About Us

MindBites is your place on the web to find, publish and sell valuable video instructional content. A full publishing and commerce platform, MindBites enables everyone from individuals to content sites and publishing companies to publish, sell and distribute video tutorials and how-to lessons in the MindBites marketplace, on their own site, and across the web. The resulting on-demand knowledge library (which covers everything from Calculus lessons to Photoshop tutorials to Baby Sign Language instruction) simply can't be found anywhere else and offers individuals and organizations a unique monetization platform for their instructional video content. MindBites promises to revolutionize the way the world publishes and shares knowledge. MindBites – What do you know?

Our belief is that the world is at the dawn of a new era in the publishing and sharing of knowledge. Led by the ubiquity of the high-speed, wireless and real-time web, advancements in digital media technology, and the evolution of publishing models, we are experiencing the largest period of change in how the world shares knowledge since Gutenberg invented moveable type. The bottom line is that today we can learn, from one mind to another, like never before in the history of the world (please speak in your best James Earl Jones voice).

We also believe in the power of markets and commerce. We enjoy and utilize free stuff from across the web as much as anyone, but we also feel that it’s not a bad thing for people to earn money or make a living by teaching/instructing others in a more traditional manner (classes, tutoring, apprenticeships) or by accomplishing these same ends through the creation and sale of high-quality instructional content. And, just like we don’t think twice about paying for a good book or a great class, paying for valuable, high-quality and effective video instruction will be a normal act on the web. We are inspired to be living in such an exciting time and playing a part in these historic trends.

Our team is an ever-expanding group of unique, talented and fun (if not a little goofy) individuals. As a group, we have experience from such varied institutions as Whole Foods, Harvard Business School, Burnt Orange Productions, McKinsey and Company, FreeMarkets, Kiva Systems, Bain and Company, and Dell to name a few. We have worked in such areas as web development, e-commerce, professional education, TV and film production, design, sales, marketing and entrepreneurial ventures. Most importantly, though, we're a group that includes bad but aspiring chefs, gardeners, artists, bartenders, golfers and foosball players. We own old houses and have no idea how to fix them. We'd like to learn foreign languages, have dreamed of knowing martial arts, and are always trying to figure out how to use our latest technical gadget. Simply put, we love learning, and that's why we're here.

The MindBites team includes: Jeff Kramer, who oversees our technology and infrastructure; Nathan Ladd, our lead engineer; and Ethan Burrow, our resident Rails badass. Judd Lyon tends to our usability, findability and front end. Huntley Tarrant is our VP of Business Development Extraordinaire, while Ellen Ambrose focuses on author recruitment. Alex Jurek is all about marketing, while Brittanie Flegle and Sarah Moore are our video team duo. In addition to our current folks, there is a whole list of people who have left their indelible fingerprints on MindBites. This cast of characters includes: the team at squeejee.com (led by Wynn Netherland), Matt "MattDaddyC" Chapman (responsible for the direction of our funky web design), Keith Fraase (who can be seen in many early videos and is now editing future blockbuster movies), and our ex lead-deveoper-turned doctor, Matt Sanders. The bozo in the back of the boat manning the rudder (and sitting on top of the ice chest) is Jason Reneau.

MindBites is proud to be a portfolio company of True Ventures of Palo Alto, CA, who led the Series A investment round in February of 2008. John Burke, from True, serves on the MindBites Board of Directors. MindBites is humbled and excited to thus be a part of the True portfolio of companies that includes: Meebo, Brightroll, GigaOm, Automattic (WordPress), GoodReads, KISSMetrics and WeGame among others.

MindBites is built with Ruby on Rails and oodles of CSS goodness, with light sprinkles of Flash and AJAX thrown in for good measure. We serve our media in Flash and Quicktime (for the most part). MindBites simply wouldn't have been possible without a bevy of fantastic open-source software developers that make our lives so much happier – thanks guys! We've built additional super-secret technology to keep the ship sailing smoothly even through troubled waters. We could tell you about it, but of course then we'd have to kill you...

On the production side, we have made a concerted effort to use a range of technology and tools from professional, to prosumer, to consumer-level. We film everything that we do with consumer sub-$1000 mini-DV camcorders, and we typically edit with Final Cut (although we dabble with a range of Windows and Mac software). Our most critical piece of technology though is our Braun coffeemaker, without which all MindBites productivity would screech to a halt.