Oversee Appoints New CFO and Two Board Members

Elizabeth Murray has been named Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and Senior Vice President.  She will report directly to company President Jeff Kupietzky.

Board Members

Allen Morgan – Venture Partner at Mayfield Fund
Scott Jarus – CEO of Cognition Technologies

Background – Elizabeth Murray

• More than 25 years of experience in financial management, strategic investment and M&A activity.

Previously

• Executive Vice President and CFO of Fluid Music Canada, Inc.,
• CFO for RazorGator Interactive Group, Digital Insight Corp, and KornFerry International.
• Bachelor’s degree in Business Studies from Robert Gordon University in Scotland
• Chartered Accountant and member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland.

Murray replaces Stacey M. Peterson, who has resigned to pursue other professional opportunities.

Background – Allen Morgan

• Almost 30 years counseling entrepreneurs
• Closed more than 750 venture capital financings, mergers and acquisitions, and public offerings.

Previously

• Partner at two Silicon Valley law firms, Latham & Watkins and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.
• Serves on the boards of directors of BlackArrow, DECA, Electric Cloud, Jobster, Slide, Snap Technologies, Tagged, Perfect Market and Zenprise.
• Undergraduate degree (summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa) from Dartmouth College
• Second bachelor’s and a master’s degree from Oxford University ( Christ Church )
• Juris Doctor from the University of Virginia

Background – Scott Jarus

CEO of Cognition Technologies, Inc., an advanced Semantic Natural Language Processing (NLP) technology company.

Previously

• Chief executive of j2 Global Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: JCOM)
• President and COO of OnSite Access
• Senior management positions at RCN Telecom, Multimedia Medical Systems, and Metromedia Communications.
• Serves on the boards of directors of Cognition Technologies, Global Conference Partners and Ironclad Performance Wear (ICPW.OB), where he is Executive Chairman.
• Bachelor’s and master of Business Administration degrees from the University of Kansas

What do you think about these appointments? Strategic? Financial? Feel free to post a comment.

Oversee Cuts 10% Of Workforce

There have been some rumblings around the place regarding this matter, so I decided to contact Oversee directly. Here is the deal:

On the 15th of August, Oversee.Net told its staff that 10% would be cut across the board. It’s expected that up to 30 staff in total will go from middle level management downwards, across DomainSponsor, SnapNames and Moniker.

While general economic weakness has been cited as reasons for the cut – as an entrepreneur I can see that you need to shuffle the decks, especially post any merger of companies. So to me, this is just business as usual.

Once all the dust settles (especially around Snapnames), it would be good to see things getting back to normal.