Shankar Desai

Co-founder

Shankar is the guy who makes it all run as the Co-Founder & CEO of Naked Apartments.

After graduating from Harvard College in 2002 with an honors degree in Government, Shankar took a different road and spent two years as a teaching fellow at the Norbulingka Institute teaching Political Science to Tibetan Refugees.

After returning back to the states, he embarked on career focusing on business and technology, working as an investment analyst at a Soros-backed venture philanthropy fund. Shankar focused on new technologies for civic engagement and managed $10MM of investments.

He enjoys Ashtanga yoga, has a screenplay in development and lives in Brooklyn.

Peter Treadway

Co-founder

Peter is a Co-Founder of Naked Apartments and advisor to Shankar on key strategic issues.

Peter is a strategic thinker in business, with experience in understanding how companies find success. In his day job, Peter works as an investment analyst at Tracer Capital Management, a New York-based investment fund. Peter serves as the media Sector Head at Tracer Capital, where he has worked since 2003.

Before Tracer, Peter worked as an investment banking analyst at Morgan Stanley. He worked in the Mergers and Acquisitions group as well as the Consumer/Retail group. Peter graduated from Harvard College in 2002 with an honors degree in Economics.

He is a frustrated renter, an avid sports participant (soccer, basketball, football), and extremely slow but dedicated book reader. He's contemplating learning Mandarin, so long as he can get his wife Laura to join him.

Jay Signorello

Lead Developer

Jay is lead developer and responsible for operations at Naked Apartments.

He's the main man when it comes to development, with over eight years of experience, including serving as the Lead Engineer at Heavy.com. At Heavy.com, Jay helped lead the development of a video ad network dubbed Husky Media, which received over 19 million unique users and generated over $100k in revenue in the first 60 days. He also served as Director of Software Development at Pepperjam, a renowned full service Internet marketing firm. Jay holds a BS in Information Technology from Penn State University.

He enjoys building useful web apps, biking, fishing, watching movies, woodcrafting, and most of all good food. He resides in Northern NJ with his wife, Serina.

Gabriel Friedman

Creative Director

Gabriel is the Creative Director of Naked Apartments. He is responsible for the visual design and overall user experience.

Before joining NA, he owned a small web design firm specializing in e-commerce sites. His developed an online presence for influential brands such as the Sesame Workshop, Criterion, ESPN, PBS, the Nature Conservancy, Star Trek, Pepsi, and CBS.

In previous careers, Gabriel worked as a freelance journalist, private detective, vintage clothing retailer and orange juice salesman. He graduated from UC Berkeley with honors degrees in Philosophy and French. He lives in Brooklyn, and still has the occasional glass of fresh OJ.