About Us Investors Press Contact Tapinator was founded by a visionary team that has years of experience building games and applications across all platforms - including iOS, Android, Kindle and Facebook. Meet our Executive Team: Ilya Nikolayev, CEO Co-founder and CEO of Familybuilder (the Family Tree application) until the sale of the Company to Intelius. In 2007, Mr. Nikolayev created one of the first successful Facebook applications, Family Tree, and grew the property to over 6 million monthly active unique users and 45 million total users. Mr. Nikolayev raised venture capital funding, grew the business to profitability, and successfully sold the business in 2011, generating a significant return for all of its investors. Mr. Nikolayev is also a co-founder at InAppFuel, a business-to-business product for mobile game developers. Prior to Familybuilder, Mr. Nikolayev worked in banking for JP Morgan. Mr. Nikolayev graduated cum laude from New York University. Khurram Samad, CTO Mr. Samad leads Tapinator's software development team. Previously, Mr. Samad founded GeniTeam, an outsourced development company specializing in mobile, with over 40 developers in-house. He is an experienced leader of offshore technical teams, focused on cost effectively creating high-quality games and applications across mobile platforms. Mr. Samad earned his BS in Computer Science from National University of Computer and Emerging Science. MBA from LUMS. Andrew Merkatz, President Andrew Merkatz is an accomplished finance executive with 20 years of experience as an investor and operator in media and technology growth companies. From 2008-2015, Mr. Merkatz was a Managing Director of Investments at Vision Capital where he managed investments in digital media and software technology. Mr. Merkatz began his career at private equity firm, Interlaken Capital. He later served as Chief Operating Officer for Site-Specific, one of the first internet advertising agencies (sold to CKS Group), Vice President of Corporate Development at FLOORgraphics, a pioneering in-store media company (sold to News Corp.), and President of Predict It, a venture backed digital media company. In 2007, Mr. Merkatz co-founded Familybuilder, a leading Facebook app developer, which profitably scaled to more than 45 million users prior to the successful sale of the Company in 2011. In 2013, Mr. Merkatz co-founded InAppFuel, a developer of patent-pending casino minigame software for mobile game developers that was acquired by Tapinator in September 2014. Mr. Merkatz holds an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and a B.A. in Economics, with distinction, from the University of Pennsylvania. Robert Crates, Director Robert B. Crates has over 25 years of experience in private equity, investing in a broad range of industries and asset categories. Mr. Crates has served on the board of directors of numerous public and private companies. He has invested in leading venture capital and hedge funds and served as an advisory director to iEurope, a venture capital fund manager focused on Eastern Europe, and as an advisor/initial investor in the Global Undervalued Securities Hedge Fund. He is currently Chairman of Power-by-Power Texas, an electricity procurement, brokerage, and management company. Mr. Crates was previously the President and Co-Founder of Crates Thompson Capital, a private equity investment management company, the General Partner of a private equity fund managed for the principals of Luther King Capital Management, an investment advisory company with more than $10 billion under management, and an analyst in corporate banking with the United States Trust Company of New York. He is a graduate of Yale University. Teymour Farman-Farmaian, Sr. Advisor Teymour Farman-Farmaian was Chief Acquisition and Retention Officer (later CMO) at Spotify, the world’s leading music streaming service, starting in 2011. In this role, Teymour led a team of over 100 employees and helped triple revenue growth to hit a $500 million run rate. Before Spotify, Teymour spent close to two years with Zynga (ZNGA) as GM of Partnerships. There, he was responsible for Zynga’s multi-billion dollar partnership with Facebook as well relationships with Yahoo and Google. In this role, Teymour helped launch over a dozen social games. Teymour went to Zynga after six years at Google (GOOG). He joined Google as Director of European Sales Operations, where he helped achieve ten figure revenues. His last position at Google was as Director of Sales Services, where he served deal teams working on partnerships (including AOL and eBay) responsible for 25% of Google’s revenue. Teymour speaks French, Spanish, Italian, Portugese and Farsi and holds a BA from Duke University and an MBA from Harvard University. Terms & Conditions Privacy Policy Disclaimers