Max works as creative director at VISUALIS, a interactive design boutique specialized in experience design and online strategy.

His main area of expertise is user experience design for the web.
After being involved in a large amount of online projects for corporate clients, he recently focused his attention on the startup scene where he’s involved in a series of startups in Romania, Germany and the UK.

Max would be happy to help you with pretty much every aspect of user experience design, like interaction design, user interface design, information design and so on.

Get in touch:

maximilian.marele@visualis.ro
http://visualis.ro
http://twitter.com/marele
http://linkedin.com/in/marele

September 28, 2010 – London, England: Brainient, an interactive advertising platform which is set to revolutionize the online video advertising industry has just secured $800,000 in VC funding. The financing round is led by Venture Capital Investor Arts Alliance, whose investments include LOVEFILM, Kenshoo, Opera Software and lastminute.com and a group of prominent individuals including Dave McClure, Sherry Coutu, Alex Hoye and Algy Williams.

Brainient has created an innovative platform that enables brands to easily add layers of interactive “add-ons” to their video adverts. Publishers & agencies can head to the BrainStudio Library and get access to “layers” which they can easily place inside their video adverts by using a drag & drop interface.

Video advertising has been on an incredible growth path over the past few years and is expected to reach $3.3 billion globally by 2012. However, advertisers saw declining completion rates for video pre-rolls (video adverts that appear before a video stream) in the first half of 2010 versus 2009.
“According to eMarketer, 36% of online video viewers click away when they get a video pre-roll before the content they want to watch. I think interactive video advertising fills a crucial gap in the market as publishers and advertisers look for new ways to keep consumers engaged with their video adverts” said Mr. Gal.
Brainient’s layers are designed to help consumers interact with video adverts. “Think of being able to book a test-drive while watching a video advert for the new BMW Z4 or ordering a DVD while you watch the new Harry Potter trailer. We’ve created a platform that gives brands and advertising agencies endless possibilities for engaging viewers, and we think the timing couldn’t be better” said Emi.

By moving towards a more interactive advertising model, Emi strongly believes that Brainient can help boost the falling profits of newspapers, magazines and TV channels as they struggle to find a model to make online video profitable. “Interactive advertising helps brands create adverts that consumers actually enjoy, rather than forcing them to watch a pre-roll they don’t want to watch. And because the results they get are three to four times better, they’re willing to pay a premium, which helps video publishers make video advertising increasingly lucrative” adds Emi.

Brainient, which is Emi’s third company, was founded in late 2008. In 2009, the company won the early stage UK start-up competition Seedcamp Week, and received €50,000 in seed funding. It also became part of the Global Entrepreneur Programme, a UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) initiative helping entrepreneurs move to the UK and establish their Global headquarters here.

Thomas Hoegh, founder of Arts Alliance said: “Brainient is leading the way in a young but fast-growing market. We’re excited both by Brainient’s platform, and by Emi’s ability to quickly become a market leader in what is a complex and competitive space.”

Notes for Editor
For further information please contact:
Emi Gal, CEO
emi@brainient.com
+44 (0) 778 721 2915
+44 (0) 203 286 9747
For further information on Brainient please visit http://brainient.com

Dan has more than 20 years of experience in IT with a strong financial background. He started as a junior programmer in 1987, worked 5 years for BCR as senior programmer until 2006 when he switched to telecom industry in management positions.

Since 2003 he joined Voxline, first Romanian mobile aggregator, founded in 1998, where he launched first sms promotion in Romania in 2004 and first local mobile adver game in 2007. Dan was a pioneer of interactive telecom services and he was involved in several online business in the period 1998-2001: internet service provider, online publishing, online multiplayer game, online advertising, online shop.

Since 2003 Dan is involved as General Manager of Voxline in mobile areas related to mobile marketing, mobile payments, mobile content and mobile web. Dan has a strong financial expertise with more than 10 years experience in Romanian Accounting System and GAAP practice. He has also more than 10 years of marketing and management experience and body regulators negotiations.

He is a fan of entrepreneurship as this is the way to set you free and work for fun more than working for money.

Bogdan Lucaciu is an IT entrepreneur, problem solver and jack-of-all-trades.

He led System & Network Solutions’  development adventures  for five years, then founded Sinapticode, a software development company,  in 2008.

He has been involved in large web, multimedia (digital cinema, video streaming) and telecommunications projects. His specialty: absolute best bang for buck through extreme pragmatism.

Bogdan can help you with performance and scalability,  web development and infrastructure,   unix & network programming or system integration. He’d love to take a stab at your technical puzzles or share some of his  stories from the wonderful world of software development.

Get in touch:
Twitter: http://twitter.com/bogdanlucaciu
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/bogdan.lucaciu
Company: http://www.sinapticode.com/
Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/bogdanlucaciu
Email: bogdan at lucaciu dot info

Anatolie is a veteran of video game development with 14 years in the games industry and 8 preceding years in general software engineering. A Romanian born in the USSR, he immigrated to US after trying his hand at a couple successful post-soviet software startups. During his career as a video game developer he implemented and published games across PC, consoles and internet, managed coding teams of up to 30 people, on projects of up to $80 mln production budget.

Currently Anatolie is a Technical Director at Big Bang Entertainment, among other projects helping Sony Online Entertainment develop the highly acclaimed Free Realms MMO that scored 10 mln players in less than a year since launch.

Feel free to ask questions pertaining to any areas of game development: tech, design, production, management, etc.

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/anatolie
Blog: http://anatolie.us
Email: mail@anatolie.us

Adrian Niculescu is Business Development Manager and Partner in a group of companies with activities in Real Estate Brokerage, Home Entertainment and Marketing.

Due to his professional background, Adrian invested in ventures related with development of websites and blogs, IT distribution, events, corporate PR and communications, music and videogames and is active in publishing articles in online and offline press around the world regarding his areas of expertise. He also attends national and international conferences as speaker and enjoys a DJ-ing career.

Adrian finished The Faculty for International Relations at the Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest, Romania, has two masters – Economics and Online Marketing and is involved in an MBA (Cnam Paris) and an EMBA (Business School Netherlands).

Adrian was trained as business consultant in Strategic Management, People Management and Company Organization, Real Estate brokerage and also has a degree in Train the Trainers specialization. Other trainings include Landmark Education (US), Photo Reading (Learning Strategies, US) and various specializations related with Microsoft technologies.
Adrian is available for consultancy and support in: blogging, social media marketing, overall marketing strategy, corporate strategy, PR and communications.

Contact: adrian.niculescu@kbc.ro
www.adrianniculescu.com

Mihai Mafteianu is a serial entrepreneur and IT advisor. In the last five years he founded and managed half a dozen technology companies, both as an entrepreneur and as a business consultant for foreign investors. 

He is helping startups do customer development, manage the initial uncertainties, launch a minimum viable product and iterate the feedback received from the customers fast into a new product release. 

Mihai has a Law degree as well as a degree in Public Administration. 

His current focus is to help local startups make a difference in the global startup landscape and make Romania a global brand as a technology innovator. 

Get in touch:

http://ro.linkedin.com/in/mihaimafteianu

http://twitter.com/mihaim

http://www.mafteianu.com/

Paul has been living in Romania for 7 years and he is passionate about three things: People, Business and Romania. He has led large teams in Sales, Marketing, Customer Care and Strategic Planning over a 25 year business career and was involved in successful investment ventures in Telecommunications including Wireless, Satellite, WiFi, WiMAX, fixed line as well as Real estate.

Paul leads Renaud Investments, a Strategy and Marketing consultancy and effectively coaches CEOs and management teams in areas such as restructuring, innovation, planning and leadership.

Paul considers himself a Marketing enthusiast and a consummate networker with a Can-do attitude.  He is also very familiar with the unique challenges of growing and managing a business in developing markets having lived in 10 countries. 

Although he has also taught courses in Sales, Entrepreneurship and Strategy, he now focuses his attention on Marketing, Branding and Market Research with Central European University in Bucharest.

http://www.linkedin.com/in/pauljrrenaud 

www.renaud-investments.ro

Maria worked in software development for more than 10 years, both locally and abroad. She is founder and coordinator of the Romanian Agile community Agile Works Romania and owner of Mosaic Works, a company offering hands-on consultancy, coaching and training services in software development area.

From Software Developer to Agile Practitioner & Coach, Maria is supporting quality software, Software Craftsmanship and people passionate about their craft. She talks at conferences and organizes the OpenAgile Romania conference.

Due to her 5 years hands-on experience of helping product teams develop the right features in the shortest time, Product Owners to build successful products and owners/managers to better organize their companies, she can help startups with: product planning, Agile adoption (thinking incrementally & iteratively, Scrum, Extreme Programming, Lean Software Development, Kanban & others), coaching for performance(managers, product owners and team leaders/facilitators/Scrum Masters) and lean management.

Get in touch:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/mariadiaconu
www.mozaicworks.com