Fred Boos, Founder & Chief Inventor
Fred Boos invented the RocketBux model in 2006. But the long road leading to his epiphany began about 10 years earlier when Fred foresaw limitless opportunities in the world of online advertising. He chose to put aside his pursuit of a law degree, and jumped full-force into online ad sales, starting with Silicon Valley darling, CNET.
In short order, he had a brainstorm: his clients would only pay for advertising when consumers clicked and purchased. At first, CNET executives were quite reluctant since order tracking from click, purchase and redemption was a difficult and unproven process at the time. Fred worked with the CNET programmers and a third-party auditor and a new approach to online advertising—CPC or Cost Per Conversion—was born. And that first CPC sale was the seed that would eventually result in RocketBux.
Fred's vision with RocketBux is to take the power of CPC to brick and mortar merchants—a true application of merchants paying when a consumer takes an action.
"What a waste of ad dollars when a 30-something guy sees an ad for maternity wear three times in one day, or I receive an expensive and completely non-targeted coupon in the mail” says Fred. “Advertisers, especially smaller merchants, currently have a terribly inefficient vehicle to promote their goods and services. Coupons have survived too long when you consider the energy required to issue, redeem, track and dispose of them. It’s time for a change.”
“I’m taking my years of experience with hundreds of online merchants and putting it to use in the world where most of us continue to spend most of our money—in our cities and towns. This has never been done in a fully-automated and efficient way before. The technology has now arrived to make this not only possible, but incredibly fun and profitable for both consumer and merchant,” adds Fred.
Fred attended UCLA and UC Berkeley with focuses in journalism and law. He currently resides with his family in Bend, OR. Fred’s other accomplishments include two national road cycling championships and a silver medal from the 1992 Barcelona Olympic cycling trials. Fred co-founded MG Sports Marketing which is credited with starting the cycling team that would eventually garner 7 Tour de France victories with racer Lance Armstrong.
Tony Westerberg, Corporate Secretary
As a founding partner in RocketBux Tony brings a deep experience in the finance and investment realm to the company. Since 1991 he has been integral to the success of Spring Capital Group (www.springcapitalgroup.com), serving as Partner since 1998. SCG is a highly successful private investment firm with interests in Real Estate and Venture investment.
In addition to participating in the early stage funding of RocketBux, Tony brings broad finance and operations experience to the team, having organized and managed multiple investment and development initiatives with an aggregated value in excess of $500,000,000. Along with his experience in marketing, management, and finance, Tony brings to RocketBux a track record of success, and high level relationships across a diverse set of organizations which are important to the future success of the company.
Paul Willerton, Director of Marketing
Paul brings a diverse twenty-year background in marketing to RocketBux. His knowledge of merchants, mobile devices, networking, advertising, and web developement make him an instrumental part of the RocketBux team.
Most recently, Paul served as Vice President of DeFeet International from 2004 to 2006, having been VP Marketing there since 2000. During Paul's eight year career as a professional cyclist, he was intimately involved in marketing and product developement with more than 40 companies.
Paul brings a lot of enthusiasm to RocketBux. He is perpetually excited to be applying himself in the 'mobile' space. "The realization that the mobile device is completely pervasive now and will be used in entirely new ways in the future is big to me. These are trends that will continue to grow and improve for the rest of our lives.
Doug Kilgour, VP Business Development
Douglas Kilgour joins RocketBux from Santa Clara California-based ViVOtech Inc. where he directed the business development efforts for ViVOtech enterprise software products. ViVOtech (www.vivotech.com) is the market leader in contactless payment software, transaction management systems and readers. These solutions allow consumers to make contactless payments with radio frequency-enabled credit cards, debit cards, key fobs, and NFC enabled mobile phones.
Prior to ViVOtech, Inc., Kilgour served as Vice President, Sales and Marketing at Detroit Michigan-based Catuity Inc. where he lead sales initiatives both in the U.S. and globally for this leading loyalty software company, targeting Associations, Issuers and Merchants as well as directing Catuity’s Channel Partner efforts.
From May 2001 until joining Catuity Kilgour was the Vice President, Financial Services Markets for Xdrive Technologies, then a leader in enterprise software solutions for information management via the Internet. In the late 1990’s he was co-founder of Smart Card Retail Systems, a pioneer in chip card-based gift card programs for shopping malls.
Walt Granville, VP Sales
Walt Granville joins the Rocketbux team bringing 15
years of sales experience in the card and payment
processing industry. Most recently, Walt served as
the Vice President of Sales for Affinion Loyalty Group
(ALG) where he directed the sales of points-based
loyalty programs to the major card associations, card
issuers and processors. Prior to his 8 year tenure at
ALG, Walt focused on an entrepreneurial effort; owning
and operating an successful ISO in the merchant
acquisition business. Additional industry experience
includes 6 years of direct sales for various business
units at First Data Corporation including credit
approval, credit modeling and processing.
Nancy W Frisch, Director of Consumer Relations
Nancy has 30 years of experience having researched human behavior change and communication as a Research Associate at the University at Wisconsin-Madison and at the University of Oregon. She has consulted with and counseled individuals and groups in multiple organizations including Nike, Canyon Ranch Spa, the AMA and OMA, Standard Insurance, Broker, Accountant, and Attorney groups. Some of her many credits include multiple publications in the area of behavior and cognitive change. Nancy was a regular television, radio, and newspaper psychotherapist for many years. She understands from a data based perspective how to anticipate consumer needs and evaluate them. Nancy has placed her focus on the relationship between the mobile device and the consumer in the retail environment.