Craig Bassin, CEO

Craig Bassin brings an extensive career in emerging technology software, as well as a serial entrepreneurial spirit to EasyAsk. Recognizing the enormous potential for EasyAsk’s Natural Language technology and products, Bassin orchestrated the acquisition of EasyAsk technology from Progress Software in May, 2009, injecting a new entrepreneurial spirit within the company.

Previously, as Founder & CEO at B2Systems in 1995, Bassin choreographed a leveraged buyout of a $30 million software division of Sapiens Corporation, providing application development and data integration technology. After successfully establishing a growing, profitable company, B2Systems Data Integration technology was later acquired by Novell Corporation generating a 20X return on investment.

Bassin was VP & Partner for many years at GenevaGroup International, the premier boutique retained search firm, specializing in Computer Software and Internet Technology companies. GenevaGroup has built management teams for some of the world’s most successful software companies such as Oracle Corporation, Business Objects, SalesForce.com, NetSuite, Siebel Systems, GoldenGate Software, Gomez Corporation and many others.

Craig began his career in Software in the early days of the RDBMS boom, was the top sales manager at Ingres Corporation later the first Director of National Accounts at Oracle Corporation.

Dr. Richard Wood, Vice President of Development

Richard (Rich) Wood has served as Vice President of Development of EasyAsk since 2000. Dr. Wood is responsible for EasyAsk’s development infrastructure. He has many years of development and management experience. After six years with Teknowledge Corporation, he joined the development team at AICorp in 1989. He held the position of Vice President of Development through AICorp’s acquisition by Platinum Software and later Platinum’s acquisition by Computer Associates. His broad-based development and management experience as well as his linguistics knowledge has contributed significantly to the expansion of the product. He earned an AB degree from Dartmouth College, and an M.S. and a Ph.D. in Computer Science at the University of Maryland.

Evan Bobotas, Vice President of Sales & Business Development

Evan brings more than 17 years of Sales & Marketing experience to EasyAsk, and has worked with EasyAsk, targeting the e-commerce market, for the last 8 years.

Evan has grown with the company, taking on various responsibilities, and currently serves in a leadership role as Vice President of Sales & Business Development. Evan was instrumental in developing and implementing EasyAsk’s go to market strategy for its Cloud based SaaS offering. He also restructured and streamlined the Sales processes, procedures and systems; integrating CRM and Marketing Automation tools to support EasyAsk’s Inbound Marketing Strategy.

Prior to joining EasyAsk, Evan was Assistant Vice President for Banc of America Investments and a successful licensed Financial Representative. Evan delivered custom tailored financial solutions for high net worth clients. This required a broad understanding of the market as well as the ability to analyze individual portfolios and life challenges to help his clients achieve their financial goals. These are the same skills he utilizes today when helping eCommerce organization’s achieve their goals.

Evan’s passion for technology began early in his career as a successful Account Executive with Oracle Corporation. He was recognized as a top performer and achieved various awards, including multiple Club Excellence qualifications.

Evan’s unique and broad experience in Technology and Finance have allowed him to develop a sales model of true solution based selling geared toward solving business issues. Evan holds a B.S.B.A in Management from Suffolk University in Boston, MA.

Dr. Larry R. Harris, Founder and Advisor

EasyAsk was founded by Dr. Larry Harris who is still the driving force and technical visionary of the company.

Harris is internationally recognized as an expert on database systems and computerized natural language. He founded EasyAsk as Linguistic Technology Corporation (LTC) in 1994, and is the author of its EasyAsk and English Wizard products. Prior to founding LTC, Harris was the founder of Artificial Intelligence Corporation, later renamed, AICorp, which went public in 1990.

Harris’ early research involved a unique language analysis technique that became the foundation of Intellect, AICorp’s mainframe natural language product, which has the distinction of being the first third-party software ever sold by IBM. Harris was also the chief architect of KBMS, an expert system tool, and InfoHub, a relational engine for accessing non-relational mainframe data. Prior to founding AICorp, Harris was a Professor of Computer Science at Dartmouth College and a visiting professor at MIT. Harris, who received a PhD in Computer Science from Cornell University, is the author of the Bantam book, AI Enters the Marketplace.

EasyAsk which was spun off from Progress Software in early 2009 and is now a stand alone corporation once again focused on the continuation of Dr. Harris’ vision to innovate and take a leadership role in the areas of e-commerce, Operational Business Intelligence and Search, while using natural language to create a user experience which make its products truly usable by knowledge workers and end users alike.

Nick Halsey, Advisor/Board Member Marketing Strategy

Nick Halsey has over 25 years of experience in enterprise software, and has played a leading role in the emergence of both the business intelligence and commercial open source markets. He currently serves as chief marketing officer at Keynote® (NASDAQ: KEYN), the global leader in Internet and mobile cloud testing and monitoring.  Prior to Keynote Mr. Halsey was the chief marketing officer and executive vice president of corporate development at SugarCRM, where he managed the company’s overall go-to-market strategy.

Previously Halsey served as the vice president of marketing and product management at Jaspersoft Corporation, the leading open source business intelligence company. He was a co-founder and board member of Biz360, an innovator in social media monitoring and market intelligence solutions that was recently acquired by Attensity Group, and also served as the founding vice president of sales and marketing for Brio Software, where for over six years he helped lead the company to $200 million in sales and a successful IPO.  Mr. Halsey has also served as the CMO and executive vice president of corporate development at Alphablox, guiding it to an acquisition by IBM.