Management Team

Matthew Pierce was the Founder of Versus LLC and joined our company as Chief Executive Officer and a director in 2016. Mr. Pierce has over 20 years of experience working in entertainment and technology. Prior to founding Versus Systems, Mr. Pierce founded in June 2014 and was until June 2016 the chief executive officer of OLabs, LLC, a technology incubator that founded Versus. From April 2011 to June 2014, Mr. Pierce was Vice President of Strategy at Originate Inc., a business incubator where he worked with early-stage technology companies. Since 2014, Mr. Pierce has been a Lecturer at the University of California, Los Angeles, or UCLA, Anderson School of Management and in the Economics department at UCLA, where he teaches entrepreneurship. Mr. Pierce is a graduate of Stanford University and earned his MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management.

Craig Finster joined our company as Chief Financial Officer in 2016 and additionally as President in 2019. Mr. Finster has over 20 years of experience in finance, accounting, and corporate development for technology companies. Between April 2010 and March 2019, Mr. Finster worked at Originate, Inc. in a variety of roles, including Sr. Vice President of Corporate Partnerships and Managing Director of Originate’s Strategic Advisory Group, which focused on capital advisory for early and growth stage companies. He received his bachelor’s degrees in economics and finance from the University of Arizona and his MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management.

Alex Peachey joined our company as Chief Technology Officer in May 2016. Mr. Peachey leads the architecture efforts for our Elixir-based Winfinite challenge platform. Prior to joining us, Mr. Peachey founded Threadbias LLC in January 2011, an online community for people who love to sew and wish to exchange ideas, share projects and join or create groups. He continues to serve as their CEO. From February 2012 to May 2016, Mr. Peachey served the Director of Engineering at Originate, Inc., where he managed a team of software engineers. He holds a BS in Computer Science from Western Washington University and an MBA from the University of Washington.

Armour, who has been with the company since 2016, will spearhead Versus’s rapid continued growth by maximizing the potential of the company’s organizational infrastructure. Armour’s focus on growth, culture, learning and development, and hiring will support the company in its recent acquisition of Xcite Interactive and into further expansion. Armour’s work includes creating and implementing operations, hiring, and organization efforts for the inaugural 2016 Cedar Sinai-Techstars partnership and resulting technology companies, joining the Board of the Digital Diversity Network in 2019, and serving on the Advisory Board of Aeras Fog, a drone technology company that began operations in 2020. From 2012 through 2016, Ms. Armour led several NIH and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-sponsored national research teams focused on initiatives concerning organizational behavior, ingroup establishment, and motivation of group buy-in as they relate to public health measures and medical access equity.