Who we are

Dealio is brought to you by the same people behind Vendio Services, Inc., the recognized leader in sales management services for online merchants. The Dealio team is dedicated to pursuing its founding vision - to create services that help shoppers find the lowest prices, so they never overpay again.

Vendio's Properties

Founded in 1998, Vendio is the leading provider of services that help merchants reach consumers, manage transactions, and profitably grow their businesses. Over 50,000 online merchants use Vendio's services to sell over $150 million in merchandise each month. As an eBay Certified Provider and the first licensed member of eBay API program, Vendio's supported sellers have launched over 300 million listings to eBay.

Vendio's award-winning sales management services include Sales Manager Inventory Edition (named by eBay as the most innovative application for the eBay platform in 2005), Inventory Publisher, Vendio Gallery, Vendio Image Hosting, Vendio Reviser, and several other applications that save merchants time and increase their sales.

In November of 2006, Vendio acquired the assets of long time competitor, Andale, to further solidify its position in the online sales management industry. Despite while achieving 21 quarters of positive EBITDA since 2002, Vendio has also continued to invest aggressively in new initiatives such as Dealio and Widgipedia, both of which are innovative leaders in their industry and are expected to pay off handsomely in future years.

Vendio is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices in Bucharest, Romania and Bangalore, India. Vendio is privately held and backed by Lighthouse Capital Partners and MVC Capital.



Founded in August of 2005, Dealio marked the first major investment by Vendio in an industry other than Sales Management. The Dealio team was given nothing more than a simple set of instructions - to create services that help shoppers find the lowest prices faster and easier than any current method at the time.

The Dealio Comparison Shopping Toolbar was born out of this vision and officially launched in November of 2005. Significant cash investments were made in 2006 to advance Dealio Toolbar features and to increase consumer adoption. In just over a year, the Dealio Toolbar was installed on over 2.5 million consumer machines.

Vendio continued to invest heavily in Dealio with a major build-out to Dealio.com, and in November of 2006 the company launched the Dealio Community, which hosts consumer-posted bargains stemming from coupons, rebates, price matches, and more on virtually any product or service.

Investment in Dealio continued when in April of 2007 the company introduced a completely revamped Dealio.com v3.0. The Web site allows consumers to compare prices on virtually any product while seeing relevant steals in line with store and eBay results. The mix ensures that consumers find the lowest prices along with the latest rebates, discounts, and coupons available for the products they search for.

In May of 2007, Dealio Toolbar v3.1 launched with support for Windows Vista and Mozilla Firefox.


Officially launched in February of 2007, Widgipedia.com was conceived and constructed by a team of widget enthusiasts at Vendio while developing what is now one of the world's most popular Web widgets, Vendio Gallery.

As awareness, demand, and usage of widgets accelerated throughout 2006, Widgipedia.com took shape as a leading destination for developers to publish widgets and for consumers to download them. Widgipedia.com became the first site to support every widget platforms for every type of engine, including Yahoo, Google, Apple and Microsoft, as well as all types of widgets, both for the desktop and the Web.

The site has expanded further to include developer community forums, code samples, "engine" information, and a variety of helpful hints compiled from the Vendio team and other widget experts. In the future, Widgipedia.com will better connect widget developers, publishers, and advertisers to provide value for their efforts in growing the widget community.

The Management Team

Rodrigo Sales, Co-Founder, Chief Executive Officer, and Chairman of the Board
Rodrigo Sales is responsible for taking Vendio from a concept to a profitable enterprise. He is widely regarded as one of the leading authorities on online marketplaces and eCommerce. Rodrigo has been featured and quoted in several prominent publications including The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and Forbes. Entrepreneur Magazine named Vendio one of the "Hottest Businesses in 2003".

Rodrigo's professional background is in strategic analysis and supplier management with investment bank Credit Suisse First Boston (CSFB) Technology Group and Quantum Corporation, a leading provider of data protection and network storage systems. As a Research Associate at CSFB, Rodrigo prepared comprehensive reports on key players in the telecom equipment segment. As a Commodity Manager at Quantum, Rodrigo performed strategic analysis of the hard disk market, and managed an international portfolio of suppliers that provided Quantum with over $800 million worth of material each year.

Rodrigo received his BBA from the University of San Diego and earned his MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Mike Effle, EVP, Sales Management
Mike Effle joined Vendio in 1999 as one of the first 10 employees. He initially directed business development and strategy efforts, and quickly gained more responsibility over his six years at Vendio. Mike is now responsible for Vendio's Sales Management business, overseeing product development, customer support, sales, and marketing.

Prior to Vendio, Mike spent five years serving his country as an officer in the United States Air Force, where he was responsible for developing and producing classified defensive systems for the F-16 that still defends our pilots today. He also held various roles at MCI, Boston Consulting Group, and Raytheon.

Mike graduated Summa Cum Laude from Georgetown University with a BS in Finance and Management and a minor in Government. He also has an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Michael Levit, EVP Marketing and Business Development
Michael is an experienced leader adding 14+ years of brand building, partnership development, and executive management to the Vendio and Dealio team. He oversees customer acquisition, communications, brand management, research, and business development.

Michael is an expert at scaling Internet businesses in both the consumer and small/ medium business (SMB) markets. Most recently he ran the business side of Hearme and Paltalk, the largest video and voice chat communities on the Internet with over 4 million unique monthly visitors. Prior to that Michael established Broadband and affiliate marketing teams at AOL, co-founded Kmart’s online venture Bluelight.com where he ran business development, and founded and helped lead Accenture’s Internet Center of Excellence. Michael holds a Bachelors Degree in Mechanical Engineering and Bachelors and Masters Degrees in Business Economics from U.C. Santa Barbara and Oxford University.

John Chen, Chief Technology Officer
John Chen brings 20+ years of technology and management expertise to Vendio with leadership experience in software development and engineering operations in data systems, distributed object technologies, enterprise applications and online media and advertising. He oversees software development, QA and operations.

Prior to Vendio, John has built and led engineering teams at VoloMedia, serving as Senior Director of Engineering. At Yahoo, he was Director of Engineering responsible for building the new direct-marketing infrastructure. Prior to that, he served as VP of Engineering at DVDPlay, was credited for architecting a robust and scalable remote management system in consumer automation. At AdForce/CMGi, he most recently served as VP of Engineering, was responsible for the data servers and application servers division and saw the growth of ad-delivery to nearly a billion transactions a day. He was Senior Director of Engineering at FullDegree and held management roles at United Webs and Silicon Graphics. Prior to his engineering management roles, John was architect/technical lead at Taligent, Sun Microsystems and Texas Instruments.

John received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from University of California, Santa Barbara.

Timothy Vago, Director of Finance
Timothy Vago joined Vendio as its Controller in 2005 and now serves as Director of Finance, in charge of the company's financial management. Prior to joining Vendio, Tim led the finance team as Controller at Veltec Sports, a distributor of premium bicycle components and accessories, and his previous position was Director of Finance for Automated Power Exchange (APX), a privately held technology company engaged in providing online scheduling and settlement services to businesses in the energy industry. Tim also held positions at Edison Mission Energy and The Sumitomo Bank, Ltd. following his postgraduate studies.

Tim is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) holder, earned his Bachelor of Sciences in Economics with honors from San Jose State University, and completed his MBA from Thunderbird, The Garvin School of International Management.

Ravi Garikipati, Senior Vice President, Managing Director India Operations
Ravi Garikipati has been with Vendio's Andale service since mid-2000 and has served as Vice President & General Manager of Andale's India operations. Ravi's prior responsibilities have included managing the growth and development of Andale's India operations in addition to his position as Head of Engineering at Andale. His duties included oversight of Andale's product development, quality assurance and release activities for its e-commerce products and services. Ravi has over 18 years experience in building teams to deliver high quality products and services in database, middleware and enterprise application areas.

Prior to Vendio, Ravi was an Architect at Arzoo, where he lead architecture design and development of a large P2P commerce platform. Ravi also held various senior engineering management positions at Oracle, IBM and Covansys, where he gained extensive experience in building scalable enterprise application architectures and services. During his time at Oracle, he was part of Oracle Global Alliances, responsible for building and managing a highly specialized technical service practice to evangelize Oracle Technology adoption amongst global SIs and ISVs.

Ravi received Masters degrees in Software Engineering and in Management from Birla Institute of Technology and Science in Pilani, India.

Radu Togui, General Manager, Vendio Romania
Radu Togui joined Vendio in 2000 as one of the first employees of Vendio Romania. In his years with Vendio, he has been instrumental in helping to develop the Vendio's award-winning Sales Management products and services, rising from senior developer to product manager and general manager. Radu is now responsible for leading the Vendio Romania team as it grows and expands its capabilities as a world-class development organization.

Prior to Vendio, Radu worked as a researcher for Romania's Ministry of the Economy and as a project manager with an independent French software company.

Radu received his Masters in Computer Science from "Politehnica" University of Bucharest, Romania, whose prominent engineering alumni have helped to build some of the most well-regarded commercial and scientific organizations in the world.

The Vendio Board of Directors

Rick Stubblefield - Founder & Managing Director, Lighthouse Capital Partners
Rick has over 17 years experience in structured venture capital investing. He is a co-founder of Lighthouse Capital Partners where he manages the day-to-day operations of the firm, directs West Coast investment activities, oversees investment decision making and other operational activities for the Funds. While at Lighthouse Rick has led the firm in over 100 investments including Mimosa, RiverBed, Omneon Video Networks, BlueLane, Transera, Tzero, Broadvision, Ariba, Marimba, Portal Software, RedBack Networks, Foundry Networks, Shasta Networks, MMC Networks, nVidia, Symyx Technologies, and Force 10 Networks. Rick serves on the Board of Vendio, and Axis Personal Trainers.

Prior to co-founding Lighthouse in June 1994, Rick was a Senior Vice President with Comdisco Ventures where he co-directed and co-managed West Coast investment activities since 1988. While at Comdisco he led the firm's investments in Synopsys, Spectrum Holobyte, Illustra, Visio, Aspect Development, Edify, and Tularik.

Rick holds a BS from the University of California at Davis and an MBA from Golden Gate University.

Bruce Shewmaker - Managing Director, MVC Capital
Mr. Shewmaker is a senior investment professional with over 30 years of private equity and investment banking experience. Prior to becoming a Managing Director of the Fund in November 2003, Mr. Shewmaker served as a member of the board of the Fund from March 2003 and served out his one year term. Mr. Shewmaker was a co-founder of Merrill Lynch Venture Capital Inc. where he initiated several private equity investment partnerships, including three business development companies. During his ten year career at Merrill Lynch, he participated in sourcing, negotiating and monitoring over 40 private equity transactions including leveraged buyouts and venture capital investments, of which seven companies completed initial public offerings. More recently, Mr. Shewmaker served as President and CEO of The US Russia Investment Fund, with committed capital of $440 million, where he managed a staff of 60 people, including eight private equity professionals, in seven offices across the Russian Federation. As a Managing Director of E*OFFERING Corp., he helped this investment banking firm participate in underwriting more than 50 initial public offerings of domestic companies and was responsible for organizing a global investment banking network. While Mr. Shewmaker has spent the majority of his career with registered investment companies or investment management divisions of NYSE listed firms (divisions of The Chase Manhattan Bank and Time Inc.), in the late 1990's Mr. Shewmaker co-founded Crossbow Ventures, a regionally focused private equity partnership located in Florida.

Bruce earned his undergraduate degree in Finance from The Ohio State University and has passed the Series 7 and 63 NASD qualifying examinations.

Reid Hoffman - Chairman and President, Products at LinkedIn
Prior to heading Products, Reid led LinkedIn through its first fours years of rapid growth as the company's founding CEO. Prior to LinkedIn, Reid was Executive Vice President of PayPal. At PayPal, Reid was in charge of all business relationships: business development, corporate development, international, government relations, and banking/payments infrastructure. During his tenure at PayPal, Reid was instrumental to the acquisition by eBay and was responsible for partnerships with Intuit, Visa, MasterCard and Wells Fargo. Reid also has held management roles in large technology companies, including Fujitsu Software Corporation and Apple. Currently, in addition to LinkedIn, Reid serves on the Board of Directors for several companies including Mozilla Corporation, SixApart, and Kiva.org.

Reid graduated with distinction from Stanford University with a B.S. in Cognitive Science and from Oxford University with a Master's degree in philosophy.

Keith Rabois - Vice President, Strategy and Business Development at Slide
Previously, Keith worked as Vice President of Business Development and Advertising Sales at LinkedIn where he was responsible for developing strategic partnerships as well as generating new revenue for the business. Earlier in his career, Keith served as Executive Vice President of Business Development and Policy for PayPal. Prior to his foray into Silicon Valley, Keith practiced law at Sullivan & Cromwell, clerked for the Hon. Edith H. Jones, and engaged in politics, serving as political director for former Vice President Quayle and associate counsel for a US Senate committee.

Keith graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University with a B.A. in political science and received a J.D. with honors from Harvard Law School.

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