The Blueseed Team
Max Marty
Chief Executive Officer (CEO)
Max, the son of two Cuban immigrants, has been passionate about entrepreneurship and technology from a young age. He received his undergraduate degrees in Global Political Economy & Philosophy from Muhlenberg College in PA, and his MBA from the University of Miami. Before joining Blueseed, he was Director of Business Strategy at The Seasteading Institute, the world’s only think tank researching ocean communities.
Dario Mutabdzija
President
Dario studied and/or worked in Hawaii, China, California, Austria and Bosnia. He received his J.D. and LL.M. in Transnational Business Practice from McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento CA, and the University of Salzburg in Austria. Prior to Blueseed, Dario served as Director of Legal Strategy for The Seasteading Institute. He is passionate about connecting people and businesses around the world.
Dan Dascalescu
Chief Information&Technology Officer (CIO/CTO)
Dan is an ex-Yahoo! software developer, technical writer and knowledge manager, with a broad vision of the tech arena. He is a seasteading ambassador, connected with the open source and emergent tech circles, and is excited about making big ideas happen. Prior to Blueseed, he founded the Quantified Self Forum, worked in satellite communications in Belgium and co-authored and translated a number of IT books in Romanian.
Sam Bhagwat
Chief Financial Officer (CFO)
Sam takes seriously Archimedes’ quote: “Give me a long enough lever, and I will move the world”. Searching for long levers, he completed an economics degree at Stanford, worked for two years in India (where his father grew up), and completed stints in journalism and management consulting, before joining Blueseed. He plays chess and avidly reads Marginal Revolution.
Baoguang Zhai
Business Development (Boston)
Originally from Beijing, Zhai was a short film producer and a soccer coach in high school. He paused his environmental engineering studies at Tufts University to pursue an internship at Blueseed. Convinced that the ocean industry has the potential to explore new realms, generate new civilizations, and disrupt international economy and politics, he plans to dedicate his career to realize this vision.
Entrepreneurship
Jonas Lamis
Entrepreneurship, fundraising, crowdfunding
Jonas is an experienced startup executive with multiple successful ventures and international experience. He co-founded Rally, the leading online fundraising company for non-profits.
Prior to Rally, Jonas was partner in technology incubator Tech Ranch Austin, and leader of technology futurism organizations (Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Humanity+). He was also Founder and Editor of the largest Enterprise Architecture and IT Transformation focused publication in the industry, Architecture and Governance Magazine.
Vinnie Lauria
Entrepreneurship, fundraising, marketing, governmental relations
Vinnie is a founding partner at Golden Gate Ventures, fostering links between Singapore and Silicon Valley, and a mentor at Founder Institute and i/o ventures. He is currently mentoring and advising startups in a number of early stage incubators and investment funds.
Vinnie has hosted events to help foster the startup ecosystem, such as SuperHappyDevHouse.sg with over 200 attendees from 7 different countries. In 2006, he founded the Silicon Valley NewTech Meetup, which has featured over 300 startups to a monthly audience with thousands of followers – he has personally reviewed and critiqued over 1,000 Silicon Valley based startups applying to present on the stage.
Thorsten Claus
Entrepreneurship, venture capital, due diligence
Mr. Claus is a telco2.0 enthusiast and a Senior Investment Manager at T-Venture of America, Inc., the corporate venture capital arm of Deutsche Telekom. As an adviser, he is helping his companies to engineer product and service innovations, and to create and execute strategies for a flat and free world. He previously was director of scouting, due diligence, market assessments, competitive intelligence, business cases, and launch execution at Detecon, a subsidiary of T-Systems International, the professional services arm of Deutsche Telekom for large enterprises and multinationals.
John Chisholm
Entrepreneurship, enterprise software
Mr. Chisholm is a board member of The Seasteading Institute, and a trustee at Santa Fe Institute. He helped define the Enterprise Feedback Management SaaS market, leading two successful companies (Decisive Technology and CustomerSat) from 1992 to 2009, after serving in management and marketing positions at HP and Xerox. Mr. Chisholm has degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT, an MBA from Harvard Business School, and volunteers with MIT’s Venture Mentoring Service to help young entrepreneurs start their own businesses.
Sheridan Tatsuno
Entrepreneurship, strategy, Japan liaison
Mr. Tatsuno is a Silicon Valley strategist, business author (In the Valley of Digital Dreams
, The Technopolis Strategy) and screenwriter. He has advised over 700 global high-tech companies since 1983. He is currently principal at Dreamscape Global, enabling companies and nonprofits to develop breakthrough strategies. Key successes include AMD Japan’s revenue-doubling, AMD’s sub-$1000 PC and Nokia’s global launch. Mr. Tatsuno has a B.A. in political science/urban studies from Yale University and a Masters in Regional & City Planning from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
Maritime
Leif-Erik Hvide
Maritime operations and financing
Mr. Hvide is COO at Nordica Marine, a provider of turn-key refurbishment, repair, engineering, shipbuilding and contracting services to the marine industry, with a portfolio spanning offshore oil and gas installations, ferries, yachts, and cruise ships.
Mr. Hvide has a successful record of growing start-up companies in the software, hedge fund, investment management, nutraceuticals, and maritime development spaces and is highly experienced at all facets of growing and operating a business: strategic planning, legal groundwork, sales and marketing, financial planning, operations, recruiting, and analytics.
Marius Popa
Maritime operations and naval architecture
Mr. Popa, Ph. D. in hydrodynamics, is a naval architect and Principal Engineer at DNV Energy Aberdeen, UK. He is highly specialized in naval structural analysis, stability computations, and trained as a field surveyor. Mr. Popa is also a connector in the maritime world, administering the Maritime groups on LinkedIn and other work-centered social networks, with a total of over 10,000 members.
Hardberger Law Firm
Maritime law and security
Headed by Max Hardberger, an aviator, ex-ship captain, ship recovery specialist, marine surveyor, and maritime investigator, the firm draws on Hardberger’s in-depth experience and expertise to provide real-world solutions to international maritime problems. More about Mr. Hardberger on Wikipedia.
Environmental
Veronica Brieno Rankin
Maritime Operations & Offshore Health, Safety, and Environmental Compliance
Veronica Brieno Rankin, LL.M. is Founder and President of GeoSeq® International, LLC and Associate Editor for Oil, Gas, and Energy Law (OGEL) Intelligence. A former Commissioned Officer of the NOAA Corps, the Nation’s 7th uniformed service, she possesses unique professional shiphandling experience in offshore environments.
Veronica presently serves in the US Coast Guard Auxiliary, the Texas Maritime Regiment of the Texas State Guard, and is an Ambassador to The Seasteading Institute. Veronica was an Invited Expert Reviewer to four Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports leading up to the organization’s 2007 Nobel Peace Prize Co-Laureate Award and presently serves as an Invited Expert Review to the IPCC’s upcoming Fifth Assessment Report.
Rachel Barge
Environmental Advisor
Ms. Rachel Barge is a Partner at Greenstart, a venture firm and design studio for digital cleantech companies. Greenstart runs a “design accelerator” program where startups receive $115,000 and expert mentorship in business model, UX, brand and capital design. As head of communications at Greenstart, Rachel is charged with telling the stories of the entrepreneurs who are transforming the multi-trillion dollar energy market with software. Before coming to Greenstart, she founded Campus InPower, a national consultancy that implemented large-scale financial mechanisms for campus sustainability. During the first year of the initiative, Ms. Barge raised $16 million and trained over 2,000 students from over 250 universities. She then became Director of the Business Council on Climate Change and later Executive Director of CleantechU. As an undergraduate student, she helped establish a $2 million Green Fund that tripled the amount of capital available for campus sustainability at UC Berkeley.
Ms. Barge is winner of the David Brower Youth Award, the nation’s top prize for young environmental leaders, as well as the Morris K. Udall Fellowship, a federal award recognizing top environmental leaders on college campuses. She holds a BS in Conservation & Resource Studies and Forestry from UC Berkeley.
Joe Nash
Environmental Advisor
Joe Nash has over 45 years’ experience in environmental and regulatory policy. His broad-based experience is unique: he has both technical experience as a manager and policy analyst at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy and as an executive of several consulting firms. He has extensive experience in the implementation of numerous environmental laws and regulations that include developing position/policy/briefing papers, briefing senior executives, and directing the development of regulations. Mr. Nash developed a business plan for advising Boards of Directors and CEOs of large and mid-size companies on strategies for attaining “GREEN” company excellence using the Triple Bottom Line approach of incorporating economic, environmental and social value. Mr. Nash was also President of the College of William and Mary’s Advisory Board for the Thomas Jefferson Program for Public Policy. He has recently written five articles on Virginia’s energy plan, and in October 2012 was appointed to a four-year term on the Virginia State Water Control Board.
Immigration
Ronald R. Rose
Immigration
Ronald R. Rose is one of the founding partners of Rose Carson Kaplan Choi & White LLP. He has been practicing law for over twenty five years, primarily focusing on cross-border, high technology and entertainment law matters. Mr. Rose has represented a large number of successful Silicon Valley based start-up companies over the years. He is a member of the State Bar of California, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, and the International Bar Association.
