MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Oct. 22, 2024 — DrumWave is making bold strides by adding two new C-Suite executives and moving to the iconic former headquarters of General Magic at 2465 Latham Street in Mountain View, CA. These strategic moves follow a year of rapid expansion, with DrumWave doubling its workforce and beefing up its headcount across product, marketing, engineering, and operations.
Following the 2023 appointment of Patrick Hruby (formerly with Google and Facebook) as Chief Operations Officer (COO), DrumWave has further strengthened its leadership by bringing on Laura Bermudez, formerly with PayPal and eBay, as Chief Technology Officer (CTO), and Germán Scipioni, former PayPal executive, as Chief Product Officer (CPO). These hires bring exceptional global expertise in technology, product management, marketing, and user experience, bolstering DrumWave’s position as a true challenger in the data monetization space.
“We are building the missing link between the mobile and AI revolutions. This is the fusion of information and value, data and money, to serve the consumer. It’s never been done before. And our new leadership team reflects our audacious vision for the future,” said André Vellozo, CEO and founder of DrumWave. “We want to set the standard for how everyone owns, saves, invests and monetizes data.”
“DrumWave’s mission is tightly aligned to my personal mission of using software to improve the health and wealth of every person,” said Germán Scipioni, Chief Product Officer at DrumWave. “While we’ve made great strides in respecting the individual dignity and autonomy of every human being, it’s now time that we provide a way to respect the value of recording what they do in living their lives and share that value in helping them continue to thrive.”
“Data ownership is at the heart of everything today. Tech companies now control our conversations, transactions, and even our relationships. And the more one side knows more than the other, the harder it becomes to trust—that’s why trust breaks down when there’s an imbalance of information,” Vellozo explained. “It’s no wonder that, in a world where everyone is connected, it often feels like we’re more isolated than ever before.”
Tech Luminaries Join DrumWave to Architect the New Data Economy
During her 14-year tenure as a senior executive at eBay from 2004 to 2018, Bermudez demonstrated exceptional leadership in software development across multiple high-profile brands. At StubHub, she spearheaded engineering teams responsible for critical domains including Catalog, Sell, and Social. Her expertise extended to PayPal, where she led and delivered pivotal initiatives in multiple domains including; Credit Issuing & Acquiring, Debit, Bank Transfer, Funding Mix, Foreign Exchange, Merchant Reporting, and eBay integration. Bermudez’s strategic focus on planning and architecture of major domains consistently resulted in innovative, highly available, scalable, and extensible products that drove significant business growth and user satisfaction.
Prior to her appointment as CTO at DrumWave, Bermudez further honed her leadership skills in pivotal roles across the tech industry. From 2018 to 2020, she served as senior director of software development at Carta, where she led R&D Core Platform Engineering and oversaw the Payments, Capital Call Lending, SRE, Infrastructure, Data Science & Analytics, Shared Services, Identity, and Internal Tools teams. She served as VP of Payment Systems Engineering at Change Healthcare and as a Board member and Payments Strategy Advisor to CoinSpaze, showcasing her commitment to innovation in both the traditional and emerging financial sectors.
Scipioni”s tenure at PayPal from 2004 to 2014 was marked by exceptional product leadership and strategic innovation. He developed multiple high-impact businesses processing billions in volume and generating substantial revenue. His innovations earned him recognition as the company’s top patent holder. Scipioni’s key achievements include scaling the PayPal prepaid card business to more than $300 million in volume within two years and launching the PayPal MyCash Program to $100 million in revenue in its first two years. His crowning achievement was pioneering PayPal Digital Gifts, which revolutionized digital gifting with a 60-second purchase process. This initiative established PayPal as a merchant of record and secured partnerships with major brands including Apple, driving more than $50 million in sales in its first year.
After PayPal, Scipioni continued to drive innovation across diverse sectors. From 2014 to 2016, as Co-Founder and Head of Digital Transformation at Ingram Micro, he launched the company’s first incubator and led a three-year digital transformation. His impact in healthcare began at Change Healthcare (2017-2021), where as Vice President of Product Management, he built a new B2B2C business line, creating innovative consumer mobile health apps and an API marketplace. His passion for healthcare innovation culminated in founding Forma Health in 2022. This mission-driven company leverages AI and design to capture crucial health data for individuals with chronic and rare conditions, addressing long standing challenges in data collection and patient motivation to improve health outcomes and treatments.
ABOUT DRUMWAVE:
DrumWave Inc. is a high-tech disruptor headquartered at the historic 2465 Latham Street in Mountain View, CA — formerly the offices of the iconic General Magic. Using the “full-stack startup” approach, it’s building an end-to-end product to enable companies and consumers to own, exchange, and monetize data. This isn’t just a technological advancement—it’s a new era for how data is valued, owned, and used. For more information, visit www.drumwave.com.