13 Secret Tech Stars Of Silicon Valley


#4 Laura Thomson, for debugging Mozilla

Laura Thomson is Sr. Engineering Manager at Mozilla Corporation, the maker of open-source Web browser Firefox. She however underplays her role at Mozilla, "I'm an Australian," she said in a Mozilla blog post, "We specialize in self-deprecation."

Her work on Mozilla's internal Web tools, like the software that analyzes crash reports, plays a crucial role in making Firefox better.

She is also a co-author of the best-selling book on open-source Web development, "PHP and MySQL Web Development.”

#3 Matt Thomson, for scoring a big investment from Microsoft at Klout

Matt Thomson is Biz Dev (business developer) for Klout.

When Klout, the influence-measurement company, did a big deal with Microsoft to integrate Klout data into Bing's search results and have the software giant invest in the startup, CEO Joe Fernandez got the splashy Wall Street Journal interview. But business-development chief Thomson was the man who made the deal happen.

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