Mike Rowehl

Summary

Hacker, programmer, entrepreneur

I work particularly well at the very early stage of companies. The proverbial two or three people in a garage trying to get things off the ground. I create the most value making computers work - everything from operations and database admin through front end programming and web stuff. But there's a whole mess of things I do at least well. I've been working in mobile for a long time, and done a lot of work with Linux for example.

Experience

04/2012 - present : Metaresolver Inc. San Francisco CA
We're working on addressing some of the lingering problems in mobile advertising. There's a ton of mobile inventory out there, but it's hard to find the right place to put your message and figure out if you've really been effective. So we provide a system to support smarter media buying through tighter targeting using data we've pulled together from a wide range of sources and coupled to operational systems.
11/2010 - 04/2012 : Churn Labs, LLC San Mateo/Irvine CA
Hacking on awesome stuff with awesome people. We're running a lab focused on mobile services and applications. Yes, that's right, a lab. As in we build new stuff, cause we love to build new stuff. And we're looking for more people to build stuff with, so email if you're interested in joining.
10/2009 - 11/2010 : Chomp Inc. San Francisco CA
Service scalability and backend engineer. Web services, monitoring and alerting, database design and admin, operations. Trying to make it easy to throw hardware at problems without spending too much on hardware at the same time.
06/2008 - 03/2009 : Skyfire Inc. Mountain View CA
Helping to make things work well. Better, faster, stronger - the general drill. Designing and implementing large software systems to work for lots of users and respond quickly all the time. Design, architecture, implementation.
12/2007 - 06/2008 : Mowser, Inc. San Mateo CA
Founder/CEO, working on a platform for making existing web content available to mobile devices. Mowser assets were sold to dotMobi (mTLD Top Level Domain Ltd.) in Ireland in May 2008. I put together the deal and assisted in the transition. Additional info available at http://mtld.mobi/node/1032
05/2006 - 12/2007 : AdMob Inc. San Mateo CA
Director of Technology, working on a platform for delivering bidded advertising to WAP based mobile websites. High volume, high availability web application. Design and implementation of new features and architectural revisions. Lead on scaling, monitoring and reliability. New facility buildout. AdMob was sold to Google. W00t!!
08/2005 - 04/2006 : Ning Inc. Palo Alto CA
Linux Architect working on developing and running the production server environment running a large scale consumer web service. Work with both the operations and engineering teams to troubleshoot issues and determine deployment plans. Work on monitoring and notification systems, databases, Java based servers, PHP scripting environment.
01/2005 - 08/2005 : Feedster LLC San Francisco CA
Engineering Program Manager responsible for creating the FeedsterMedia advertising network. Interaction with advertisers and publishers, setup and administration of open source advertising servers, development of custom ad placement engine for RSS feeds, PHP, MySQL, Linux, and Akamai integration.
09/2003 - 01/2005 : Bitsplitter Menlo Park CA
Independent contractor working on prototyping and proof of concept systems. Wide mix of technologies and architectures, rapid prototyping, application and interface design, Linux kernel programming, Palm network programming, Linux based PDAs, GPRS, SMS and MMS delivery services, security, Bluetooth and 802.11 networking, online collaboration tools.
09/2001 - 03/2004 : MyCasa Network Inc. Palo Alto CA
Senior Engineer working on an embedded Linux product used for home automation and security. C, Linux, X10, RF, 802.11, iptables, GPRS, Javascript, x86 and ARM platforms, Linux device drivers, design and implementation, support for initial trial deployments. Also performed initial setup of the server systems, clustered Linux solution with service migration capabilities, large MySQL database, SAN, network filters, custom security setup using a private certificate authority. Participated in presentations to prospective partners and investors, performed demo and trade show preparations, developed custom marketing samples.
01/2001 - 07/2001 : Goto.com (now Overture) Pasadena CA
Security Manager overseeing all systems. Managed a small group of outside consultants to implement security policy for all office and production deployments. Policy work, Checkpoint Firewall-1, Solaris, Linux, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Cisco PIX, TCP/IP networking, IPSEC. This position was created when I joined the company.
Even more stuff before that, but this was starting to get long so I trimmed it down.

Other

I have a personal blog I write focused on mobile, both technology and business, called This is Mobility. Certainly not the most widely read site in mobile, but it goes back to 2005. Evidence of a little bit of street cred if nothing else.

Founder of Mobile Monday Silicon Valley (http://mobilemonday.us). Mobile Monday is a gathering of a few hundred mobile enthusiasts and practitioners. Participants are a cross-section of developers, entrepreneurs, manufacturers, publishers, carriers, researchers, students, and others. I started the group with some friends in 2003 as a gathering of mobile geeks. But after connecting with some other like-minded folks running chapters in other areas the group has grown into an international movement. Information about Mobile Monday as a whole is available at mobilemonday.net.

Member of the organizational team that runs the Mobile 2.0 Conference in San Francisco and Barcelona (http://mobile2event.com). It's an event that pulls in representatives from companies all over the world to focus on the mobile web and disruptive mobile innovation. We started doing it in 2005 and talking about the mobile web... so now we look pretty damn smart.

Skills

Education

Computer Science and Computer Engineering courses at Rochester Institute of Technology (computer programming, architecture, and engineering; information technology) - dropped out.