James Bergeron
Chairman and CEO
James Bergeron assumed the CEO position at First To File, Inc. in Q4 2008 with the immediate goal of building out the executive team, leading its strategic direction, enhancing the product offering, and focusing the Company on sales and marketing.
An entrepreneur, operating executive, and investor with significant experience in taking businesses “to the next level,” Mr. Bergeron has developed and demonstrated a passion for building businesses, including start-ups, turnarounds, and growth companies. Prior to acquiring First To File, he served as a business consultant – advising a number of early stage companies in the Bay Area, while simultaneously conducting a search for a technology business that he could acquire.
Prior to his consulting work, Mr. Bergeron was the CEO and a member of the board of Maverick Enterprises, a specialty closure/cap company in the wine and beverage business. Maverick’s corporate customers included such well-known brands as Robert Mondavi, Kendall Jackson, Starbucks, Fosters Estates, and many others. During his tenure at Maverick, the Chief Executive Network awarded him its annual 2005 innovation award for Best Disruptive Product Innovation/Small Company Division.
Prior to joining Maverick, he held executive level positions with Portola Packaging and General Electric. Mr. Bergeron began his career with Bankers Trust in 1992 and worked in its New York office until 1994 and in its Sydney, Australia office through 1995. While there, he was involved in both bank operations and the investment management group. He graduated from Bryant College, cum laude, in 1992 with a BS in Finance, and from Harvard Business School in 1997 with an MBA.
James Hepworth
Chief Technology Officer
James co-founded First To File® in January 2006 with his business partner and co-founder of MarkMonitor, Faisal Shah. He has guided the First To File® technical team and the architecture of the First to File® product from inception to where it is today.
Prior to First To File®, James in 1998 co-founded the international intellectual property brand protection company MarkMonitor , where he was responsible for driving the technical direction for the company. While at MarkMonitor, he built a SaaS-based hosted application that is used by more than half of the Fortune 500.
Prior to MarkMonitor, James was a co-founder and president of Nutri-Vet , a $34 million animal nutraceutical company, and prior to that was Director of Information Systems at Richardson Labs. He was the recipient of a prestigious technical award from Wal-Mart for his work on a first-of-its-kind intra-firm DSS system
James has authored more than 12 technical process patents and four utility patents, of which four have been issued to date. He studied Information systems at Boise State University.
Kurt Wedel
Vice President of Sales and Operations
Kurt joined First To File® in 2008, where he is responsible for expanding the company’s user base and developing long-term customer relationships through the delivery of a superior customer service experience.
Having 20 years of enterprise software and SaaS experience with early stage organizations, and an established track record of selling to and servicing legal professionals in the world’s leading corporations, Kurt provides a crucial combination of enterprise-level sales and operation experience, and intellectual property savvy.
Prior to joining First To File®, Kurt was Vice President of Sales and Operations at Attributor , an online copyright protection firm, where he managed the development of customers such as Reuters, Associated press, Conde Nast, the Financial Times, and Deutsche Press. Previous to that, he held senior sales, marketing, and customer operations positions at MarkMonitor , Oracle Corporation , Sybase , and Netscape Communications.
He received his undergraduate degree from Vassar College and his Masters from the J. L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University.
