Ben Lilienthal
Chief Executive Officer and Founder

Ben Lilienthal is a highly-regarded entrepreneur & innovator in the Internet industry. Mr. Lilienthal is experienced spotting market needs and executing successful sales and distribution strategies around them. Mr. Lilienthal founded Vapps, Inc. with his partner, Jerry Norton in 2003.

Prior to launching Vapps, Mr. Lilienthal founded Nascent Technologies, where he identified an early opportunity for web-enabled email and solely raised the capital investment to expand the company’s sales, marketing and software development efforts. As a result, Nascent became one of the first companies to introduce the product to the marketplace and was able to gain significant market share through OEM/VAR relationships and license deals with major telecommunications companies worldwide, including France Telecom, Belgacom and Hong Kong Telecom. In May 1999, Mr. Lilienthal sold Nascent to CMGI, which was subsequently acquired by Sendmail Inc. in 2001.

Mr. Lilienthal has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Amherst and an MBA from NYU Stern.

Go Back

Jerry Norton
Chief Technical Officer and Founder

Jerry Norton has been at the forefront of communications technology for the past two decades. He has been responsible for the architecture and design of the Vapps service offering. Along with Mr Lilienthal, Mr. Norton founded Vapps, Inc. in 2002.

With Delta Three, Mr. Norton was responsible for generating revenue with a global Voice over IP (VOIP) network. There he managed Business Development Directors, Sales Engineers, Project Managers, Wholesale Carrier Managers, Switch Technicians and a Least Cost Routing team. He grew the network from 3 points of presence to 107. At earlier positions with Lucent Technologies and Ascom Timeplex, Mr. Norton was a lead in such technologies as ATM, Voice over Frame Relay and compressed voice.
Mr. Norton has a Bachelor of Science degree from Columbia University and an MBA from NYU Stern.

Go Back

Mark Boyles
Vice President, Operations
Mark Boyles joined as the Director of Product Management but as Vapps moved into a service role, Mark managed operations and network control in addition to his product management duties. Mark was later promoted to Vice President to oversee all aspects of Vapps operations. Previously, Mark was the Vice President of Operations at Tempest Software where he was responsible for the programming, professional services and IT teams of the company. Prior to that Mark was the Development Manager at the Sybase middleware division and Production Director for Information Builders where he was responsible for the company’s flagship product, FOCUS. Prior to joining Information Builders, Mark held various consulting, systems and engineering positions in the United Kingdom at Information Builders Ltd and began his career as a consultant at Tymshare UK.

Mr.Boyles has a Bachelor of Science degree from Brighton University, U.K.

Go Back

John Bennett
Vice President, Business Development
In his role as Vice President of Business Development, John Bennett draws on his more than 20 years of experience leading companies in the communications and software industries.

Mr. Bennett joins Vapps from Ace*comm, where, as President, he managed worldwide sales and operations. Prior to Ace*comm, he was President & CEO of Sentori and was instrumental in growing Sentori into a Tier 2 market leader in the global wireless billing space.

Previously, Mr. Bennett served as Vice President of Corporate Strategy for CMGI. In that role, he provided strategic counsel and business development support to CMGI's operating companies and the companies in its affiliated venture portfolio, CMGI @Ventures, with special focus on wireless strategy and related investments and acquisitions. Mr. Bennett also worked in similar positions at Nascent Technologies, IoWave, Boston Technologies and Bell Atlantic.

Go Back