General Sentiment is a technology company that produces comprehensive research products to help marketing, sales and communications executives evaluate their brands' performance in the media and assess return on investment.

Our Team

Ari Kahn, Chief Executive Officer | e-mail: ari.kahn@generalsentiment.com

Ari Kahn is the chief executive officer of General Sentiment. He has been a technology entrepreneur since 1996 and is an expert in artificial intelligence technology. 

Ari co-founded FatWire Software in 1996 and helped grow the company to become a leading web content management software provider, doing over $40M in sales with more than 400 enterprise customers worldwide, including Apple, Chanel, GM, Ford, Best Buy and Walmart. 

Ari received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Chicago and his Bachelor’s in Mathematics and Computer Science from Kalamazoo College. His doctoral thesis from the Artificial Intelligence Lab at the University of Chicago created an attention system for robot vision that allowed fast processing for real-world navigation, including missile guidance and unmanned exploration. 

Gregory Artzt, Chief Strategy Officer | e-mail: greg.artzt@generalsentiment.com

Greg Artzt is a co-founder and the chief strategy officer of General Sentiment. Greg has ten years of varied experience as an entrepreneur in the technology and financial markets. After graduating from Cornell University as a Computer Science major and a brief stint as an ITF tour professional tennis player, Greg started his technology career at Computer Associates as a software engineer. 

Greg later joined Citigroup as an associate in fixed income structured products, quantitative analysis, options market making and proprietary trading. 

His first entrepreneurial venture was as one of the founding members of hedge fund Element Capital, where he acted as a trader, systems developer, quantitative analyst and portfolio manager.  

In late 2006, he co-founded Indavest, an angel-funded technology incubation and investment firm in the US and India. At Indavest, Greg was involved in building and nurturing several technology startups from the ground level into their current growth stage of development. Greg joined up with the rest of the General Sentiment team in mid-2008 to launch his most exciting entrepreneurial technology venture yet.

Read a letter from Greg explaining his vision for General Sentiment.

Mark Fasciano, Chairman | e-mail: mark.fasciano@generalsentiment.com

Mark Fasciano is a co-founder and the chairman of General Sentiment. Mark has 12 years of technology startup experience and is a serial entrepreneur. In 2007, Mark launched Karma411 with fellow FatWire co-founder John Murcott. Karma411 is the leading people-to-people fundraising and collaboration tool for nonprofits.

Prior to these companies, Mark co-founded FatWire Software in 1996. For ten years as CEO, Mark helped grow the company to become a leading web content management software provider, doing over $40M in sales with more than 400 customers in nine countries around the world, including GM, Ford, Chanel, JPMorgan Chase, Best Buy, Banco Santander, Allied Irish Bank and Walmart.

Mark graduated from Cornell University with degrees in English and Computer Science and received his M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Chicago. His doctoral thesis from the Artificial Intelligence Lab at the University of Chicago defined a system for planning and acting in real-time, uncertain worlds. 

Steven Skiena, Chief Science Officer | e-mail: steve.skiena@generalsentiment.com

Steve Skiena is a co-founder and the chief science officer of General Sentiment. Steve is a professor of Computer Science at Stony Brook University. The Lydia news/blog analysis project created by him and his students serves as the technological foundation for General Sentiment. 

His research interests include the design of graph, string and geometric algorithms and their applications. He is the author of four books, including "The Algorithm Design Manual" and "Calculated Bets: Computers, Gambling, and Mathematical Modeling to Win."

He is the recipient of the ONR Young Investigator Award and the IEEE Computer Science and Engineering Undergraduate Teaching Award.

Simon Walsh, Vice President of Sales & Marketing | e-mail: simon.walsh@generalsentiment.com

Simon runs sales and marketing for General Sentiment. Previously, he ran the credit and debit card program at UBS, where he more than tripled spend to $1.2B, reduced costs by $14M, increased client satisfaction from 69 percent to a high of 85 percent and led the program back to profitability.

Before UBS, Simon was CMO at Jefferson National - the DMA’s 2010 Financial Services Company of the Year - and launched the product cited in the DMA award. It is now the number one recommended annuity among independent advisors. 

Prior to that, Simon was CMO at E*TRADE Bank, where he managed a $50M marketing budget and used digital and direct marketing to double the deposit base from $4B to $8B. Net interest income jumped 60 percent to $160M in that period.