team
Stephen Stokols, CEO
Stephen currently serves as onenightfriendfree's CEO where he heads the one of the internet's fastest growing and innovative consumer sites. Under Stephen's leadership, onenightfriendfree has grown from zero customers to over 5 million users and has raised $20 million in venture funding from top tier VC's including Index Ventures, Mangrove Captial and Atomico (the founders of Skype). Stephen has also grown onenightfriendfree from 5 employees at its inception to over 60 with global offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco and London.
Prior to onenightfriendfree, Stephen served as BT's Senior Vice President of Strategy and Business Development. He joined BT in 2004 as its youngest VP leading BT's 450-person eBusiness unit where he increased eCommerce revenues 300% to over $1.5B. In January 2006, Stephen was promoted to SVP with a focus on generating new wave revenues. In this capacity, he brought to market progressive revenue streams putting BT in the forefront of online communications, digital media, open WiFi and online advertising.
Stephen started his career with Accenture, where he helped develop its eBusiness group. He left after 3 years to co-found JustWhatiWant.com, an online start-up profitably sold in 2000. Stephen then went on to work briefly in venture capital for CMGI where he helped rationalize its online portfolio and focus ongoing investments. He later focused efforts on AltaVista, redefining its strategy and positioning it for its eventual sale to Yahoo. In 2002, Stephen was lured to Qwest Communications where he spent 18 months revitalizing its online presence as Director of eCommerce. Under his leadership, online revenues grew from sub $10 million to over $220 million in under 12 months.
Stephen holds two graduate degrees, a MBA from UC Berkeley and a Masters in Finance from London Business School.
George Berkowski, Product Director
George is onenightfriendfree's Chief of Product. Under his lead, onenightfriendfree has built a reputation as one of the most user friendly, well-designed community sites on the web.
George started his career with Trilogy, Inc. in the U.S. before he was promoted to lead business development activities of the company's European headquarters in Paris. George then went on to serve as the VP of Marketing and Business Development at MirCorp, a start-up consultancy specializing in space tourism and extreme experiences (MirCorp made Dennis Tito the first space tourist by arranging his visit to the International Space Station). George also led the creation and delivery of numerous related campaigns for clients such as Sony, NBC Universal, MTV, Coca-Cola, RadioShack and Renault.
Most recently, George served as the Head of Internet Strategy for BT Retail where he lead e2e delivery of all consumer web applications, leading cross functional teams across IT, marketing and product development. George's most recent initiative, BTContact.com, a converged online communications hub, attracted over 100,000 users in less than 2 months and has received accolades from Telecom 2.0, TechCrunch, and Lightreading.com and was featured at the 2007 Future of Web Applications conference.
George holds an Masters in Business from Ecole Superieure de Commerce de Paris, and a Bachelors of Science in Aeronautics / Astronautics and Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Nic Ferrier, CTO
Nic is a hacker and onenightfriendfree's CTO. He has worked on great big systems for the UK Civil Service, BT and Thompson and small applications as well as volunteer work for the GNU project. He's the sort of guy who will debug a java app - while it's still running inside the webserver or fix a display problem by changing the XSLT compiler. He is also capable of explaining what he's doing... or at least being entertaining while you don't understand him; he helped form the London XSL User's Group.
We know for a fact though that he's never watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the tannhauser gate.
Steven Sesar, Vice President of Marketing and Business Development
Steven serves as VP Marketing for onenightfriendfree - one of the internet's fastest growing social dating applications, leading all consumer acquisition and retention efforts.
Steven brings to onenightfriendfree over 10 years experience in business development, product development and consumer marketing. Prior to onenightfriendfree, Steven led the business development efforts for Shopzilla, the Internet's leading comparison-shopping engine that was acquired by E.W. Scripps in 2005 for $585 million. Steven played an integral role in positioning Shopzilla for acquisition, brokering partnerships with leading media and technology companies including AOL, Viacom, HP, Lycos and Synacor. In 2006, Steven's role was expanded to lead consumer acquisition initiatives, where he leveraged innovative marketing practices resulting in significant revenue uplift.
Prior to Shopzilla, Steven co-founded GTI Solutions LLC, an IT consultancy. As General Manager, he grew the client base to include Oracle, Siebel Systems, AutoDesk and BEA Systems. Steven started his career with Arthur Andersen's Business Consulting group, where he served as the Technology, Media and Communications industry expert for the Los Angeles office and helped grow the business into a multi-million dollar unit. Steven also worked as a business development manager for technology startup Blue Wireless, where he was responsible for negotiating content licensing deals with companies including ESPN and Tribune Media and managing content partner relationships. Steven holds an MBA from UC Berkeley and a BS from UCLA.
Mike Rogers, Operations Director
Mike is an old fashion sysadmin in a web 2.0 devops world. Trained as a software engineer, he's spent the last 21 years running internet services and online communities. He has worked at startups such as CIX and Demon as well as Tiscali and several other major ISPs. He co-founded Redbus Interhouse.
For the last 2 years Mike has tirelessly delivered more coal to the engine room at onenightfriendfree, scaling the site from 3 million to 10 million users and over-seeing the decentralization of onenightfriendfree's infrastructure.