Peter Dengate Thrush, Executive Chairman
Prior to joining TLDH, Peter Dengate Thrush was Chairman of the Board of Directors of ICANN, and in that role led the process that resulted in the historic decision to launch the new gTLD program in June 2011. He has been actively involved in international policy development and governance of the Internet since 1995 and is a regular media commentator on Internet issues. Peter is a past Chairman of InternetNZ and past Chairman of the Asia Pacific Top Level Domain Association. A barrister and registered patent attorney specializing in intellectual property matters, Peter is Vice Chairman of the New Zealand Electricity Rulings Panel and a member of the New Zealand Copyright Tribunal.
Antony Van Couvering, Chief Executive Officer, Director
Antony Van Couvering has been working with domain names and Internet infrastructure since 1996. He has played a substantial role in Internet governance issues and acted as a consultant on domain name issues to many of the world’s top companies.
Mr. Van Couvering has founded and run several companies, beginning with NetNames USA, the first firm to handle the domain name needs of larger companies, which he sold in 1999 to Group NBT (AIM: NBT) after helping launch several country-code top-level domains and assisting many others. In 2000, he founded NameEngine, began working with many of America’s top companies and intellectual property law firms, and pioneered the corporate domain name services model still in use today. He sold NameEngine to VeriSign (NASDAQ: VRSN) in 2001, and helped VeriSign with strategy, marketing and software design until 2004. Until recently, he operated Names@Work, an Internet consultancy.
Mr. Van Couvering founded Minds + Machines in 2009 to provide a low-cost, full-service alternative to existing registry options. Originally from Los Angeles, Mr. Van Couvering grew up in England and Kenya. He has a B.A. from Columbia in Comparative Literature and lives in Los Angeles.
Fred Krueger, Chief Strategy Officer, Deputy Chairman
Mr. Krueger is a serial entrepreneur who has started a variety of successful software and Internet companies.
Mr. Krueger began his career as a proprietary fixed income trader at Salomon Brothers and Grenwich Capital from 1986 to 1992. He left finance in 1992 to start a graphic design software company, Fauve Software, which was acquired by Macromedia (Nasdaq: ADBE) in 1995. Following this, he started Random Noise, a Java tools provider, which was sold to Vignette (Nasdaq: VIGN) in 1997.
In 1999, Mr. Krueger turned to the Internet sector, and started iwin.com, one of the 50 largest internet sites at the time. The company was merged with Uproar Inc. and sold to Vivendi Universal. He also started Traffic Marketplace, a top five advertisement network; the company was also sold to Vivendi Universal. Mr. Krueger subsequently founded TagWorld, a social network that was acquired by Viacom, and Adconion, an internet advertisement network based in Munich, Germany that serves over 6 billion ad impressions a month. Fred serves on the board of Adconion.
Mr. Krueger received a BA in Mathematics from Cornell University and a PhD in Operations Research from Stanford University.
Guy Elliott, Chief Investment Officer, Director
Mr. Elliott is founder of F3 Capital Management, LLC, an independent alternative asset management and advisory firm. Mr. Elliott currently serves as senior non-executive director of Polo Resources, an AIM-listed mining investment company. Additionally Mr. Elliott is a director of Red Dragon Resources, listed on the Toronto Venture exchange, and the privately-held Direct Petroleum. Prior to that, Mr. Elliott was president and co-founder of Croesus Capital Management, a specialist emerging markets hedge fund manager, which grew over several years to over US$800 million under management. Additionally, Mr. Elliott was President of Rothschild Emerging Markets and managed a variety of funds for them. Previously, he was Manager of Proprietary Trading at HSBC New York (1992 to 1993) and a Portfolio Manager at EBF & Associates (1990 to 1992). He worked for Merrill Lynch Capital Markets (1986 to 1990) and Cargill Inc (1980 to 1986). He has almost 30 years experience in capital markets and investment management. Mr. Elliott is a graduate of the London School of Economics B.Sc. (Econ), 1980.
Non-Executive Directors
Michael Mendelson, Director
Mr. Mendelson is Managing Director with the investment bank of Wunderlich Securities where he leads a team focused on cross-border public financings, private placements, and M&A transactions. Prior to joining Wunderlich, Mr. Mendelson served in the same capacity with both Anderson Strudwick, Inc. and Ferris, Baker Watts, Inc., where he was involved in over 30 public and private financings which raised in excess of $4 billion.
Earlier in his career, Mr. Mendelson served as founder and CEO of Align360, a general management and information technology consultancy which serves property and casualty insurers, banks and credit card issuers in North and South America, Europe and the Caribbean. Over the course of nearly 15 years, Mr. Mendelson provided the strategic direction to lead his firm to both rapid growth and industry leading levels of profitability. He sold his business to a publicly traded consultancy in 1997, but repurchased it in early 2001. The business was sold a second time to a large privately held consultancy in mid-2003. Mr. Mendelson was a recipient of the prestigious Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 2002.
Mr. Mendelson holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration degree from the University of Richmond and an MBA from the Wharton School. He has served on the executive committee of the University of Richmond’s Board of Associates.