About

Smashwords, Inc. Management Team

Mark Coker, Founder, CEO and Chief Author Advocate

Mark Coker founded Smashwords to change the way books are published, sampled, marketed and sold.

Mark is co-author along with his wife, Lesleyann, of Boob Tube, a novel that explores the behind-the-scenes world of daytime television soap operas. It was Mark's frustration trying to get Boob Tube published that inspired him to start Smashwords. He believes Smashwords holds the promise to make publishing more enriching for authors, readers and publishers.

With Mark's previous startup, BestCalls.com, which he launched in 1999, he helped level the playing field for small stock market investors, who at the time were denied access to the earnings conference calls of publicly traded companies. His work with BestCalls, as a champion for fair disclosure, was a catalyst for the SEC’s ground breaking Regulation FD. BestCalls was acquired in 2002 by Shareholder.com and is now owned and operated by the Nasdaq Stock Exchange.

In addition to Mark's work with Smashwords, since 1993 he has owned Dovetail Public Relations, an award-winning Silicon Valley PR firm.

Mark is a long time angel investor and advisor to technology and media startups. He currently serves on the advisory boards of Knowledge Genie, a new digital publishing startup now in stealth, and GetQuik, a provider of restaurant order automation technology and services.  Between 2007 and 2009, Mark served on the advisory board for Flat World Knowledge, the leading publisher of open source textbooks.

Mark is a graduate of the Haas School of Business at U.C. Berkeley, where he received his B.S. in marketing.

For Smashwords updates, follow Mark on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/markcoker

Bill Kendrick, CTO and Developer

Bill Kendrick has been involved in pioneering web software development since the mid-1990s. Bill is chief of pixie dust at Smashwords. He's responsible for the coding behind nearly everything that's cool about Smashwords. Among his body of pre-Smashwords work: a collection of award-winning and browser-independent games, a number of search systems, web-based chat and discussion forum software, a realtime online auction, an extensible events calendar, and a product rating and recommendation system.

Prior to joining Smashwords, Bill worked in the mobile software industry, designing and developing games and applications and helping companies enter the realm of web-based widgets. Prior to that he worked for nerdbooks.com, a brick-and-mortar and online book retailer, where he helped improve and maintain their web-based sales and inventory software.

Keri McKie, CFO

Keri McKie is Smashwords' CFO and sits on the Smashwords Board of Directors. At Smashwords, she is responsible for all things financial, including accounting and author payments. She also manages human resources. She holds a B.A. degree in sociology from U.C. Santa Cruz, and has completed the HR Management Certification Program through the University of California Extension.

Advisory Board

Gordy French

Gordy is Smashwords' former CTO, responsible for creating the foundation architecture for Smashwords. He now works in the IT department at the University of Washington, and continues to consult on development matters for Smashwords. Originally from Seattle where he completed a degree in Informatics from the University of Washington, Gordy has several years of experience with Web technologies and open source software. His programming experience ranges from small-scale business portfolio sites to larger scale applications such as Smashwords with rich and dynamic interfaces.

Prior to joing Smashwords, Gordy served as a contract employee at Google, where he helped develop client libraries for various Google APIs. Before that, he worked for a graphic design company in Seattle creating web sites for small businesses. He also develops many personal projects to explore new ideas and functionality.

An advocate of open source software, Gordy promotes systems built on open, interoperable standards which allow customers to control their own data, benefiting both customers and the Internet at large.

Terry Duryea

Terry brings to Smashwords an impressive track record of founding and operating successful Internet companies. Prior to joining Smashwords as an advisor in 2007, Terry was an advisor for Mark Coker's previous startup, BestCalls.com, up until its acquisition in 2002. Terry previously co-founded Quova, Service Metrics, Interliant and BroadWord. Terry is also a former CFO and vice president of corporate development for McAfee Associates. Terry earned an industrial engineering degree at U.C. Berkeley and an MBA from Stanford University.