Joe E. Russell
co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
Joe has been involved in the formation, financing and growth of three companies from startup to valuations in excess of $1 billion. He is the founder of inBuilding, where he devised the combination of public and private clouds in office environments in an innovative structure which benefits both property owners and office tenants.
Prior to inBuilding, he was the Executive Vice President, Corporate Development and General Counsel, of Brahma Holdings, LLC and its subsidiaries from 2005 to 2012. Brahma developed a series of portfolio companies to execute on a vision for transforming injury-related claims management, including, an electronic presentment and payment platform serving over 600 law firms with 10,000 users) and an innovative software as a service company which structured medical information and salient claim considerations to empower claim adjusters to more efficiently process injury claims.
Prior to Brahma, Joe was the founder of Inabled Online Corp., which provided touch screen, interactive plasma screens and an innovative website application to capture the community of office tenants and provide a communication tool between property managers and tenants. Inabled was spun off from inBuilding Systems Corp., which Joe co-founded along with Lee Hancock in 1999.
inBuilding Systems was a leader in providing high-speed Internet access to commercial office buildings and quickly grew to provide access to several thousand office buildings across the US. Joe has been involved in angel, venture, and investment banking financings, mergers and acquisitions, real estate and, international operations. He has served on the Board of Directors of numerous companies, including several Far East subsidiaries for Texas Instruments Incorporated, where he also served as general counsel. Joe is a graduate of Southern Methodist University with a BBA, with honors in finance and accounting, and received his J.D. from the Southern Methodist University, School of Law.
Lee Hancock
co-founder
Lee is a successful serial entrepreneur in digital technology with particular emphasis on local information delivered over mobile devices. He is currently the founder and CEO of Hancock Technology Partners. He is also the founder of go2, which launched the world’s first mobile, local directory, movie guide and information service in 1998. From 1998 to 2002 Lee grew go2 from a startup to over 100 employees and over a $7 million run rate. With the dot-com crash in 2001-02, he orchestrated a management buy-out of go2 in 2002 and successfully navigated go2 across the mobile internet adoption chasm. go2 delivered well over one billion page views of mobile, local search and content to tens of millions of unique users during hundreds of millions of unique user sessions. Under Lee’s leadership go2 became a top 20 mobile internet brand and mobile media company in the U.S. and one of the top local search and information services in the U.S. In 2007 he successfully sold/merged go2 with Boston-based 80108 Media to form go2 Media. Lee remains on the board of directors and HTP is a major shareholder of go2 Media.
Prior to founding go2, Lee was a co-founder of inBuilding Systems Corp., a provider of a unique ‘lobby portal’ and high speed internet access for tenants of multi-tenant office buildings, which was successfully sold in 2000.
Previously, Lee practiced corporate and venture finance law with two major law firms, including a major Southern California firm, Allen Matkins, where he served as the chair of the corporate law department. Lee is also a CPA, and in 2000 was awarded one of Ernst and Young’s prestigious Entrepreneur of the Year awards in Orange County, California. He graduated summa cum laude from Missouri State University with a degree in accounting and cum laude from Southern Methodist University School of Law.
