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About Us
Winster.com is a social community where friends help friends solve puzzles to win real prizes. You pick the prize you want to win, then play engaging, fun games until you win your prize.
Our games are specifically designed to foster a sense of community and promote positive interaction. Players cooperate to help each other win prizes, rather than compete. At Winster.com, players play with each other, never against each other.
Our mission is to build and serve a friendly online community through entertaining games and valuable prizes.
Contact Information
Winster, Inc.
155 Bovet Rd.
Suite 303
San Mateo, CA 94402
Toll Free Phone: (866) 651-4700
Local Phone: (650) 376-1460
Customer Service
By Email:By Phone: (866) 651-4700 (Toll Free), or (650) 376-1460 (Local)
The Winster Team
Jerry Kaplan
CEO
As a serial entrepreneur, Jerry Kaplan is widely credited with a number of inventions and patents, including online auctions (as a founder of Onsale.com),
and pen computers (as a founder of GO Corporation). He is perhaps best known for his bestselling non-fiction novel,
Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure.
His most recent paycheck was as CEO of Egghead.com. Jerry holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Pennsylvania.
Frank Yien
VP & General Manager
Frank Yien has an extensive background in consumer internet marketing, serving as VP and General Manager of MetaReward (an Experian Company), VP Marketing at Netblue,
and COO at Aptimus. He has also held product management positions at Netscape, Sybase, GO, and Sun Microsystems. Frank has a BA and MBA from UC Berkeley.
Mark Fussell
VP Engineering
Mark Fussell enables teams and companies to build great software. Mark was
founder and CEO of Velidom, led engineering at Evant, Inc., and was president
of ChiMu Corp. Mark has a BS in Engineering and Applied Science from California
Institute of Technology.
Michelle Kaplan
Co-founder and inspiration for Winnie
Michelle Kaplan originated the Winster concept and is the model for her alter ego, Winnie Winster. She has an extensive background in internet marketing and business development, serving as Director of Marketing and PR then VP of Business Development at Onsale.com, where she met Jerry (see above) and to everyone's surprise, agreed to marry him. She also held various marketing and public relations positions at Interex, Inc. Michelle was recruited out of UC Santa Barbara by Hewlett-Packard where she held various corporate marketing positions.
Winnie Winster
Apocryphal Founder & Web Site Host
Winnie is a ‘Virtual Miss Manners’, the personification of grace, with a long and storied career as a character. She has held numerous position as avatar, mascot, logo model, and corporate icon. Most recently, she was understudy to Barbie in Nutcracker Barbie, and is on call for product package cameos as Betty Crocker when Betty is unavailable. Winnie comes from a long line of notable English figurines, dating back to her great-great-grandmother’s appearance as a wood-cut in Chaucer’s "Canterbury Tales". (The town of Winster, Derbyshire was named in honor of her family.) She is well known for her charity work, fundraising for lost or abused child caricatures, and volunteering as a substitute teacher on Sesame Street. Winnie holds a BS in Fabrication from Ersatz College and a Certificate in Web Site Hosting from I.S.P.
Staff Picture
The Story of Winster - in Winnie's own words!
Did you ever wonder how my web site came to be? Here's the scoop...I used to sneak off to Hubby’s home office when he wasn’t looking and play on his computer. But somehow, the games just didn’t seem right for me. I wanted to play with other people, not against them. And I hated all those timers ticking down pressuring me to go faster. What’s the point of playing if it makes you feel dumb? Not to mention that when I tried to cash in my hard-earned points, not only did I never win anything, but no one I ever knew ever won anything!
So one day, I was complaining to Hubby (who happens to be a computer genius), and he said if I could come up with a better game, he’d make a web site for me. So I designed a game where you play at your own pace, help out your neighbors (and vice versa), and always win a prize – that you get to pick yourself!
After he worked his magic, I started inviting my friends to play. They loved it. And then they started inviting their friends, and their friends’ friends. Everything was going great…until Hubby got the bill for all the prizes I was giving away. Did he ever hit the roof!
When I told my friends, they suggested a nifty way to calm Hubby down and still allow them to win cool prizes – make it a club and charge a membership fee! So that’s what I did. And so now you can win as many prizes as you want, all the while helping me to preserve matrimonial bliss in my home. Thanks!
