Cynthia Typaldos
Serial Entrepreneur
Cynthia is the Founder and President of Kachingle. She also a successful serial entrepreneur in social web endeavors. Her first internet venture was GolfWeb, which she co-founded despite not being a golfer.
On the day of launch in January 31, 1995, GolfWeb included reader reviews of golf courses and a find a playing partner social networking service. GolfWeb became a major presence in the golf world and was acquired by CBS Sportsline in 1999. While at GolfWeb Cynthia envisioned and led the development of the GolfWeb Players Club, a subscription-based social application for golfers launched in August 1997. The Players Club had member profiles, a reputation system, integration with the golf course data base, and a sophisticated social application that allowed players to track their golf game statistics (in 20 different ways!) and compare themselves to others in groups.
Based on what she learned about social interaction at GolfWeb Cynthia founded RealCommunities, a way-too-early platform for social networking and online communities. Her 2001 manifesto on The 12 Principles of Civilization became a major white paper on defining the successful web features for online social interaction.
[See also the article about the 12 Principles in Fast Company magazine, September 2000.]
After doing some random consulting work in a variety of tech industries she got the idea for what is now Kachingle in 2004.
Although Cynthia has always been a technologist, not a journalist, ever since GolfWeb she felt that the content and service sites weren’t getting their fair share of the revenue (or valuation) vis-à-vis search engines. Cynthia does have some experience as a journalist however a bee photo was published in the SF Chronicle, and a set of a classic articles written for GolfWeb in February 1995 at Pebble Beach:
• Ken Everett, Official Scorekeeper
• Technology in the AT&T National Pro-Am Press Room – Part A
• Technology in the AT&T National Pro-Am Press Room – Part B
Cynthia is a former director of product marketing & management, and director of standards at Sun Microsystems. She has taught courses in these subjects and online communities at the University of California Berkeley Extension. At Kachingle, she is particularly passionate about applying her knowledge and experience in creating de-facto standard platforms. Earlier in her career, she was a software developer at Bank of America.
Cynthia has a B.S. in chemistry from UC Berkeley, where she also attended graduate school in computer science, and an MBA from MIT.
Languages: American English, pathetic Spanish. Cynthia is a native Californian but has lived in Pasadena, Boston, Ivrea (Italy), Mount Vernon (MO), Panama and Silicon Valley.
