About Elie (your captain on this blog)

Elie is the CEO of Oyster Hotel Reviews and one of its co-founders.

Elie has been an entrepreneur nearly since graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 1997. After spending a year working for Trilogy in Austin, Texas (where he and Ajay Agarwal of Bain Capital Ventures first met), Elie moved back to the East Coast and was involved in the founding of his first company, Wired Business, a telecom services company funded by Norwest Venture Partners. In the fall of 2000, Elie co-founded Epana with his long time business partner Ariel Charytan. After a near banrkuptcy experience after the first bubble burst,  between 2002 and the end of 2005 they grew Epana to more than 400 employees. Elie departed Epana in the spring of 2006 and spent a year as a venture partner at Lime Rock Partners, a private equity fund based in Westport, Conn.

Ariel Charytan and Eytan Seidman, the other two co-founders of Oyster, contribute to the ideas presented in this blog.

Follow elie on Twitter at: @elieseid

He can be reached by email at elie-at-oyster-dot-com