About Us
Our Company
Spendji is brought to you by Plans365 Inc., founded in 2005 and based in Detroit,
Michigan and Northern California (yes, yes, a rather strange combination, but hey,
it’s the mobile age).
We are two founders - one business mind and one technical mind - with just enough
overlapping skills to be dangerous (quite possibly to each other!). But our select
cast of supporting players helps to keep things running smoothly.
Our passion is great software that leverages the power of the Internet to help people
get more connected, more informed and more productive. Not to mention helping them
get more for their money.
We are privately held and backed by a supportive group of angel investors.
Our Name
The word Spendji is a play on the Indian tradition of adding “ji” to a person’s name to show respect (as in "Gandhiji"
or "What's up, ji?"). The "spend" part becomes rather obvious
once you've used our site.
It also happened to rhyme with Benji,
one of our childhood favs. Either way, we hope it becomes very useful to you soon.
By the way, forget Chuck Norris, here's Benji in some serious 1970's action
(pre-CGI, no less):
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Team
Arpan Patel – cofounder and
CEO
Arpan has over 15 years of experience in financial services and entrepreneurship.
A former investment banker specializing in mergers and acquisitions with Lehman
Brothers, Lazard and Credit Suisse, this is his second technology startup as a founder.
He previously cofounded eFrontiers, a pioneering online asset management platform
for institutional investors. Since 2003, Arpan has also been investing in
and developing land and residential properties. He has a BA in Economics from
The Johns Hopkins University and an MBA from The University of Chicago, Graduate
School of Business.
In his off time, Arpan obsessively explores art, independent film and music.
He also attempts to meditate, exercise and simplify overly complicated recipes.
He is currently using Spendji to coordinate a camping trip with a group of urbane
friends from New York and San Francisco that he cannot really picture roughing it
in the woods without an espresso machine nearby.
Mark Crawford – cofounder
and CTO
Mark was previously a product design engineer at Ford Motor Company for nine years.
With his significant software and product development experience, he engineered
a multimillion-dollar cost savings on the Ford Explorer and developed a novel software
program for knowledge-based engineering. Mark also received several technical
awards during his time at Ford and was named “Black Engineer of the Year” by GEM
in 2005. He holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Mechanical Engineering
from the University of Missouri – Rolla, and is a Ph.D. pre-candidate at the University
of Michigan.
Mark balances out startup life by spending time with his wife Tonya, and their four
exuberant children. He thanks his lucky stars that the grandparents live close
by.
He is using Spendji to plan and manage the building of a new backyard deck that
can withstand the maximum impact that his kids can dish out.
Advisors
Tim Brennan – CEO, Photo.com
Tim has spent the last ten years building and leading consumer-facing web
sites. He is currently the CEO of Photo.com, a premium photo management site
for organizing, printing and sharing photos. Prior to joining Photo.com, Tim
was the VP of Marketing at Viewpoints.com. Before that, he was the SVP of
Products and Properties at Q Interactive, where he managed an advertising network
that reached more than 16 million unique consumers every month.
Nusrat Durrani – Senior Vice President, MTV
Networks (Viacom)
Nusrat is General Manager and SVP of MTV World and has been with MTV Networks
for 12 years in various positions in strategy, business development, e-commerce
and digital media. He was part of the team that launched MTV.COM and initiated
MTV’s push into new media. He is currently developing a multi-platform pop
culture network for MTV.
Sandeep Sood – CEO, Monsoon Company
Sandeep is founder and CEO of Monsoon Company, a web design/development firm
located in Berkeley, CA and Mumbai, India. He is also co-founder and creative
director of Badmash.tv, an online animation studio. Sandeep is a noted writer
and speaker on global collaboration and effectively getting things done with distributed
teams.
Contact Us
Are you a member of the press, the technology community, or an interested member
of the general public? We’d love to hear from you. Please drop us a
line at CONTACT [AT] SPENDJI [DOT] COM and/or visit our blog.