Meet the Chatroll Team!
Chatroll was founded by Francis Ma and Jonathan McGee.
Francis and Jonathan previously worked at Amazon.com and Microsoft
where they worked on user interfaces, operating systems, and large-scale e-commerce systems.
They now live in Toronto, Canada.
About the Founders
Prior to co-founding Chatroll, Francis worked at Amazon.com
where he held software development and management positions in the Seller Platform and Item Management groups.
He has extensive experience leading and building large-scale distributed software, including web services for real-time financial calculation and product information retrieval.
Francis graduated from the University of Waterloo with a BASc in Computer Engineering.
Prior to co-founding Chatroll, Jonathan worked at Amazon.com on the retail site interface,
including a redesign of the Amazon.com home page.
Before that he worked at Microsoft on the new user interface for
Windows Vista called
Aero.
Jonathan graduated from the University of Waterloo with a BMath in Computer Science.
He is French-Canadian, loves skiing, good food, and good music, and was voted most likely to be a comedian in grade school.
The Chatroll Story
Everyone has interests they're passionate about. And everyone loves to connect with others who share their interests.
Before we came up with Chatroll, our interests included watching funny videos,
keeping up with sports like basketball and hockey,
traveling, playing golf and
scotch tasting, just to name a few.
We found no shortage of information surrounding our interests on the web. The internet provided instant access to millions of articles and thousands of forums surrounding almost any interest. But we found the experience lacking. Simply put, people still felt "distant" on the web. Where was the human connection? Wouldn't it be great if we could:
Imagine a place that combines the interactivity of an instant messenger, the connectivity of a social network, the niche of a discussion forum and the serendipity of a social bookmarker. A place that restores the human connection. That's the experience we envision with Chatroll.
We found no shortage of information surrounding our interests on the web. The internet provided instant access to millions of articles and thousands of forums surrounding almost any interest. But we found the experience lacking. Simply put, people still felt "distant" on the web. Where was the human connection? Wouldn't it be great if we could:
- Get notified immediately when one of our friends finds a funny video on the web?
- Stay connected with other scotch drinkers, without having to "add them as a friend" on our personal networks?
- Learn about the latest golf equipment and news from direct live conversation with other passionate golfers?
- Get all the information about our interests delivered live, in one place, without reloading our web browser?
Imagine a place that combines the interactivity of an instant messenger, the connectivity of a social network, the niche of a discussion forum and the serendipity of a social bookmarker. A place that restores the human connection. That's the experience we envision with Chatroll.
