Meet The Team
Paul Saarinen
All Around Business Guy
paul@zingstring.com
Paul is a recognized and sought after thought leader in the social media space. He has developed online strategies and programs for C.H. Robinson, Schwan's consumer brands, and Carmex lip balm as Director of Director of Digital Insights and Culture for more than five years at Bolin Marketing, Minneapolis. Paul is now Director of Digital Strategy at Yamamoto Moss Mackenzie. Previous to Bolin, he was principal of the brand strategy firm Brand & Butter, where he developed interactive strategies for Best Buy, LG Electronics, Apple, Electronic Arts, Capcom, and DreamWorks Pictures. Paul frequently presents to students and industry groups about the future of online marketing and social media.
James Ostheimer
Founder - CTO
jamie@zingstring.com
James has more than six years of experience building web-based projects from the ground up in a variety of languages and platforms, and more than seven years leading, architecting, and implementing large-scale software projects. Ostheimer holds a Masters degree in Astronomy from Yale and a Ph.D in Astronomy from the University of Virginia. He has led software teams doing cutting-edge research, and building cutting-edge web apps. Ostheimer takes projects from the idea stage all the way to production, including developing and writing patent proposals (e.g. patent titled SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR DETECTION, CLASSIFICATION, AND MANAGEMENT OF COLLUSION IN ONLINE ACTIVITY) and single-handedly building several web applications from the ground-up related to web search (such as http://re-searchr.com a social search application that lets your social networks contribute to ranking your search results). Most recently, Ostheimer has worked for Fancast (http://www.fancast.com), where he has helped architect and develop a site that scales to 9,000,000 page views per month on only 10 servers.
Nate Kadlac
Chief Designer
nate@zingstring.com
Nate is an independent UI Designer for Kadlac LLC, Nate has more than 10 years experience building interfaces for the Web, with the last three years specifically focused on Web and Mobile UI/UX application design. He has worked for multiple design agencies, with large brands such as Best Buy, MPR, Sony, Microsoft and others. Nate has a unique skill set, combining sharp UX skills with front-end web development, centered around a core set of design capabilities.
Meet The Advisors
Graeme Thickins
Marketing and Business guru
graeme@zingstring.com
Graeme Thickins, Marketing and Communications Advisor - Graeme is a marketing consultant and startup advisor for technology and Internet firms. Since founding his consultancy 25+ years ago, he has advised more than 100 startups that have collectively achieved many hundreds of millions of dollars in shareholder value, including Secure Computing (IPO), Net Perceptions (IPO), VTC Inc. (acquired), Cartia (acquired), Connect Computer (acquired), and Agiliti (acquired). In recent years, he has consulted for several software, mobile, consumer Internet, and cloud startups, including W3i, Inveni, Visi.com/ReliaCloud, enStratus, Virteva, Workface, PedalBrain, CodeMorphic, DoApp, FanChatter, AsystMe, QONQR, TST Media, and others. Graeme served earlier in his career as interim Director of Content for the launch of BestBuy.com, and more recently as VP of marketing for a mobile app development firm founded in 2007 by an early Google employee.