Meet Your Bridge Crew
dedicated to getting your products off the ground.
Rob Rodriguez
founder, ceo
Rob’s expertise has always been in designing something fast and just making it work. He has worked in software research and development for over 20 years with several Fortune 500 corporations, including Citrix, Cisco Systems, and Dell Computer, as well as academic institutions like Stanford University. He has expertise in leading product development in areas ranging from network security to enterprise storage to IoT. In 2004, Rob co-invented the Net6 SSL-VPN which was acquired by Citrix Systems and quickly climbed to the top of Gartner Magic Quadrant as one of the most successful network security products of the time. As part of the Advanced Products group with Citrix, Rob developed many underlying technologies like a neural-net based OCR, used across product suites. In 2009, Rob leveraged this experience and developed an image compression library for a startup that was acquired by Dell that quickly became a leading tool used by major social media networks to deal with the exponential amount of data flooding into their systems. Rob holds 19 granted patents in technology across various segments, and degrees in Computer Engineering and Psychology.
Jon Thies
Founder, CTO
With a keen eye for simple, innovative solutions to complex problems, Jon is passionate about leading Model Rocket to develop systems that can have a global impact by leveraging his background in Machine Learning, Cloud Infrastructure and Data Science. Before founding Model Rocket, Jon was CTO and founder of Qwasi Inc. QWASI activates high volumes of real time data points for companies in a wide variety of industries. Prior to founding QWASI, Jon founded Net6 which was acquired by Citrix Systems in 2004. At Net6 and later at Citrix, Jon provided technical leadership of the mobile and Voice Over IP application gateway products. With key involvement as a Research Scientist and Lead Architect at Citrix, Jon provided strategic guidance and leadership in future product development. Before founding Net6, Jon was a member of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at Lockheed Martin, Advanced Technologies Laboratories. At Lockheed, Jon developed his unique approach to solving today’s highly complex technical problems with intelligence based solutions.
Ruben Rodriguez
Founder, Director of Operations
Ruben keeps our operation on course with the perfect combination of business and engineering experience. Ruben is armed with a business degree from UNR and decades of technology expertise.
Nicholas Mayne
Director of Engineering
Nick keeps our team on task and our clients happy. With 20 years of software development and management experience and an Engineering Degree from Cal Poly SLO he runs a tight ship ensuring nothing escapes into the cold vacuum of space.
Russ Lentini
Principal Engineer
Russ provides our team with decades of high quality product development expertise. Russ has a Masters Degree from the University of Pittsburgh with emphasis in Artificial Intelligence.
Matthew Johnson
Full-stack Engineer
Matt is our go-to engineer for everything from legacy to new technologies. With a unique brand of intuition and resourcefulness, he just makes stuff work.
