Executive Team & Board
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David Hyman
Founder, CEO
David Hyman, a self-proclaimed music junkie, is CEO and founder of MOG, the premier destination for music fans to learn about and discover music. Before starting MOG, David served as CEO of Gracenote, the world’s largest music database and music-identification service, which sold to Sony for $260 million in 2008. Previously, he was SVP of Marketing at MTV Interactive, and he co-founded Addicted to Noise, the webzine that pioneered multimedia music reporting and around-the-clock music news.
Finding himself at the intersection of music and technology, David is a frequent speaker at conferences such as CES, SXSW, and Digital Hollywood. In 2008, he founded Musica Tecnomica, a regular gathering of music-focused innovators in San Francisco.
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T. Jay Fowler
Product Lead
T. Jay is a huge music fan with a huge music collection that spans back to his days working at record stores, writing reviews, and seeing shows. His mom, while responsible for the start of his life, was not responsible for his taste in music (she liked Richard Clayderman and Frank Mills), though his dad did have a big influence. His desert island picks range from Pinback and Radiohead to Harry Nilsson and Echo & the Bunnymen. His new media life started at suck.com where he was the resident butt of jokes, and most recently he led teams at Yahoo! News. He spends his days creating specs, drawing wireframes and coming up with new ideas.
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Heather Wajer
CMO
Heather has been hooked on music ever since seeing her first live show with Siouxsie and the Banshees and P.I.L in the 80s. She entered the digital music scene at the end of the 90s working for the digital music pioneer MP3.com. One of her first assignments was to go out on tour with the Goo Goo Dolls and Tonic on the MP3.com Music and Technology Tour to turn people on to new-fangled things like “beaming” their CDs into a locker to stream their music from anywhere. After coming back relatively unscathed from months living on a tour bus she went to work driving user acquisition, retention and brand building initiatives for MP3.com, eMusic and later BabyCenter.com.
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David Rotenberg
CFO
David has been a music fan since first hearing the Beach Boys and the Four Seasons on a transistor radio. He has a spreadsheet for every occasion, including one for his vast inventory of music and concert DVDs. He likes to listen to the Velvet Underground, Psychedelic Furs, Depeche Mode, New Order, Cause and Effect, Sigur Ros and Assemblage 23. His daughter favors the Backyardigans and Anpanman. He is the proud owner of 3 picture discs of Mr. T's Commandment and 13 copies of Raw Power by Iggy & the Stooges.
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Alex Brough
SVP, Sales
Alex joined MOG last year and currently runs the sales office out of Venice, CA. Alex ran the West Coast ad sales for eight years at MTV Online, handling the business first as a solo act, then building a team that delivered over $25 million in revenues. As a young boy, custom-painted guitars in the spirit of Eddie Van Halen's axes were common at his house... except these were made of plywood and rubberbands. Alex's calling in sales began in high school, selling knives door-to-door, which helped to pay for his Phish concerts attending college in Vermont, and seeing them coast to coast. No Lie: Seen over 230 Phish shows and counting!
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Drew Denbo
SVP, Business Development
Drew has been hooked on recorded and live music ever since his first concert with The Church and Peter Murphy at the Orpheum in San Francisco. His introduction to the music business was while in college at Washington and Lee University, in Virginia where he booked the bands for the school, bringing in artists such as George Clinton and The P-Funk All Stars, Drivn n Cryin and the Hoodoo Gurus. Drew has over 10 years of experience in the digital music industry and comes to MOG from Rhapsody where he licensed music and executed strategic distribution deals. He most recently led Rhapsody's consumer electronics business development, negotiating and managing partnerships with major corporations such as Sony, Samsung, Philips, Vizio, SanDisk and Logitech. Drew completed his MBA at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business.
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Sonja Hoel Perkins
Board Director
Sonja started her music career at an early age where she sang in the high school choir and was briefly a back-up singer for a neighborhood band. Unable to secure her dream job with the Rolling Stones, she persued a career in venture capital. Sonja is passionate about early stage companies, having spent over 20 years investing in and helping build great technology companies. Sonja loves live music and still can recall most lyrics of hit songs of the 1960's, 1970's and 1980's. More recently, Sonja has been helping to produce an original musical by three-time Grammy award winning singer-songwriter Bruce Hornsby.
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Scott Jones
Board Director
As close to Bruce Wayne/Batman as one could possibly be in this world, Scott walked away with MTV’s “Best Crib” Award (of the decade) in 2009.  As Gracenote’s founding Chairman, Scott brought together the people and technologies to forge the company that dominates the world of music identification and discovery, which was sold to Sony in 2008 for $260 million. Before that, he invented the voicemail that is most used around the world today, and he built a company to deliver it.  Scott’s new passion is ChaCha (text 242242), which is like having a smart friend to answer all your questions for free from any mobile phone. For fun, he likes building jeep-sized robots that drive across the desert by themselves and inventing never-been-seen-before holiday light displays on steroids. Interesting factoid: When Scott goes to restaurants, he will often order every single dessert on the menu.
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Rick Rubin
Board Director
The Grammy-winning Rubin has produced albums for some of music's biggest names, including the Dixie Chicks, Neil Diamond, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Metallica, Tom Petty, the Beastie Boys, Johnny Cash, System of a Down, and Run DMC. In May, 2007, Rubin joined Columbia Records in a unique executive and creative partnership with Rob Stringer and Steve Barnett. Rubin is also the co-founder of Def Jam Recordings.
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Steve Simon
Patron Saint
In an effort to flee the ho-hum real estate business, Steve found solace by investing in cool businesses such as Gracenote, Method, Yes to Carrots and Pinkberry. He hit the mother lode when his mother dumped her entire record (yes, vinyl!) collection on him at age 13. Thus the Dead, Beatles, Stones, Coltrane, Traffic and Dylan were his life and breath growing up.
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