We are Rival IQ.

From making big strategic decisions to helping customers in our support queue to stocking the office shelves with healthy snacks, John keeps the trains on the tracks at Rival IQ. Founding companies is in his blood, and we like to think we’re at least tied for his favorite startup that he’s ever started with Seth Pollack and Seth Bridges.

He’s a lifelong Washingtonian who can often be found jetsetting across the globe when he’s not heading up the one-man Orcas Island Rival IQ HQ. He loves planning his next travel adventure (or at least his next ferry ride) and is our resident Old Fashioned bartender extraordinaire.

Seth is a true Northwest guy — he grew up in Seattle, he’s an engineer, and he loves the outdoors. When he’s not coding or in the mountains, he loves adventuring around the Puget Sound (and the world!) with his family.

Another Northwest box that Seth checks is “I did some really cool stuff in the 90s at Microsoft.” Having started and led the Active Server Pages (ASP) product at Microsoft, he really knows about building reliable, scalable software. He’s done a bunch of other great stuff, too, including founding V2Green with a couple other folks on this team.

This company was founded on nerdery and 200% more Seths than the average tech startup, and Doc delivers on both fronts. He wears a million different hats and is known to get his hands dirty doing a little bit of everything from marketing to data analysis and back again. He’s also the pioneer of the “Doc Special,” where you ship something directly to production without extensive testing, only to have it waiting to bite you later. Ask us about his hit rate there.

His nickname is the result of a land-grab on the name from the other Seth, who sneakily nicknamed Doc after he earned his doctorate in Computer Science at UW. Well played, Seth Pollack. When he’s not in back-to-back meetings or nitpicking marketing images (or anything, really), he loves hanging with his wife and sons or getting some outside time biking, hiking, or even just sitting.

With experience as a business owner, Cat brings a true sense of understanding to the marketing challenges our customers face. Whether at Digg Fitness or Grand Canyon University, she’s spent much of her career honing her client success skills. If you’re lucky enough to work with her, you’ll see what we mean.

Originally from El Paso, TX, Cat graduated from Baylor University in 2009. But all that Texas heritage couldn’t keep her around (nor could getting lost and subsequently rescued from the Franklin Mountains on a proposal “hike”). In 2017, she and her spouse made the jump to the Pacific Northwest, and we couldn’t be happier that they did. Outside of work, Cat loves hanging with family, whether it’s hiking, camping, or studying dinosaur encyclopedias!

Denna joins Rival IQ to tackle the giant job of Product Manager, AKA herding all our engineering, design, and copy cats to ship new features and make our app awesome for customers.

When she isn’t wrangling Rival IQers, she makes the most of her Utah residence by hiking, camping, paddleboarding, and snow-frolicking as much as possible with her husband and adorable pup Toko. If she’s not taking in the great outdoors, you might find her huddled over a sewing machine trying to top her all-time favorite Halloween costume: a peacock complete with articulating tail. Denna brings her creativity and relentless drive for success for everything from peacocks to product design in her work at Rival IQ.

Mary joins our engineering team to write code by day and jump out of planes by night, making us wonder if we inadvertently hired a superhero/software dev combo. Thankfully, we already have a few plane-obsessed engineers on the team to help her get the hang (and drop) of things.

We’re told that in her off hours she spends her time knitting and baking up a storm, though we have neither the sweaters nor the brownies to prove it (curse you, remote work!). She’s also a passionate cat mom and a voracious storyteller. Just ask her about her stint in People Magazine, why all she wants for Christmas is two new front teeth, or the title of her as-yet-unwritten autobiography and prepare to be amazed.

Though originally from the Bay Area, Blair fully considers herself a Seattleite at this point. Blair is in charge of words at Rival IQ, and regards the pen mightier than the sword (which is good, because she has no proficiency with a sword).

When not filing UX bugs that only she would care about, Blair manages to make free time for her other loves. She’s a voracious reader (119 books just last year!) and loves to spend time cooking and baking. We hear that she even used to be a rock band drummer, so we’re thinking about getting a group together now. Check back soon for our band name. It’s going to be great.

When she’s not driving her kids all over the Puget Sound for sports or traversing the world on amazing family adventures, Lisa makes everything look good at Rival IQ. She brings her world-class design talents to our team after a decade (or two) wearing many creative hats at ESPN. Lisa’s gorgeous design aesthetic, digital marketing chops, and lightning-fast Sketch skills have seriously upped our product and marketing game.

Lisa loves the outdoors and traveling to cultures she’s never experienced before with her husband and two kids. She’s made a serious dent in our Diet Coke stash, but if that’s what it takes to power this graphic designergizer bunny, we’re not complaining.

Not many teams can boast a software developer who moonlights as a cut flower farmer (or is it the other way around?), which is why we’re so stoked to welcome Sam’s nerdy floral talents to our team. Between bug bashing and all the actual bugs that live on flower farms, Sam isn’t afraid to get her hands dirty at work.

She has plenty to keep her busy on and off the farm, like mountain biking, hanging with her family, and exploring the rich history of the Northeast in her off hours.

A self-described “grizzled software curmudgeon,” Keith comes to Rival IQ with a software engineering toolkit honed over many decad…er, years. He’s spent time everywhere from Microsoft (almost prehistoric era) to some hipster startups in Portland, OR, and a bunch of places in between – including a stint at GridPoint with some other Rival IQers.

While not sitting in front of a computer, Keith is either hanging out with his wife and their tiger-cats (which are different than Thundercats), or he is out riding some super long bike route with his randonneuring buddies. Regardless of where he is, he’s probably being a smart ass.

A Seattleite by way of Illinois and India, Maria joins our team to handle all things digital marketing. From SEO to paid ads to oodles of social media posting and analysis, Maria is our go-to for reaching potential customers authentically with just a mild amount of stalking.

Outside of work, Maria loves to travel with her family and play with her two sons. (We’re told her analytical skills from a former life as an engineer come in especially handy when judging paper airplane contests at home.) When she’s not lamenting the rain in Seattle, she can be found on a stand-up paddleboard in one of our beautiful lakes or inside baking up a storm in every season.

Originally from Seattle and a proud UW grad, Mark has made a career of selling SaaS products from some great local companies. Before Rival IQ, Mark spent 4 years with DocuSign, focusing on Commercial Sales. Previously, Mark worked with clients at Onvia, helping them use data to improve their competitive advantage when selling to the government.

Outside the office, Mark is a huge soccer fan, and he loves spending time with his wife and young sons. Plus, as a French literature major in college, you can expect some serious refinement from this guy.

Joey joins Rival IQ to squash all the bugs and write all the code as the newest member of our engineering team. He’s a lifelong Florida fan with a strange-but-true love of humidity and, presumably, alligators. He loves hanging in the Sunshine State with his dog (coincidentally also named Sunshine) and taking the heat up another notch with hobbies like pit mastering at BBQ joints and sweating it out with his buddies in pursuit of his next weightlifting PR.

Speaking of PRs, he’s already chasing the pull request record by checking in oodles of code in his short time here to improve our app and make the Rival IQ experience even better for our customers.

Matt is a real life customer-turned-employee and joins us after a decade as a social media manager, proving once and for all that Rival IQ is good for both social media analytics and changing your life.

When he’s not leaping to help customers in our support queue, he’s building LEGOs with his sons or co-planning the next family adventure to complete the goal of visiting every U.S. National Park. We forgive him for living all the way in Utah because of his rabid commitment to all the Seattle sports teams (and the gear to go along with it).

Not to be stopped, Colin designs it up, then slings front end, back end, and whatever-else-end-you-want code to get you the latest and greatest features in Rival IQ. Despite a college run in the Lone Star state, this Seattle local is 100% a Northwest guy (though we haven’t seen him in socks and sandals, yet).

At home, Colin is a husband and super-dad extraordinaire who loves to spend time with his young daughters. We sometimes wonder if the pensive look on his face is him thinking of how to teach them to code! Or, maybe he’s just thinking about lunch.

Emily joins our team ready to double our product management capabilities and to head up our Midwest office (okay, that office is just her). We’re confident her previous experience in tech combined with her passion for improv will have her saying “yes, and” to even the wackiest ideas on our product roadmap.

When she’s not wrangling our team to roll out the next big Rival IQ feature, she can be found bumping, setting, and spiking on the volleyball court and chowing down on tomatoes, though almost never at the same time. She joins us with confidence, experience, and serious organizational chops–just don’t ask her about her irrational fear of butterflies.

John joins us from our parent company, Quid, to bulk up our engineering team and to double our on-site John presence (watch out, John C.!). We’re told his commitment to wearing shorts year-round sharpens his focus and makes him an extra-effective software bug squasher.

When he’s not coding in shorts, he can be found hanging with his wife and two young kiddos, connecting with fellow kendama enthusiasts on the University of Washington campus, playing guitar, and traveling the world. We feel lucky to have him on loan from his native Taiwan.