Management Team

Sam brings a wealth of operations and logistics experience to ScanCafe.  As COO of a mid-size firm, Sam developed and implemented a global supply chain with fulfillment centers in the US, Sri Lanka and Indonesia. Sam has over 15 years of experience in managing intricate engineering projects for companies like Cisco Systems and Northern Telecom. Sam also has extensive operational experience in both Europe and Asia and managed a $10 billion acquisition portfolio while at Cisco. Prior to joining corporate America, Sam spent ten years living in the mud and dodging bullets as an Officer in the US Marines. Sam began his affair with photography while combat deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina where he kept a Kodak point and shoot in the front pocket of his bullet proof vest; while it failed to provide adequate ballistic protection, it turned out to be his most useful tool.

Born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri, Sam holds an MBA from the Wharton School of Business and is an avid outdoorsman. Be sure to check out Sam’s CEO blog.

Naren is an accomplished executive in global product development and is an expert in conducting business between the US and India. As the Director of Applied Materials India and its global development centers in China and Russia, Naren managed a workforce of 900 engineers and business associates. Prior to that, Naren led Applied Materials’ strategic technical account group based in Silicon Valley, and serviced such major customers as Intel and Samsung. Naren returned to his home in India to establish and manage our operation there. His success in developing operations globally for a billion dollar semiconductor firm was founded upon stringent quality metrics and deployment of six-sigma programs to achieve world class quality. We have taken these same methodologies and applied them to our own processes at ScanCafe where quality control and world class processing are benchmarks.  Prior to Applied Materials, Naren completed his dissertation in confocal laser scanning microscopy and image processing of biopolymers. He has been awarded patents in the areas of remote plasma generation and the magnetic shielding of plasmas. 

Naren holds an MBA from the Wharton School of Business, and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Naren spends his weekends playing with his daughter, teaching her how to roller blade and play golf .

Wade Lagrone has long worked at the leading edge of the consumer internet, with over 10 years of experience in financial services, social networking. Wade led marketing, business development, and product development for the US effort of the world’s first online exchange for person-to-person lending, Zopa. In addition, he has led marketing for Tribe.net, a next-generation social networking site, and developed and led an award-winning product management team at Yahoo! Finance, which pioneered a suite of web-based financial management applications for consumers that used account aggregation technology. Additionally, Wade spent several years consulting with Fortune 1000 companies on their marketing strategies.

Wade graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College and obtained his MBA at the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University, where he was the 1996-1998 Brunswick-Urbanek scholar. For fun, Wade plays tennis and his old piano, and takes too many photographs with his Nikon D50.

Laurent is a serial entrepreneur with over 12 years of experience developing leading edge software and high throughput automation technology and has worked in industries ranging from retail distribution and internet media to drug development. Laurent has built global engineering teams spanning India, the US and Europe. He developed technology partnerships with companies such as IBM, HP, and AT&T.  He also developed partnerships with research organizations in IBM and the San Diego Super Computer Center.  A few years before Napster shook the foundations of the music industry, Laurent founded CD World and developed the first kiosk-based electronic music distribution infrastructure. He authored the first pan-European digital rights management applications and was a key contributor to IBM's Tiger Shark supercomputer streaming platform. Before founding ScanCafe, he applied his expertise in clustering, content management and automation to proteomics at Syrrx which revolutionized crystallography with its robotics technology. Syrrx was acquired for $270M by Takeda Pharmaceuticals. 

Laurent has a Masters in Software Engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and holds an MBA from the Wharton School of Business. Father of two, he speaks four languages and would like to live out his days windsurfing or heliboarding.  

Damon is a true pioneer in internet marketing and brings over a decade of strategic planning, business development, and advertising sales strategy to the team. Prior to ScanCafe, Damon spent 5 years in Strategic Partnerships at eBay where he managed agreements with top firms such as Yahoo, Google, and MSN.  In addition, he worked in strategic planning and internet marketing for two pre-IPO companies that later went public, LookSmart, Ltd. and Individual, Inc.  Damon has been in the internet since nearly the beginning.

Born and raised in St. Louis, MO, Damon received his undergraduate degree from Yale University and holds an MBA from the Wharton School of Business. Damon "claims" to be a pretty good soccer player, and is ready to take on any challenger.