Oreal Brands (Maybelline, L'Oreal Professionnel, Garnier Fructise, Matrix) Revlon, P&G, Coty, Prada, and International Paper, while working with large retailers such as Wal-Mart and CVS. Conducted retail audits for Coty, DKNY, and Prada.

Worked with a small web development team to produce the weekly Village Voice website, winner of the 2001 National Press Foundation's Excellence in Online Journalism Award.

Lead programmer in London for Oven's 'presentation tool' multinational project, integrating an Oracle database, Macromedia Generator and XML communication protocol. Primary internal rich media developer.

B.S. in Computer Science

JohnWehr.com, Goodsie.com, Flavors.me