About us

Meet the Placeforce founding team.

Nate Burnes

Prior to co-founding Placeforce Nate worked for Hollingsworth & Vose Company managing a technology development business. While there, Nate was responsible for determining strategic goals, managing resources and delivering results. Throughout his career Nate has worked with a variety of different types of customers to increase efficiencies.

Nate is married with 3 kids and spends most of his time outside work either coaching one of his kids or trying to stay in shape by playing a variety of different sports.

Nate earned a BA from Hobart & William Smith Colleges and an MBA from Cornell’s Johnson School of Business.

Eric Swardstrom

Product Manager
eric@placeforce.com

Before founding Placeforce, Eric held leading positions in the Information Technology and Property Management industries. Eric was a systems engineer for IBM, Oracle, and SCS Partners; he was an owner and operator of a Fish window cleaning franchisee in the Back Bay area of Boston; and, he led the Technology and Sales efforts for a respected Boston-area property management firm.

Eric is married with three kids and lives in Brookline, MA. In his spare time, Eric enjoys cooking, boating and spending time on Cape Cod with family.

Eric graduated with degrees in Industrial Management and Computer Science from the University of Massachusetts.

Mark Swardstrom

Developer
mark@placeforce.com

Since 1995, Mark has worked as a lead designer and developer for a number of popular websites including ESPN, MSN, and Jobster Inc. More recently, Mark has been developing websites in the Ruby on Rails programming language using Agile development practices.

Mark lives in Seattle and is married with two kids. When he’s not coding, Mark plays and coaches Ultimate Frisbee, struggles at photography and painting, and continues to be a New England sports fan in spite of recent playoffs results.

Mark studied Marketing and Illustration at Cornell University, and Computer Science at the University of Washington.