Introduction: James Shively

Hello everyone,

I am James Shively, co-founder of Pyreus, and creator of the Pyreus concept of “online trade shows” which we are in the process of implementing for the food industry.

What I love the most is working with companies to help them tell and broadcast the story of their company, their people, and their products and services. Having worked in sales & marketing and pre-sales consulting, I know how challenging it can be to get the word out and get the message across to the right people that they should give your product or service serious consideration. I believe that we at Pyreus have a solution which will make it very easy for any company (in the food industry, for starters) to market themselves and their offerings to an increasingly broad audience of buyers, in an increasingly effective way. It is my pleasure and my passion to help

A bit more background on me:
I came up with the idea of creating rich, community-oriented online trade shows several years ago, and I have been working it them ever since. During this time, I spent 5 years working at Microsoft, and there was a period of about a year and a half within those 5 years when I intensively and passionately evangelized the concept to Microsoft with the hope that the company would take it up as a new line of business for its online services division. But that was not to be, so I teamed up with some passionate friends and we created Pyreus to go after the opportunity.

Since then, the team has grown to 14 people in all, most part time and four full-time, and it is indescribably exciting for me to see my dream becoming a reality, with such a great team of equally passionate people making it happen.

Prior to coming up with the online trade show concept, I founded a different startup company back in 1999 to build and operate educational computer centers and cyber cafes in Mexico. Prior to that, I worked in software consulting, specializing in designing and building artificial intelligence-based solutions to very complex problems in the areas of manufacturing, logistics, and health care. I did my undergraduate studies at U.C. Berkeley, and graduate studies at M.I.T., Berkeley, and U.C. San Diego.

I am from the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area originally, and now live in Seattle. I am not married yet, though I hope to be one day, and I look forward to having children and lots of pets. Though I love Seattle, I would like to live on the San Juan Islands eventually.

Several years have passed since the January 2003 trade show “Expo Agro” in Culiacan, Mexico, during which I came up with the concept of the online trade show.