GET TO KNOW US

We are a professional cross-functional company helping companies grow and build.

MEET THE TEAM

Hailing from tech giants to startups, the folks at Best and Basic bring deep technical, design and operational expertise to execute and scale at every stage of a business.

CEO, Co-Founder

Karolina Smith

A native of The Netherlands, Karolina Smith built a successful entrepreneurial career as a driven business professional with extensive experience in change management, leadership, and scrum master roles.

She holds a degree from the University of Applied Science in Business and speaks multilingual in English, Polish, Dutch, and German.

She is constantly seeking out new opportunities for growth and development both professionally and personally.

A proven leader with a track record of driving change and achieving results. With a passion for making a difference, she’s a go-getter who is always looking for new challenges.

Executive Chairman of the Board, Co-Founder

Austin Smith

Smith is a Malibu Native who has built a successful entrepreneurial career that blends strategic marketing, technology-enabled efficiency, and supply chain management with his leadership skills. While attending Moorpark College, he started his first business at age 18 and sold it three years later. Next, going into real estate with a partnership group taking part in raising $50 million and employing data analytical tools to purchase and sell over 450+ real estate properties. Moving into the tech sector, Austin studied bank data and financial modeling, he identified an opportunity in e-commerce subscription, and it was off to the races.

Larger success followed. Austin was recruited by noted incubator Science Inc. to start a venture; PVbody later to be rebranded, Ellie. As COO he grew the business from 0 to 50,000 subscribers within the first six months of commencement. He was then recruited by Fabfitfun to head their Operations Department, Austin grew their subscription base from 15,000 to 250,000 within two years, directly managing a staff of 100+ employees. He has helped to oversee rapid-growth companies including The Black Tux, Papa & Barkley, Fam Brands, YourMinerals, Squarehearts, Splendies and ReCharge; a billing software company. Austin has immersed himself in business intelligence, machine learning, data analysis, and supply systems management; served on the Board of Directors for e-commerce at FedEx.

Specialties include New Product & Business Development and Growth, Strategic Planning & Execution, Board presentations, Startup mentorship, IT, Systems Design, Integrations, Data Analysis, Framework Design, UX Design, Photoshop, PHP, SQL, HTML, XHTML, CSS, Javascript.

VP of Business Development & Partnerships

Michael Garganese

“Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.” -Andy Warhol

Michael Garganese is an industry-agnostic entrepreneur with a track record of taking ideas from conception to execution in emerging industries. He started his career at Google where he advised CPG and tech businesses on their online strategy. Michael is of the rare breed that has the ability to work with creative and business types, effectively bridging the gap between the two worlds to execute projects that are always centered around a big picture vision and create positive culture in the process. He is the cofounder of the California based wellness brand, Lola Lola, where he led the brand to multiple millions of dollars of revenue and hundreds of wholesale clients in their first year of business. He also spent time as the Chief Brand Officer of a venture-backed portfolio of CPG companies as well as a Director of Strategy to their parent company, a private equity fund. Michael has been featured in Business Insider, Forbes, and Yahoo Finance.

Senior Software Consultant

Meathanjay Baidya

Baidya is a professional software engineer developer since 2010. He have worked with more than 12 International start-ups and mid-level companies. Working as a developer gave him the opportunity to work on different parts of web applications, mostly backend, front-end, and DevOps rule and found interests in different technologies.

Baidya is always looking for challenging positions and always believe there a room for improvement and keep the learning mode always on.

CULTURE

Innovate with no exceptions.

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Always overdeliver to our customers.

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Build modern solutions.

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