Who are we?
You read the team page because you want to know who the team is, correct?
So, does a dry “resume-bio” paragraph tell you who a person or team is?
I don’t believe so.
As CEO, I’ve had to learn the hard way that bios and resumes just tell me what a person has done in the past (and sometimes that’s not even verifiable).
What it doesn’t tell me, is who they are, which is more important for “cultural fit” into smaller, early-stage companies like ours.
So, rather than display the same-old tired, short, resume-bio-type team pages that you see everywhere else, I’ve decided to tell the story of how our team came to be and who each of these people are for me and our project.
So here is the story of our team, in chronological order, beginning with… me.
The Story of Our Team
Paul Marek
Mad Entrepreneur
Founder & CEO
This is my team. But since Muuver is all about you, they are your team too.
Here’s how I select them for you:
I don’t care if they’re green, blue, orange or purple, from Venus or Mars or Uranus, sideways, backwards, broken, giant, tiny or square. My formula is simple:
If A+B+C=D, then they’re hired, where;
A = they’re passionate about our idea
B = they want to do their part like the world depends on it
C = they aren’t an a**hole
D = perfect fit
If either A or B or C is missing, it can’t equal D (Decision to hire)
All of the great people you’ll meet below have a wide range of diverse backgrounds and/or identities that fit into at least one or more of the previously-mentioned colours, shapes, sizes or types… except a**hole. They leave that to me.
My background?
I’ve never been a “founder”. I’m a “serial-utopian-idealistic-unrealistic-entrepreneur-dreamer-inventor”.
Someone has to be the visionary dreamer.
But “founder-with-a-successful-exit” – no.
I haven’t achieved any academic accolades greater than Grade 15.
I had at least 20 or 30 jobs before 2000, when I found web-development and SEO as my left-brain/right-brain saviour. So I’ve done a handful of small-business web-dev projects since then.
Previously…
Previous to 2000, I was also; a Waiter, a Realtor, a Mortgage Consultant, a Life-Insurance Salesman, a Network Marketer, a Limousine Driver, a Graphic Artist, danced as Scooby-Doo at Canada’s Wonderland (zoinks!), a Power Quality Specialist, a Manufacturer of Energy Efficient Lighting (in my living room and bedroom), an Auto-Assembly-Slave-Monkey (twice – no offense to anyone who does it), a Closet Rock & Roll Star, an Auto-Detailer-Extraordinaire, a Champion Kart Racer, a Jack-of-All-Trades-MacGyver-type, a Conspiracy Theorist, a Recovered Conspiracy Theorist, a Recovered-Recovered Conspiracy Theorist and a Dad to the sweetest string of fur-babies that were ever created by a god nobody else but me believes in.
And… I’ve also spent more than 25 years thinking about how to build what Muuver now is, ever since I first saw “the internet” back in 1993, when I said…
“HOLY F***! There’s finally a way for people to gather together around the world as a common voice to hold bad companies accountable!”
But it never happened.
Ever since that rapturous vision I had back in 1993, I’ve gradually sunk into an ever-deepening realization, shock and sadness that instead, we took the blue pill and we’ve actually just let big-brother happen rather than use the internet for the common good.
Well f*** that.
We’ve given it away so we can get it back, but the key is to take control of our personal data on the blockchain. Even Sir Tim Berners Lee, Inventor of the Internet just last year (2017) said that THE NUMBER ONE PROBLEM on the internet is that “we’ve lost control of our personal data“.
Well, Sir Tim, blockchain and decentralization are here to stay and I promise you that I intend to fight until my last dying breath to make sure that there is a safe and secure way for us to all take control of our personal data, our personal privacy and our personal value, and, that the internet is used as a tool for positive, democratic, decentralized control of our societal institutions for the betterment and true equality of opportunity for everyone.
I hope I can do you proud, Sir Tim, and thank you for the gift you’ve given humanity – we promise to take better care of it from now on.
And these are the people who are helping you, and everyone else take care of it, listed in order of appearance in the story that is now Muuver…
Tony DiOrio
Obi-Wan
Co-Founder and Executive Vice President
Tony has been with me since the beginning of things getting serious in 2011 with the creation and first registration of muuver.com.
That Tony had a background in the pharmaceutical industry made me cringe, but he learned great skills there doing research and compliance assurance on clinical trials of treatments for some of the most dangerous pathogens out there.
These were also the perfect skills that I needed someone to have in order to do the deep digging for finding key info and insights about some of the crazy things we needed to know about that we probably shouldn’t know about, while at the same time making sure that no-one knew about what they shouldn’t know about us while we did all kinds of things right in front of them.
Not to mention that his passion for this endeavour is equal to or greater than mine, his ability to provide supportive feedback on my wild ideas, as well as his cautious, virtuous guidance around some of the squirrely hair-pin corners I’ve encountered while driving this Formula-1-like super-machine around this insanely maddening race-circuit called “startup life”, has been absolutely key to getting us to where we are today. Without him this would not be.
Thanks, brother Tony! The checkered flag is near!
Rick Shea
Calm Sensibility
VP Revenue
Rick, Rick, Rick.
What would I do without Rick?
If you’ve ever been to a startup networking event in Toronto in the last 5 or 6 years, you’ve met Rick, and then probably had coffee with him too. He’s the consummate networker and connector who has a passion for helping people.
I met Rick at StartUpDrinksTO in January 2017 and we clicked right away – it was obvious that we shared the same beautiful choice of cranial presentation – “forehead brothers” as it were.
Over a beer or two, Rick genuinely listened intently to my idea, liked it, and wanted to help make it happen. And he got to work on it right away, introducing me to the people I needed to meet, helping me think about what needed to be considered for the growth and sales aspect of things, and made sure we had quality beers and great food while doing it.
Since then, Rick has become a brother-father-uncle-psychiatrist-angel-on-my-right-shoulder that I trust with my life. He’s been selflessly loyal and graciously willing to work through the many tough times to help bring my crazy vision into reality. We’ve become friends off-the-clock and have spent more than a few beers enjoying our mutual love of live music with buddies.
I am forever indebted to him eternally – or for the next five years, at least.
Thanks Rick – it’s been a true pleasure working with you on this.
And that’s the story of our growing team so far.
Many others have come and gone, but we look forward to whomever else would like to join us on this amazing journey to protect our personal rights, freedoms and liberties through proper personal stewardship of the fuel of the future – our personal data.
