Precog is an advanced analytics engine for multi-structured data, which helps companies answer deeper questions on today's diverse data sets.
Precog is the next-generation technology that spawned out of ReportGrid, a 2011 TechStars company. Founded by veteran technologist and entrepreneur John A. De Goes, Precog is making advanced analytics on today's non-relational data sources simple and intuitive, through a combination of disruptive technology and obsessive attention to usability.
Precog is funded by RTP Ventures, Resonant Ventures, Launch Capital, David Cohen, Doug Derwin, Walt Winshall, and other seasoned angels. Its board of directors includes SendGrid CEO Jim Franklin and RTP Ventures Managing Directory Kirill Sheynkman.
John began his journey into computer science at the age of 8, when he taught himself to program BASIC on a Commodore 64. Eight years later, John was writing best-selling books in 3D graphics programming. After graduating Summa Cum Laude with a degree in mathematics, John launched his career as a research and development engineer, eventually turning his creativity toward entrepreneurship. John's latest company was acquired by LivingSocial for technology developed under his leadership as VP of Engineering. With more than a decade of experience in distributed and scientific computing, John is the vision and brains behind Precog, relentlessly pursuing his dream of powering the data-driven future.
When not contributing to open source, speaking at conferences, or working at Precog, John enjoys spending time with his wife and two kids, hiking the Rocky Mountains, cooking fine food, and weight-training like a madman.
Jeff Carr COO Jeff has been passionate about great technology for over 25 years while developing expertise in Business Development, market assessment, strategy and operations. For the past 11 years he has focused exclusively on early stage companies in markets including network security (Vericept,CipherTrust), VOIP (Borderware SIPassure), and Big Data (Precog). The energy and entrepreneurial spirit of startups is what drives him. In his role COO he focuses on go to market strategy and execution, operations and helping build a culture of success.
Jeff's other passions are making great wines and building the community better through technology education.
Franco Ponticelli is an experienced solution architect and developer. An Architecture graduate with specialization in Industrial Design, he performed many different activities in the Information Technology area from 3D Computer Graphics to hard-core software development.
Very active in the Open Source community, he is the author of Haxe/PHP and many other projects including a book on the Haxe development environment.
Over the past 15 years, Derek has held a variety of roles, including network engineer, sysadmin, security architect and software developer. Since 2007, Derek has been an active member of the Scala community, where he developed relationships with many of the people who now make up Precog's stellar engineering group. At Precog, Derek is able to utilize his breadth of knowledge to engineer distributed systems that maximize performance, reliability and customer value.
Outside of work, Derek enjoys exploring all things Colorado (save Rocky Mountain oysters) with his family, including snowboarding, hiking, biking and enjoying our awesome weather.
Kris Nuttycombe didn't start out in technology, but while writing research software while finishing his BA in geology he inadvertently stumbled upon his true passion for computing. An early whirlwind career in the technology startups of the late '90s was followed by years of working on large distributed geospatial data systems for the government while he pursued a Master's in machine learning. Finding the pace of progress in government corridors too slow, he dove back into the startup world in 2007 and has become as passionate about entrepreneurism as he is about writing immaculate software.
When not writing software for work, Kris has far too many things going on in his life. A father of 2, rock climber, biathlete, archer, inveterate gamer, blacksmith, hobby programmer, machinist, gardener, cook, chicken and rabbit raiser, hunter, medieval re-creationist, go-player, and all-around do-everything-yourselfer, he needs more time to sleep.
Matthew has spent the better part of the last decade in the graphic design field. At first, in character/environment illustration and then by adding website and graphic design to his skill set. After years in the freelance community, he accepted a full-time graphic designer position with Precog. If you see a zombie, robot, data-hero, or gradient on this site or in print form, it was likely his brainchild. As graphic designer and web developer for Precog, his mission is to create strong brand recognition, improve website usability and make all Precog visuals amazing.
When he's not stitching together virtual zombies, Matthew enjoys weight training, spending time with his wife, continually improving his artistic talents and listening to audiobooks.
Daniel Spiewak started toying with programming languages at the age of eight. After teaching himself BASIC by trial and error, he ventured forward into Java, Ruby, C++, SML and eventually Scala. Fascinated by the theoretical underpinnings of programming languages, Daniel devoured papers and books on type theory, parser theory and theory of computation. With little else useful to which he could apply such a random collection of arcana, Daniel began to write and speak avidly on the conference circuit, something he continues to this day.
In the time not spent plotting ways to improve Quirrel as a language or streamline its vast underpinnings, Daniel enjoys hiking in the mountains, gaming, playing the piano, reading late-19th century British fiction and teaching himself statistics. He earnestly wishes the personal automobile would be abandoned by society in favor of bicycles and public transit.
Nathan studied Logic, Computation and Methodology at Carnegie Mellon University where his thesis analyzed lending patterns in Kiva microfinance loans. Nathan learned Quirrel while sailing on the Semester at Sea maymester voyage and has been a Precog fan ever since. It is Nathan's job to make customers rave about Precog by creating useful and accessible documentation and tutorials.
Nathan is still trying to crack the Top 100 users on Kaggle. He also enjoys games of all sorts, cooking vegetarian food, playing basketball and showing off his t-shirt collection.
Tom has been programming since he entered his teens. He managed to follow this passion through to university, where he found a particular taste for algorithms and data structures. After school, Tom bounced around a couple hospitals, developing bioinformatics software, before finally landing at Precog.
When not developing software at Precog, Tom develops software at home. When that gets tiring, he likes to cook, work on cars, and enjoy the outdoors (snowboarding, canoeing, camping, and ... playing golf).
Brian started computing at the age of 3 by inputting BASIC commands into an Amstrad CPC. He later started developing websites and learned to properly program with JavaScript. After working as a web developer with PHP and JavaScript, Brian decided to look for something more powerful. He discovered functional programming via Haskell and became a proponent of proofs as programs.
Brian has since created a few popular open-source projects. Roy: a functional language that compiles to JavaScript. Bilby.js: a functional library for JavaScript. OSXMonad: a port of XMonad to Mac OS X.
Alissa Pajer started full-time programming in Scala when she joined the Precog team. Before her coding days, she studied pure mathematics, earning a Bachelors from Carleton College. After graduation she moved to Boulder and spent her time tutoring high school students and undergraduates in math. Hanging around campus, she found herself missing the rigors of academia, so she earned her Masters at CU Boulder. Currently, she works on Quirrel language development and the implementation of machine learning algorithms. She also uses vim. And programs with vigor.
When she's not at work, she's either running up a mountain, riding her bike, swimming at the reservoir, or skiing. She is also known to read books, peruse xkcd, and eat vegan ice cream.
Erik discovered Unix and C in 1999 and never looked back. Since then, he's primarily worked as a systems programmer, on projects ranging from expert systems and data interchange to GIS, modeling and simulation. Since 2010 he's been active in the Scala community, developing compiler plugins and libraries as well as contributing patches to the Scala compiler. His interest in data structures, specialization, and functional programming derives from a fundamental desire to make things fast.
Outside of work Erik spends a lot of time around powerful amplifiers, open source software projects, and urban decay. He is one of the maintainers of the classic rogue-like video game Angband, plays in several bands, and thinks bicycles are the most civilized form of transportation.