About What Spot Now

With What Spot Now’s live views and realtime updates, consumers can check out what’s happening at their favorite restaurants, bars, cafés, and coffee shops before they go, and get access to exclusive promotions. You’ve seen the ranting & raving of online reviews, seen the stale websites, so next time you're trying to decide where to go, be your own judge: check it out by taking a live peek at the action. Seeing is believing with What Spot Now.

For business owners, What Spot Now is a marketing tool that allows consumers to connect with your business in a powerful way. Our special wifi-enabled SpotCam™ cameras install in seconds, and it's easy to plug What Spot Now into your existing website and social media presence, as well as customize your presence in our mobile apps. Making your site more than just a static name, address, and phone number, our patent pending software monitors your cameras and automatically makes promotions available whenever business is slow.

What Spot Now was founded in July 2009 by Luke Sontag, Kiyo Kubo, Nick Farina, and Ryan Livesay.

Leadership

• Luke Sontag

  Co-founder & CEO

  Luke had the vision for What Spot Now while attending a backyard BBQ with Ryan; what if there was some way to find out if this BBQ was good before driving out to it? After refining the idea and writing a patent, Luke reached out to his friend Kiyo and thus began What Spot Now. Luke was previously the president of technology at Vidoop (now Confident Technologies, Inc.), a web security start-up he co-founded in 2006. Beginning with a DEC Rainbow 100 in his childhood closet in Oklahoma, Luke’s love of technology had him working full time for a major telecommunications company after high school and attending college in his spare time. He earned his undergraduate degree in Business at St. Gregory’s University.

• Kiyo Kubo

  Co-founder & COO

  Kiyo oversees many of the company’s business operations including finance and business development. Along with Nick Farina, he is a co-founder of Spotlight Mobile, one of the most respected names in mobile application development. Spotlight was founded in 2002 emerging out of the Human-Computer Interaction Lab at Cornell University where the founders conducted research on mobile and context-aware computing. Spotlight customers include Nike, Intel, Conde Nast, APC, Barnes & Noble, and Pixar, amongst many others. Their most recent app for the American Museum of Natural History uses indoor wifi to provide location awareness for museum tours. Kiyo has degrees in Computer Science and Economics from Cornell University.

• Nick Farina

  Co-founder & CTO

  Nick oversees the technical innovation and development of the company’s platform, website, and mobile applications. He also leads the engineering program at Spotlight Mobile, where he is a co-founder with Kiyo. Nick earned an undergraduate degree in Computer Science from Cornell University.

• Ryan Livesay

  Co-founder, Sales

  Ryan spends most of his time on the street signing up new locations to WSN but has had a very diverse career in sales and marketing. He began his career in marketing as a producer in Post Production whose clients included Old Spice and EA Sports, but also spent time at hedge funds in NYC and managing one of the largest commercial real estate properties in Oregon. When he is not convincing spots that WSN is the future, he plays semi-professional tennis. Ryan attended Santa Clara University for two years but earned his degree at the University of Tulsa in Business Marketing.

• Jim Weidenbaum

  VP of Sales & Marketing

  Jim has been in the business of marketing and selling to restaurants and bars for almost as long as the rest of the team has been alive. He has held senior marketing roles and built highly successful sales teams at some of the largest consumer goods companies on the planet including Anheuser-Busch, Coca-Cola, and most recently the Gambrinus Company, the original importer of Corona and brewers of Bridgeport, Shiner Bock, and Trumer Pils. He is responsible for building the What Spot Now sales team and leading all marketing efforts. Jim earned an undergraduate degree in Economics from Vanderbilt and an MBA from the University of Michigan.

Team

Adam K., Christen H., Josh H., Brian W.