What is Tagwhat?
Tagwhat is the most comprehensive feed of hyperlocal content in the world. Its award-winning mobile apps instantly find and deliver actionable content about the places around you. Tagwhat delivers the right content to the right people at the right time so that you never miss what’s happening nearby again.
Tagwhat Founders
Dave A. Elchoness
Co-founder and CEO
Dave is an attorney and executive turned start up guy, whose earliest memories are of his grandmother’s tales of life in 1920’s Brooklyn and his dad’s stories about places they passed on long car rides to the beach. Dave started his career working for major law firms, as lead counsel to Qwest Communications’ senior management, and then as an executive overseeing an international IT team. But as time passed, Dave followed his passion telling everyone who would listen about the promise of social media. Soon, he took to the road to share his expertise with periodicals, companies, and audiences in far off places like Amsterdam, New Delhi, and even the OC. It was during this time that Dave realized that his dreams about location based media were rapidly becoming possible and he called Don and Angus to form the team that would become among the first mobile augmented reality developers anywhere. Tagwhat is the natural next step in this journey. Dave loves what he does most days and is a husband, a dad, and a graduate of Rutgers University and the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of International Economic Law.
Angus Shee
Co-founder and CTO
Meet Angus, he’s obsessed with gadgets. From his beloved smartphone to the thing you pour wine through that automatically aerates your drink. If it makes life easier and smarter, game on. But even today’s most advanced mobile technologies have left a huge gap between our real and digital lives. What if all the information from the web about the world around us was instantly available, everywhere we went? Um, game on. For Angus, Tagwhat fulfills a dream for the ultimate “gadget” that completely changes the way people are able to interact with the real world. Angus is a defense industry Fellow Engineer turned full-time mobile junky. He designed next-generation electronics for the most advanced radar systems on Earth. His specific expertise lies in non-traditional product design through the strategic blending of cutting-edge and existing technologies (hence his love for innovative gadgets). Beyond mind-blowing gadgets, Angus is also obsessed with being a loving husband and father to his wonderful wife and son. He is a graduate of the Johns Hopkins University.
Donald M. Cramer
Co-founder and CIO
Over the course of 20 years in computing, Don has honed his skills in software development becoming fluent in PHP, SQL/MySQL, HTML, XML, JavaScript, AJAX, PERL, Java, CSS, and Windows C/C++, and others. Additionally, Don has over 10 years experience in server setup, hardening, configuring and deployment, including base OS install, network setup, server configuration, installation of required software (Apache, PHP, Database,etc and configuration) either through pre-provided packages or custom builds, network configuration (both private and public) and setting up remote secure persistent connections between the LAN to remote networks. He has deployed complete systems ranging from single server to multi-server deployments for scalability and high availability as well as data redundancy. Don's expertise lies in the management and distribution of high volume web application and database traffic. He believes that unique implementations of cloud computing technology will be critical in providing the data availability and redundancy necessary to process and deliver the magnitude of data that mobile users will soon demand.
Tagwhat Staff
Sara Fossum
Multimedia Content Producer
Growing up, one of Sara’s fondest memories was when her father gave her a book highlighting all the Pulitzer Prize winners for photojournalism. The power of those photos and their corresponding stories blew her away. It was then that she decided to pursue a career in visual storytelling. Her greatest experience to date was when she studied abroad in Fiji. Fiji’s history is rooted in oral storytelling, a now-endangered tradition. Sitting around the kava bowl and listening to the elders of the village speak made her realize that it is important to maintain these stories. She’s attracted to Tagwhat because this application aims to document the stories that might otherwise never be recorded. Other non-Tagwhat related enjoyments in Sara’s life: photography, art, traveling far away as humanly possible, exploring small towns, long road trips to nowhere in particular, trailing running, kicking people (tae kwon do style) and a glass of good wine coupled with equally good conversation.
Lauren Walter
Multimedia Content Producer
“Curious” is not only a word that describes Lauren Walter, it’s also one of her favorite words. It’s defined as one who is “marked by the desire to investigate and learn,” which is exactly what she has always done, both in school and at Tagwhat. As part of the generation that saw cells phones become commonplace and Google become a verb, she finds it exciting to work with a company that is continuing that tech evolution by developing a new way to bring the real world and the virtual world together seamlessly. (However, she’ll leave the tech side to someone else. She tends to crash electronics just by looking at them.) Her real love lies in satisfying her curious nature by delving into a new place and teasing out the story there. She holds two degrees from the University of Colorado at Boulder- a BS in Journalism and a BA in Studio Art with a focus on Photography. She was the photo editor of the school paper, the CU: Independent.
Tagwhat Advisory Board
Steve Bernstein
Advisory Board Member
Steve Bernstein is a finance professional based in Hong Kong. Formerly Chief Executive Officer of Oppenheimer Investments Asia Ltd. Steve has been covering Asia since 1983 and spent five years in Japan during his successful 23-year career at Citigroup. Before joining Citigroup, Steve ran the International Fixed Income Sales division at Salomon Brothers. He moved to Tokyo in 1994 to run Asia Fixed Income Sales and Trading and ultimately served as Chief Administrative Officer of the joint venture Nikko Salomon Smith Barney. Returning to the U.S. in 1999 as senior staff to the Chairman and CEO of Salomon Smith Barney, Steve worked on planning and strategy for the Corporate and Investment Bank, integrating acquisitions such as Schroeders PLC and overseeing disaster planning and business continuity in the wake of the September 11 attacks. In 2003, he was tapped to run Global Securities Services in the Corporate and Investment Bank. Steve retired from Citi in 2005.
Roger Wood
Advisory Board Member
Roger Wood is currently Vice President, Digital Media for a division of Hearst Corporation. He is responsible for advertising campaign development, planning and buying for all social, video, mobile and traditional web media. Roger is an international marketing executive with 20 years of experience at the intersection of digital media, analytics, and advertising at both early-stage and Fortune 1000 companies. He has led marketing operations in 184 countries and has been a consistent figure in every major stage of the Mobile Web and Internet industry since 1993. Prior to Hearst Corp., he was a co-founder, board member, and investor in several start-up companies in digital advertising, social media monetization, and was a founding figure in the mobile advertising industry, helping form several Silicon Valley start-ups focused in the space. His career began in mobile on the founding team of the two most successful start-ups in the history of wireless: iDEN/Nextel (Acquired by Sprint); and Omnipoint (acquired by T-Mobile USA). Roger was prepared at Wardlaw-Hartridge School, and continued his education at his family’s alma mater, Morehouse and Spelman Colleges, earning his degree in Statistics and Marketing. He pursued his graduate work in Computer Science at Columbia University, and earned an MBA from Harvard Business School.
