Guest Authors


Dominique Trempont

Dominique Trempont

Dominique Trempont has been CEO and Board Member at a series of companies. In 1993, he was recruited by Steve Jobs to turnaround NeXT as CFO. He sold NeXT to Apple in 1997 for $462M. In 1997, Dominique became the CEO of Gemplus Corp., the software application and mobile telephony company of Gemplus, world leader in smart cards. In 1999, he became CEO of Kanisa, a knowledge management software company, which has since merged with Knova. Dominique has been on the boards of Verity (NASDAQ: VRTY), leader in enterprise search, & Signio, a mobile payment platform, as a founding investor. Signio was sold to Verisign for $700M. He is currently on the board of Finisar (NASDAQ: FNSR), 3COM (NASDAQ: COMS), Energy Recovery (NASDAQ: ERII) the advisory board of the INSEAD Business School (France), and works with several early-stage entrepreneurial ventures including ZillionTV. Dominique has an MBA from INSEAD, a BA from the University of Louvain, Belgium, and spent the first fourteen years of his career at Raychem, world leader in Material Sciences.

Lance Glasser

Lance Glasser is presently an industry consultant and a part-time senior advisor to KLA-Tencor. Previous positions at KLA-Tencor include Chief Technical Officer, Group Vice President of the Wafer Inspection Group, and Vice President and General Manager of RAPID, the Reticle and Photomask Inspection Division. Before joining KLA in 1996, Lance was Director of the Electronics Technology Office at the Advanced Research Projects Agency. His responsibilities included all electronics technology at ARPA. Lance is also co-founder of the iNEMI, the International Electronics Manufacturing Initiative. Before coming to ARPA as a Program Manager in 1989, he spent one year as a Visiting Senior Researcher at Hitachi Central Research Laboratories in Tokyo. Lance was a member of the faculty in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1980 until 1988. In addition to numerous articles and patents, he has written, with Dan Dobberpuhl, The Design and Analysis of VLSI Circuits. He is the 1986 recipient of the ASEE Frederick Emmons Terman Award. Lance’s website is www.lanceglasser.com.

Frank H. Levinson

Frank H. Levinson, Ph.D., is the founder and managing director of Small World Group, PTE LTD. From 1988 through 2005, he was founder, CTO and chairman of Finisar Corporation, a technology leader in fiber optic subsystems and network performance test systems, headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. Frank lead a dynamic team of talented technology and business professionals who helped build Finisar from a startup to ~$300 million in annual sales by 2005. He also worked extensively with manufacturing teams in Asia to help make Finisar a leader in high volume manufacturing of fiber optics components. Before Finisar, Frank developed fiber optic technologies at Raychem/Raynet in Menlo Park, California and at Bell Labs and Bellcore in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. In 1984, he founded Netek Corporation in Lincoln Park, New Jersey in partnership with AMP. He served as Netek’s CEO and lead the development of fiber optics transceivers.

Shomit Ghose

Shomit Ghose

Shomit Ghose joined ONSET Ventures in 2001 after 19 years of working at high-tech companies in the Silicon Valley. During his career he participated in several successful IPOs, including those of Sun Microsystems and Broadvision. Prior to joining ONSET, he was Sr. VP of Operations at Tumbleweed Communications, where he managed the marketing, professional services, applications engineering and corporate development departments. He helped the company through a successful IPO in 1999. Previously, he was VP of the Worldwide Professional Services Organization at BroadVision and helped that company through a successful IPO in 1996.

Calvin McElroy

Cal is an accomplished Canadian executive with 25 years of experience with major technology companies. He has honed his skills with executive mandates at Intergraph Canada (Director and President) and Wang Center for Imaging Technology (General Manager). His career also spans technical, marketing and management roles at Data General (EMC), SHL Systemhouse (EDS) and Oracle. He has served 11 years as a CE0 and board member of startup companies, first with The TPI Group, a strategic consulting company with global clients in telecom, government and the energy industries and later, with Cquay.

Gerard Langeler

For more than 26 years, Gerry has started and grown technology-based companies. He was co-founder of Mentor Graphics Corporation where he served as President, and helped lead Mentor through its IPO to over $400M in worldwide sales and over $1B in market capitalization. Gerry has also served as a board member for companies ranging from enterprise software to wireless communications, retailing to medical devices. He is the author of The Vision Trap (Harvard Business Review, 3/92). He also authored a chapter in Venture Capital Best Practices, Aspatore Books, 2005. Gerry has an AB, Chemistry, from Cornell University, and a MBA, Harvard University. His venture investments include: 800.com, Captivate Network, djangos.com, Elekom, Foundstone, Max-Viz, Now Software, Portland Software, Preview Systems, Surplus Software, TView, Unify, Vascular Solutions, Viral Logic Systems, Webridge. His current board seats include: Max-Viz, Viral Logic Systems.

Dr. Jörg Überla

Dr. Jörg Überla joined Wellington Partners in February 1999 and focuses on investments in Services, Software and Electronics. He currently manages the firm’s investments in 1-2-3.tv, EnOcean, Giga TV, Ingent Technologies, Questico, Truphone and VoiceObjects. Jörg has supported three of these companies in the crucial transition to the U.S. market. Prior investments include net mobile, the mobile company that had a successful IPO in the summer of 2005. Jörg holds a master’s degree in Computer Science from the Universities of Munich and Grenoble, a doctorate in Computer Science from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, and an MBA from INSEAD.

Dharma Kuthanur

Dharma is currently Vice President, Strategic Accounts, at July Systems, a provider of integrated solutions for mobile content retailing. Dharma has over 16 years of experience in high technology, having held senior positions in marketing, business development, software development and management consulting with both large corporations as well as start-ups. Through his successful career in pioneering companies such as Lucent Technologies, July Systems and Veraz Networks, Dharma has gained extensive operational experience in all aspects of marketing & business development. Dharma’s recent experience also includes 2.5 years in Bangalore with July Systems as well as an independent Product Marketing consultant for technology start-ups. He has a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from BITS Pilani, India, a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Louisiana State University and an MBA from the University of Chicago. His interests include India, technologies that the layman can touch & feel (such as Telecom, Mobile VAS), and the intersection of history, culture & politics that make societies and individuals what they are today. The views expressed in Dharma’s columns are his own, not that of July Systems.

Daniel Cohen

Daniel Cohen is a Partner at Gemini, specializing in Internet and enterprise software investments. He sits on the Board of Gemini companies eSnips, SupportSpace and Verix (formerly Business Events). In addition Danny manages the Fund’s operation in Silicon Valley and provides portfolio companies with a direct link to the technology and VC activity in California. In addition, Danny led the creation of Gemini’s Internet Lab, which co-invests funds in Internet companies together with Lightspeed VP. Danny has a BA in computer science and psychology from Tel-Aviv University and an MBA from INSEAD. He blogs on Internet and Israeli Venture Capital at http://coheda.typepad.com.

Lyla Kuriyan

Lyla Kuriyan is a Director of Product Marketing in the Research & Breakthrough Innovation group at SAP. She works in a team that is developing the strategy to define SAP’s next generation mid-market products. The thoughts that Lyla expresses are her own — not SAP’s.

Mitch Berman

Mitch Berman is a 25 year multimedia industry executive specializing in video distribution for cable, satellite, IPTV, interactive TV, VOD and P2P. He is the former Corporate Vice President of Global Marketing for C-COR, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing and Operations for the start-up and IPO of OpenTV; Senior Vice President of Strategic Business Development & General Manager for the start-up of Australia’s Galaxy Media/East Coast Pay TV Ltd (aka News Corporation’s FOXTEL); Marketing Director for the start-up of News Corporation’s Sky Network Television New Zealand; Vice President of Affiliate Sales at the start-up of E! Entertainment Television; and Regional Manager of Affiliate Operations at Home Box Office (HBO/Cinemax). Mitch is a frequently requested speaker/moderator at global industry events, such as Digital Hollywood, iTVT’s “TV Of Tomorrow Show,” NAB, IBC, CTAM Europe, Telecom ‘07, and Fierce Markets IPTV Conference. Mitch holds a Master’s degree in Public Administration from USC and a B.A. in Sociology from UCLA.

Richard Laermer

Frequently-quoted authority on media culture and hype, Laermer is a former magazine and newspaper journalist, author of six bestselling books including the brand new 2011: Trendspotting and 2007’s Punk Marketing plus being cohost of TLC’s makeover show Taking Care of Business.

Laermer’s reporting has been published in The New York Times, New York Daily News, Reuters, USA Today, Saturday Review, US, New York Post, Soho News, and Editor & Publisher, among others.

He is founder of RLM PR (1991) and has written books like trendSpotting and Full Frontal PR. Laermer co-runs Bad Pitch Blog and his radio show, Unspun, appears around the nation.

Vijay Nagarajan

As an engineer at Atheros, Vijay works to bring state-of-the-art wireless systems to the consumer. Previously, he was with Denver-based TensorComm, a start-up providing advanced receiver solutions for CDMA/WCDMA networks. Vijay has over 15 published patent applications and multiple technical papers/articles in mobile receiver design. His active engineering experience, along with his penchant for market research/analysis, helps provide unique perspectives and insider insights about wireless industry trends which he jots down in his analyst blog. Vijay holds an M.S(EE) degree from the University of Colorado, Boulder and a B.S degree from the College of Engineering, Guindy, India. Vijay writes regularly at his blog, Wireless Industry Analyst.

Gadi Shamia

Gadi
Gadi Shamia is an accomplished Senior Executive with more than 13 years of software leadership experience, focused on the small and midsize business (SMB) market, working in both large companies and start-ups. Currently Gadi serves as VP & General Manager, SMB at Qualys, an on demand security and compliance management company. Prior to that, Gadi served as a Senior Vice President, responsible for SAP’s small business product portfolio. Other positions Gadi held were Vice President for sales, channels and field operations for SAP America’s SMB unit and a co-founder and Senior Vice President of Sales, Marketing and Business Development for TopManage, Inc., an Israeli market leader in the business management software space. TopManage was acquired by SAP in early 2002. Read more about Gadi’s interests in his blog.

Aparna Chennapragada

Aparna is a graduate student at MIT, in a joint degree program between Sloan School of Management and School of Engineering. Previously, she worked in software product development roles at Akamai technologies, a leading Internet content delivery service provider. Her interests include Technology entrepreneurship, India and Venture capital.

Gabe Zichermann

Gabe
Gabe Zichermann developed the concept for New York-based rmbr in early 2007 after realizing that he had stopped enjoying the process of dealing with his friends’ online photos, and that a Funware-based approach might fix the problem. Gabe is a ten-year veteran of the games industry, with roles at CMP Media, Trymedia and Boonty as Director of Marketing, VP of Strategy and CMO. Prior to joining the games industry, Zichermann held roles with Cisco, CheckPoint Software and Nortel/Bay Networks.

Michael Kanazawa

Michael Kanazawa
Michael Kanazawa is CEO of Dissero Partners and co-author of BIG Ideas to BIG Results. He works with top executives on corporate transformations, strategy development, business execution and leadership. His clients have included a wide range of organizations, including Silicon Valley start-ups, private equity investors, and global corporations, such as AT&T, Anadigics, Intel, PG&E, Schlumberger, Symantec, and Verizon. Michael holds a BA in mathematics and economics from U.C. Santa Barbara and an MBA from the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California.

Carlo Maley

Carlo
Carlo Maley studied computer science and psychology at Oberlin College. He then went to the University of Oxford on a Marshall Scholarship where he received a M.Sc. in evolutionary biology. He returned to the states to do a Ph.D. at MIT in computer science (really, computational biology). As a postdoc at the University of New Mexico, and later at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center he began studying the evolution of cells in cancers. Carlo is now an assistant professor at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia where his lab uses both experimental (”wet lab”) and computational (”dry lab”) techniques to understand and prevent both carcinogenesis and therapeutic resistance.

Sudhakar Ram

sudhakarSudhakar Ram, Founder and Chairman and Managing Director of Mastek Ltd, has bagged the CNBC Asia’s India Business Leader of the Year award for 2007. Mr. Ram has been the moving force in leveraging the company’s strengths as an IT solutions company, and led its repositioning, focusing on chosen verticals like insurance and government. He has also been instrumental in identifying the futuristic ‘Third Wave’ opportunity for the Indian IT industry.

Bob Compton

bob_compton.jpgBob Compton has spent most of his career as a professional venture capital investor specializing in start-up technology companies, primarily medical tech and software. He has served on the boards of over a dozen non-profit organizations, including as a Trustee of the Kauffman Foundation, a $1.8 billion foundation dedicated to accelerating entrepreneurship. Compton’s latest endeavors include global traveler, author, record producer, photographer and film-maker. Two Million Minutes: A Global Examination is his first documentary film which was released this year. The film follows 2 high school seniors in India, China and the U.S. to compare and contrast the high school experiences in each country. How kids spend their time during high school – approximately 4 years, or two million minutes - in each culture is radically different and has profound implications for America’s economy in the decades ahead.

Kathy Hwang and Charles W. Bush

3strandinnovation
Kathy Hwang works with clients to create strategies to deliver powerful brand experiences through her consultancy, 3Strand Innovation. She has a BS in mechanical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an MS in Industrial Design from Art Center College of Design. She gained expertise in analytical problem solving and manufacturing as an engineer at General Motors. She has worked with BMW DesignworksUSA as a research and strategy consultant for branding and experience design. Other projects include consulting with Nike and Walt Disney Imagineering.

Charles-W-Bush Charles W. Bush specializes in filling the space between business and design. He recently completed a collaborative degree program between INSEAD International Business School in Singapore and Art Center College of Design. He is currently in California focusing on strategic business innovation. Previous work includes envisioning future customer trends and opportunities for Whirlpool and NTT Docomo and running creativity workshops for INSEAD. Most recently, he has been consulting with India’s telecom giant Bharti Airtel to increase collaboration at executive levels through new uses of environment and software.

Dr. Elgamal

Dr. Elgamal is a leading expert in computer, network and information security. Also, recognized in the industry as the “inventor of SSL,” Dr. Elgamal led the SSL efforts at Netscape and throughout the industry. He also wrote the SSL patent and promoted SSL as the Internet Security standard within standard committees and the industry. Dr. Elgamal invented several industry and government standards in data security and digital signatures area, including the DSS government standard for digital signatures. Several thousand publications have been written in the space referred to as “the ElGamal Cryptography.” He developed the basic work that has been adopted by about ten companies for commercial products and for several IEEE and ISO standards. This work has also been adapted for the DSS government standard for digital signatures and is the basis for the Elliptic Curve encryption methods recently introduced in the industry. Dr. Elgamal has public company board experience with RSA Security, hi/fn, Phoenix Technology and Tumbleweed. He holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in Computer Science from Stanford University and a B.S. in Computer Science from Cairo University.

Greg Gianforte

Greg Gianforte,Greg Gianforte, CEO and Founder, RightNow Technologies
A serial entrepreneur, Greg founded RightNow in 1997 and took the company public in 2004 with one of that year’s most successful initial public offerings. Greg has grown RightNow to more than 700 employees worldwide and more than $100 million in revenue. Greg also founded Bootstrap Montana, a program to help entrepreneurs learn the principles of bootstrapping and provide micro-loans to rural Montana entrepreneurs (bootstrapmontana.org).  Greg has also launched his own blog.

Dave Hatch

Dave Hatch is Research Director of Aberdeen Group’s Business Intelligence Practice, where he benchmarks user organizations’ BI strategies, actions and planned technology investments. His research focuses on the collection (DQ, EDI), assembly (data modeling, data access, business rules and KPIs), and delivery (reporting, dashboards, scorecards, analytic tools, portals, On-Demand/SaaS, and software licensing) of information throughout the enterprise. Dave has been involved as a user, marketer, and analyst of BI technologies for 15 years within many industry environments including life sciences, manufacturing, wholesale/distribution, retail, publishing/media, and insurance. Prior to joining Aberdeen, Dave was VP of Marketing for Dimensional Insight, a privately held business intelligence software developer and marketer. Dave holds a BA, Communications degree from the University of Massachusetts.

Judy Estrin


Judy Estrin is CEO of JLABS, LLC, formerly known as Packet Design Management Company, LLC. She is the author of Closing the Innovation Gap, published in September 2008. Beginning in 1981 Estrin co-founded three other successful technology companies: Bridge Communications, Network Computing Devices and Precept Software. In 1998 Cisco Systems acquired Precept, and Estrin became Cisco’s chief technology officer until April 2000.

Estrin has been named three times to Fortune Magazine’s list of the 50 most powerful women in American business. She sits on the boards of directors of The Walt Disney Company and FedEx Corporation as well as two private company boards – Packet Design, Inc. and Arch Rock. She also sits on the advisory councils of Stanford’s School of Engineering and Stanford’s Bio-X initiative. She holds a B.S. in math and computer science from UCLA, and an M.S. in electrical engineering from Stanford University.

Dave Chen

Dave works to increase private equity investment in sustainable commerce. Since 2003 he has participated in initiatives to define sustainable economic and energy policies in the Pacific Northwest. Dave chairs the Oregon Innovation Council and is a board member of the SF Fed Reserve Bank, Portland branch. In 2007, he worked with the Meyer Memorial Trust to develop a strategy for market-based mission investing focused on sustainability; that tool is now a core component of the 2% Challenge, a campaign to increase mission-related investments to 2% of all U.S. foundation assets over the next five years. He is co-founder of Equilibrium Capital Group, a private equity investment firm committed to building the leading companies for a sustainable future. Prior to Equilibrium, Dave was a GP at OVP, founded GeoTrust and The Ascent Group and held senior management positions at companies including Mentor Graphics and McKinsey. He has a BA in biology from the University of California, Berkeley, and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.


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