A serial entrepreneur, Mike excels at inventing new technologies for the restaurant sector. Through founding Tap.in2, Ordermark, Nextbite and Team Kitchens he honed his expertise in combining high tech with experiential marketing for food, sports and entertainment brands to create new business modalities. He brings to KDS a commitment to innovation and fostering a positive company culture, accompanied by skills in product development and marketing. Mike enjoys getting in the trenches, particularly digging into KDS’ underlying data science. Indeed, his background with the FBI gives him a unique vantage point on data driven tech: as a counterintelligence analyst, he was responsible for a task force that worked with the U.S. DoD & Intelligence Community. For this service he was nominated for the Director of National Intelligence’s National Counterintelligence Award. Mike is a graduate of U.C. Berkeley.

A classic ‘heavy hitter’ investor, Jon shares his formidable management skills and financial acumen with KDS on an international stage. With degrees from USC, London School of Economics, MIT and The Wharton School, Jon is focusing his laser brain on KDS strategy, operations and scale. Deeply connected to food tech, he is Co-Managing Partner of Unicorn Venture Partners, Partner at Trousdale Ventures and Senior Venture Partner at Expert Dojo. Having held positions at Morgan Stanley, UBS, and Cummins, Jon has experience running U.S. and China offices, working with retailers such as Amazon. In addition, he is the Managing Member for his family investment office, J Heart Ventures, which invested in startup companies such as Boulevard, ChowNow, Daily Harvest, DocSend, Gyft, LeafLink, Miso Robotics, Solugen.

At the helm of KDS’ tech team, Mark brings 14+ years’ experience building great software and even greater engineering teams. His leadership approach stresses the importance of healthy interpersonal dynamics and cohesion. Naturally attracted to big challenges, Mark learned to write code at the age of 11, and not surprisingly feels most comfortable in the fast-paced world of tech startups. He loves solving ‘unsexy’ problems– especially profitable ones. His background in highly competitive industries such as adtech, e-commerce, social media and fintech informs his expertise in foodtech. In his previous foray, he served as Director of Software Engineering for Ordermark (now Nextbite). Mark is building a world-class team perfectly suited to dominate this rapidly growing world of virtual brands and ghost kitchens.

An entrepreneurial corporate strategist, Allison chairs the Media and Space groups for L.A. Venture Association and has had multiple exits, including as CSO of Webcasts.com (IPO as iBeam). A longtime champion of interactive media, she is CEO/Founder of ITV Alliance representing Fortune 500 tech and media brands. Allison has contributed to numerous digital media, advanced television and tech forward entertainment initiatives for companies such as Liberty Media, IBM, AOL, France Telecom, AT&T, Stan Lee Media and AEG. She advises companies in streaming, AR, content creation and crypto currency. She holds an M.A. from the University of Virginia.

A charismatic leader, Scott thrives in fast paced startup environments by building and scaling organizations. His client first mentality has propelled him to build meaningful relationships with operators and partners. With a keen interest in athletics and a former all-conference basketball player he went on to co-found Ponos Apparel a premium performance sock company working with many top North American university athletic programs including branding the Canadian USPORT National Championships. His previous start-up experience in the food tech space includes going through Y Combinator with Cuboh where he helped grow the organization to multimillion dollar sales. Scott holds a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Victoria with a minor in various beach activities.

An experienced farm-to-table chef focused on California cuisine, Leo is an inventive food craftsman. He has created many menu items for specialty shops in East Los Angeles, and been featured in L.A. Magazine and Daily Coffee News. He is committed to using locally sourced ingredients, and has been a longtime champion of farmers’ markets, along the way developing a line of vegan Mexican sauces, sides and tortillas under the Bloom Foods Markets label. Originally from Mexico City, he holds a B.A. from UC Berkeley. Early industry forays included an internship at an organic vineyard in Baja California, Valle de Guadalupe.

A native Angelino, Hailey Russo has joined the KDS team as the Director of Operations. Deeply rooted in strategy and logistics, Hailey’s drive to build processes that help early stage startups scale quickly, stems from her time spent in food and travel tech start-ups. While working at Roaming Hunger, Cater2.me and AvantStay, she has scaled lean markets and assembled departments and programs using data-driven metrics. Hailey enjoys empowering her team in the office as well as on the football field with her multiple co-ed flag teams. She also enjoys singing karaoke, fishing, and training to be an Olympic hopeful in Trap.

Greg’s customer service journey started 25+ years ago with companies such as Great Expectations and Countrywide. Previously, he led Ordermark’s account management team, expanding support to 24/7, decreasing client attrition while dramatically increasing satisfaction. For Grubhub he oversaw a team of 50 throughout Southern California, Austin and Chicago. There the incentive program he created decreased employee turnover and substantially increased productivity. Managing customer support for Network Telephone Services, he migrated throughout the shifts, helping increase productivity and provide training. Greg introduced his “one team, one dream” mantra to KDS, underscoring our commitment to superior service.

A talented leader in software quality assurance, Rigo applies 18+ years’ experience, providing KDS with structure and fundamental testing principles to creating a winning product. For video game innovator Activision he led development of the popular Call of Duty franchise across all platforms. At Disney Interactive he was an in-house Product Evaluator for all titles. His team leadership skills expanded at DirecTV and SnapChat, including offshore (India, Brazil, Taiwan) multi-platform management for testing and test case development. Time at Ordermark afforded greater understanding of food service tech, including requirements for ideal systems for client/user interaction with virtual kitchens and brands.

A graduate of the UNC School of the Arts, Brandon cut his teeth in the set lighting realm of physical production for the film industry, eventually migrating into the vendor world and utilizing his knowledge gained to expand sales and operations, gaining new clientele for various lighting companies in the LA film community. During this time, he developed a deep passion for sales and quality customer rapport. He is also deeply passionate about music, playing guitar, cinema and the crossroads between storytelling and aesthetics.

Bailey was born and raised in Guangzhou, China before attending Peking University where he studied International Business. Shortly after graduating, he moved to Los Angeles where he developed a burning passion for building innovative technology in the foodtech space. When he's not busy building the future of virtual food brands and restaurant technology, he enjoys hiking, splooting, and eating snacks.