Founders Story

Ustream was founded in the summer of 2006 by John Ham, Brad Hunstable, and Dr. Gyula Feher as way to help overseas soldiers connect more efficiently with their families.

John and Brad met as cadets at West Point. Serving as U.S. Army as officers during a wartime environment, John and Brad noticed an opportunity for revolutionizing communication. Soldiers were limited by the phone or instant messenger to connect with family and friends back home. They could only talk with one person at a time. John and Brad wanted to find a way to allow soldiers to connect with all of their loved ones at the same time. The goal was to create a way for them to stream with family members in cities all over the U.S. and the world. After a few months of late night brainstorm sessions, John, Brad, and Gyula decided to take a risk on behalf of a better vision. As they say, the rest is history.

Today, Ustream empowers everyone from sports fans to Presidential candidates and rock stars to quickly and easily broadcast to a global audience of unlimited size.

Leadership

Leadership

• 

  John Ham

  CEO and Founder

  A native of Riverside, California, John Ham is the Co-founder of Ustream and its Chief Executive Officer. John founded Ustream in March 2007 with fellow West Point graduate Brad Hunstable and lead technologist Dr. Gyula Feher. John showed a propensity for entrepreneurship from a young age, when he began trading equities and options at age 16. While at West Point, John interned with NASA and the New York Stock Exchange, and went on to receive his B.S. in Aerospace Engineering. Upon graduation, he was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the US Army. While in the Army, John was selected as a Commander and later selected to be the Aide to the 19th TSC Commanding General in South Korea.
  
  As a thought leader in live interactive video, John was a featured speaker at NAB, CeBit, LeWeb, Web 2.0 EXPO, Digital Hollywood, AlwaysOn, Streaming Media, Red Herring 100, and Adobe Roundtable to name a few.

• 

  Brad Hunstable

  President and Founder

  Brad Hunstable is the President and Co-founder of Ustream. Brad founded Ustream in March 2007 with partner and former West Point graduate John Ham and Dr. Gyula Feher, lead technologist. As founder, Brad is responsible for guiding the company's strategy and growth through partnerships, technology innovation, and product architecture. Brad has been a featured speaker at South By Southwest (SXSW), Video On The Net (VON) conferences, Talkers, Convergence, and others.
  
  Prior to founding Ustream, Brad worked at Hillwood Development, a Ross Perot Company, overseeing the development of master planned communities. Before joining Hillwood, he completed five years of active duty in the United States Army, serving in various capacities around the world.
  
  Brad is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and holds an MBA in finance from The Ohio State University.

• 

  Dr. Gyula Feher

  CTO and Founder

  Dr. Gyula Feher is Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Ustream. He is focused on setting the technology strategy of the company as well as managing the spectrum of overseas development efforts of the Ustream engineering team.
  
  A native of Hungary, Feher is one of the three founders of Ustream and has been with the company since it was incorporated. Previously, he founded and served as CEO of Sorensen-Online Development, a former top ten Hungarian web consulting firm, which created and Googlerankings.com.
  
  Dr. Feher holds a Cum Laude JD from the Institute of Law Studies of the Peter Pazmany University (Hungary). He is based in Budapest, Hungary.

Management Team

• 

  Ed Delfs

  SVP of Sales & Sales Operations

  Ed Delfs is the SVP of Sales & Sales Operations and is responsible for sales across Ustream's platforms.
  
  Prior to Ustream, Ed served as Vice President of National Advertising Sales and Operations at Real Networks. Ed was responsible for driving Real's advertising efforts forward by managing the National Advertising Sales force and the National Ad Operations team. Ed has over a decade of sales and advertising experience and joined Real from TheStreet.com where he was Vice President of Sales and Strategic Partnerships. During this role, he was responsible for structuring, staffing and managing TheStreet.com's advertising sales and national strategic business development departments. Prior to TheStreet.com, Ed was Vice President of Sales for iVillage.com.
  
  Ed received a Masters of Pacific International Affairs with a Japan International Business Management focus from the University of California, San Diego and a Bachelor of Arts degree with departmental honors from the University of Southern California.

• 

  Chris Blocker

  VP of Strategic Partnerships

  Chris is responsible for Ustream's platform and device strategy across all connected devices, as well forging key relationships with carriers and MSOs.
  
  Before joining Ustream, Chris was Vice President of Business Development at Sling Media, where he was responsible for evangelizing Sling's products and solutions to PC, Mobile, and CE OEMs, as well MSOs and operators. Prior to Sling, Chris was Director of Global Business Development at Solid Data Systems, managing strategic relationships with HP, Siemen's and LogicaCMG. He also held executive sales and business development positions at Roxio (a division of Sonic Solutions), OneChannel, and Western Digital Corporation.
  
  Chris received a Masters in Business Administration from The University of San Francisco and his undergraduate degree in Combined Sciences from Santa Clara University.

• 

  Wendy Hsu

  VP of Finance

  Wendy Hsu leads finance, which includes Accounting, Financial planning and analysis,Treasury, Taxes, Administration, and Investor reporting.
  
  Prior to joining Ustream, Wendy has held CFO and Vice President of Finance positions for several pre-IPO companies in the hi-tech industry; leading two successful merger and acquisition transactions. She specialized in structuring global operations and tax strategy, designing and implementing scalable financial and operational infrastructure for pre-IPO companies. Earlier in her career, she gained her controllership and management experience with multi-million publicly traded companies such as UMC and Hewlett Packard (formerly Tandem computers).
  
  Wendy began her career at PriceWaterhouseCoopers where she participated in IPO and financial audit engagements. Wendy earned her BS degree in Business Administration in Accounting from San Jose State University. She is a Certified Public Accountant licensed in California.

• 

  Koichiro Kanda

  VP of Strategic Partnerships

  Koichiro is responsible for Ustream's International Business. His focus is to expand and succeed in International business operations.
  
  Prior to joining Ustream, Koichiro served as the US Country Manager for ACCESS Inc, having P&L responsibilities and running Business Development / Sales groups. He has licensed deals and maintained relationships ranging from large Carriers and OEMs such as Verizon Wireless, NTT docomo, Motorola, to special projects like the Amazon Kindle.
  
  Koichiro is a Sophia University graduate in Business Administration and is completely bi-cultural and bilingual in English and Japanese.

• 

  Jason Kirk

  VP of Media & Web Distribution

  Jason Kirk is Vice President of Distribution & Media for Ustream and oversees the company's web distribution partnerships. He is based out of Ustream's LA office.
  
  Prior to his current role, Jason was Vice President of Video & Entertainment at MySpace. In this role, Jason oversaw the business, sales, and marketing around the company’s hugely successful entertainment platform which included video, movies, sports, comedy, and the company's profitable original series business. Additionally, Jason led successful content partnerships with companies including Hulu, NFL, Discovery Networks, ESPN, Comcast, Nascar and original series “Circle of 8” produced by Paramount Digital & "Married on MySpace 1 & 2" produced by Endemol. Before MySpace, Jason was the Director of Sales & Marketing at HBO.
  
  Jason earned a Bachelor of Arts & Sciences in English and Film at the University of Colorado-Boulder.

• 

  Shawn Rose

  VP of Product Management

  At Ustream, Shawn is responsible for the Product Management, Project Management, UX & Visual Design and Customer Support functions at Ustream.
  
  Prior to joining Ustream, Shawn was the Vice President of Product for Fox Digital Media (FDM). While at FDM, Shawn led the Product Management and Shared Services functions across a number of Fox properties. Before Joining FDM, Shawn served as the Vice President of Entertainment Sites at CNET Networks, directly managing the TV.com, Gamespot, and MP3.com properties. Prior to joining CNET (CBSi), Shawn was an early member of the Hulu launch team, serving as an advisor on the Search & Discovery products. Shawn began his career in technology working at other notable companies like Yahoo!, AOL and AltaVista.
  
  Shawn holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from the University of Missouri, Columbia.

• 

  Wayne Sieve

  VP, Sports

  Wayne Sieve is the Vice President, Sports at Ustream where he is responsible for building the company's business in Sports and oversees all dealings with professional and amateur sports properties, athletes, broadcast networks, and other entities in the global sports landscape.
  
  Before coming to Ustream, Wayne was a co-Founder and EVP at 5to1, an online advertising platform that publicly launched in the summer of 2009. Prior to 5to1, Wayne spent 9 years at Yahoo! where his last position was the head of business strategy for Yahoo! Sports and Entertainment. In this role, Wayne was responsible for developing business strategy and new revenue opportunities for the 9 business units within Sports and Entertainment. During his first 8 years at Yahoo!, Wayne managed business development for Yahoo! Sports where he lead all dealings with pro leagues and athlete associations, college sports rights holders, TV and radio networks, Olympic properties, athletes, and general content and data providers. He lead the acquisition of rivals.com and developed a variety of businesses within the editorial and fantasy sports verticals. Some of his endeavors included the first ever live video streaming of complete seasons for the NHL and MLS, and also developed online PPV businesses in partnership with the NFL, UFC, and over 100 college and universities.
  
  Wayne earned a B.S. from Arizona State University in 1990 and received his M.B.A. from the University of Oregon in 1998.

• 

  Rajiv Taneja

  VP of Technology

  At Ustream, Rajiv's objective is to create the most successful live media delivery company by establishing a robust engineering environment that leads to quality products and operational infrastructure. Rajiv has spent the lion's share of his 20+ year career in high technology companies managing engineering teams and incubating new ideas. The product development efforts he has led have generated several billion in revenues.
  
  Prior to Ustream, Rajiv was at Blue Coat Systems (VP Of Engineering) and Motorola (Sr. Director of Engineering) where he led global teams of 100+. At Motorola, Rajiv is credited with creating mobile content delivery services such as SCREEN3 and TuVista. Both services are commercially available and broke new ground with unique user interface and rich media delivery. At Blue Coat, Rajiv streamlined engineering operations to establish a culture of excellence. Rajiv's stints also include Vice President and CTO roles at technology startups where he raised over $50 million in venture money.
  
  Rajiv is a graduate of Indian Institute of Technology and Stanford University with degrees in engineering and management.

• 

  Jeff Varnell

  Executive Director of Business Development

  Jeff is responsible for Ustream's content acquisition efforts in the Los Angeles office. His focus is to build a high quality and engaging content offering on the site through partnerships with entertainment companies.
  
  Prior to joining Ustream, Jeff was an Executive Director of Business Development at MySpace. At MySpace, Jeff oversaw all business development activities related to video for the company. He developed a cohesive strategy and financial model for the premium video content offering on MySpace. He also created deal templates for both original and licensed content and negotiated contracts with media companies, talent agencies, and production companies.
  
  Jeff received a Masters of Business Administration from the University of Southern California and a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California, Los Angeles.

• 

  Troy Nguyen

  Director of Human Resources

  Troy Nguyen is responsible for leading Ustream's employee success strategy including talent acquisition, employee productivity and retention, and organizational development.
  
  Troy joins Ustream with a background in human resources management and specializes in building emerging technology companies during rapid growth phases. He most recently ran human resources at Exponential/Tribal Fusion and was involved in their international expansion into the United Kingdom, Asia, and Australia. Troy has lead human resources during crucial growth stages with technology companies that specialize in online media, social networking, e-commerce, and enterprise software like cafepress.com, IMVU, and Datasweep (acquired by Rockwell Automation).
  
  Troy earned a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology at California State University, Long Beach.