Management Team

Fabrice Sergent, Founder and CEO, Cellfish

A lifelong entrepreneur, Fabrice Sergent is the Founder and CEO of Cellfish. He is a media and Internet pioneer with 20 years of experience, based in the company’s New York headquarters.

Under Sergent’s leadership, Cellfish has completed three successful acquisitions since its founding in 2004: Bandsintown, the world’s largest concert discovery application, ToneMedia, a leading digital advertising platform built solely around music content, and Cellfish Studios (formerly Airborne Mobile), a mobile app publisher. Today, Cellfish generates nearly $100 million in revenue and employs a global team of 240 across offices in New York, San Diego, Paris, Montréal, and Düsseldorf. Sergent also serves as chair of the Advisory Board for the Mobile Giving Foundation, for which Cellfish provides the technology platform in order to process mobile-giving transactions that empower non-profit organizations and donors.

Previously, Sergent was the Founder, Chairman and CEO of Club-Internet, one of the first and largest French consumer ISPs, which was purchased in 2000 by Deutsche Telekom’s T-Online (the largest European ISP) for a historical 1.2 B€ transaction, a landmark deal in the European new media space for its time. Sergent also served for 11 years as the CEO of Lagardère Active Broadband, the digital arm of Lagardère, one of the world’s largest media groups headquartered in Paris. Between 1998 and 2006, he served as a member of the Executive Board of the TV and radio subsidiary of Lagardère (Lagardère Active). Additionally, Sergent served as a member of the supervisory board of Deutsche Telekom’s T-Online for many years while it was a public company, and a board member for Europe1 Interactive, Hachette Multimedia and Le Monde Interactif.

Sergent holds an MBA from Institut Telecom.

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Julien Mitelberg, Co-Founder & COO, Cellfish and CEO, Bandsintown

Julien Mitelberg is the Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of Cellfish, based in the New York headquarters. He also serves as CEO of Bandsintown, the No. 1 concert discovery app with over 11M registered users, powering the tour dates for more than half of all touring artists today. Since 2011, he has led Bandsintown's expansion onto mobile platforms (iOS, Android, Amazon Kindle and Spotify) and into new geographic markets (210 countries) with the mission that users never miss another live show. Mitelberg has spoken at prominent music industry events on fan engagement and tour promotion including New Music Seminar, SXSW, Billboard Touring and Amsterdam Dance Event.

Previously, Mitelberg was the COO of Lagardère Active Broadband for 11 years with Fabrice Sergent. In 1995, Mitelberg co-founded Club-Internet, which was purchased by Deutsche Telekom’s T-Online International AG, Europe’s largest ISP, for a historical €1.2B transaction. He also founded Le Studio, one of the first and largest French web agencies.

Mitelberg holds a Master of Science from Institut Telecom.

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Val Katayev, CEO, ToneMedia

Val Katayev is the founder and CEO of music ad platforms ToneMedia and ToneFuse, both of which were acquired in 2013 and now operate as the ad division of Cellfish. Katayev is a serial entrepreneur, having led four successful startups to hyper-growth centered around mobile, digital entertainment, music and search data. Within Cellfish, Katayev serves as CEO for ToneMedia where he oversees a portfolio that reaches over 300 million consumers in the evolving music content space. The company works with over 50 hand-picked publishers to pinpoint the buying interests of consumers, providing advertisers with a hyper-targeted solution to reach the right audiences. Today, ToneMedia is ranked by comScore as the second largest cross-platform digital music property after VEVO and the No. 1 mobile property in music.

While at ToneMedia, Katayev developed ToneTargeting, a patent pending tech that evaluates consumer demo, buying habits and hobbies based on musical tastes. In 2009, Katayev founded ToneFuse, which he grew to become the world's largest ringtone marketing platform. Also in 2009, Katayev co-founded and laid the early foundation for MobileFuse, one of the leading premium mobile ad networks reaching 85 percent of mobile web users in the U.S. In 2001, Katayev founded Poise Media, an industry leader in performance and paid search marketing for 800+ clients like eBay, VistaPrint and Rhapsody, while still attending Baruch College.

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Nicolas d’Hueppe, CEO, Cellfish Europe

Nicolas d’Hueppe is the CEO of Cellfish Europe, based in the Paris office.

From 1998-2000, d’Hueppe launched and ran the first online booking site of the Accor Group, accorhotels.com, before he joined the business development team of Lagardère Active Broadband for its mobile launch, notably with Plurimedia. In 2002, he became the Internet Distribution Manager and, subsequently, the CEO of Cellfish France, four years later.

d’Hueppe graduated from HEC Lausanne and University of Paris Dauphine.

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Muriel Lelandais, CEO, Cellfish Canada

Muriel Lelandais is the Chief Executive Officer for Cellfish Canada, which develops the technological capital of Cellfish by ensuring sustainability of products, process efficiency and team expertise. She launched the Montreal office in June 2007, where she is based.

Lelandais’s team consists of developers and engineers who serve as Cellfish subsidiaries with technical solutions and infrastructures to support their products and business. She oversees the development, deployment, operation and maintenance of back-end solutions that require complex and innovative architecture, robust hosting and high performance. Additionally, her team develops user applications
and front-end interfaces for the U.S. market.

As early as 1995, Lelandais began working with Cellfish CEO & Founder, Fabrice Sergent, in the creation of Club-Internet. Since then, she held successive operational and administrative positions for Lagardère Active Broadband’s executive team, including business development project manager and general secretary.

Lelandais is a graduate from Ecole Supérieure de Commerce de Montpellier.

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David Weisz, CMO, Cellfish

David Weisz is the Chief Marketing Officer of Cellfish, based in the New York headquarters.

Appointed in 2002 to Vice President, Weisz led the marketing and business-development functions for Lagardère Active Broadband, the digital arm of Lagardère Group, one of the world’s largest media groups.

Prior to Lagardère Active Broadband, Weisz worked at Legion Group, where he was responsible for the company’s international business development, notably for the creation and management of subsidiaries in Greece, Brazil, Singapore, Taiwan and Poland. He started his career at Thomson Publishing, where he held various sales and marketing positions.

Weisz holds an Economics degree from Leeds University, as well as an Executive MBA from the London School of Business.

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Dan Nemo, CFO, Cellfish

Dan Nemo is the Global Chief Financial Officer of Cellfish, where he is responsible for the company’s overall finance, legal and human resources functions. He joined the company in May 2011, and is based in the New York headquarters.

Nemo has over 12 years’ experience in mobile technology, having worked in a variety of finance, corporate development, business development, product management and legal functions at TextGuard, RealNetworks, WiderThan, Ztango and MobileSpring. Most notably, Nemo acted as deputy CFO and general counsel of WiderThan, taking WiderThan public on NASDAQ in 2005, and leading WiderThan’s ultimate sale to RealNetworks in 2006. At RealNetworks, Nemo served as VP, Corporate and Business Development. Nemo started his career practicing law at Thelen, Reid & Priest and Sullivan & Cromwell, negotiating corporate finance and mergers & acquisitions transactions for telecommunications companies.

Nemo earned his bachelor of arts in history from Stanford University, a JD from George Washington University and an MBA in finance from Columbia University.

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