At Best Startup US we track over 1,000,000 US startups and over 3 million people who hold key positions in these companies. We use this directory of startups to highlight top employees, founders and board members we think deserve more appreciation than they are currently getting.
This list showcases the top California based Founder operating in the Cloud Computing space. If you think a Founder is missing from this list, feel free to contact our editor on editor@beststartup.us.
The individuals on this list have been included because of exceptional performance in one of the following categories:
- Innovation – Operating as a key part in an extremely innovative business or startup.
- Growth – Operating as a key figure in the growth and upscale of a market leading business or startup.
- Management – Showing exceptional management skills.
- Societal impact – Putting their business on the map for their positive societal or environmental impact.
Our Data – We source our data from OSINT (open source intelligence) and public directories such as Crunchbase, SemRush and many more. The data from these sources should be treated with a degree of caution and verified yourself.
Bill Tai
Co-Founder of Treasure Data
Bill Tai started in VC in 1991 and has had 22 IPOs from his early stage investments. He has served a Board Director for 8 publicly listed companies as a result. He is founding investor and Chairman of Treasure Data (acquired by ARM / Softbank in the largest all cash acquisition in their history), Founding Chairman of IPinfusion, Founding Chairman and CEO of iAsiaWorks (listed on NASDAQ through Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs). He is among the original seed investors in Zoom Video, Canva, SafetyCulture, and Wish.com, and early angel in ColorGenomics, Tweetdeck/Twitter. He supports conservation and economic empowerment via ACTAI Global, a 501(c)3 he founded and Chairs. Originally trained as a computer chip designer (BSEE, Honors, Illinois), he joined LSI Logic, a seminal Silicon Valley startup formed by the CEO of Fairchild Semiconductor, then completed an MBA at Harvard. He was was issued badge #A001 at TSMC (NYSE:TSM), now a $250 Billion leader in semiconductors. He also holds a HonD PhD from, and is an Adjunct Professor of ‘Innovation and Economic Development’ at Curtin University in Perth, Australia.
Follow Bill Tai:
About Bitfury Group, Canva, CRV, Scribd, Treasure Data, Zoom: Treasure Data is an enterprise customer data platform that offers end-to-end, fully-managed cloud service for big data.
_______
Amjad Masad
Founder of Repl.it
Amjad Masad is the Founder at Repl.it.
Follow Amjad Masad:
About Repl.it: Repl.it is a browser-based integrated development environment for cross-platform collaborative coding.
Haya Odeh
Co-Founder of Repl.it
Haya Odeh is the co-founder of Repl.it.
Follow Haya Odeh:
About Repl.it: Repl.it is a browser-based integrated development environment for cross-platform collaborative coding.
Dave Hitz
Founder Emeritus of NetApp
As Executive Vice President, David Hitz is responsible for the future strategy and direction of NetApp. Dave Hitz and James Lau founded NetApp in 1992 with a desire to simplify storage the way Cisco simplified networking. Dave and James believed that general-purpose computing systems were too complex, so they built dedicated devices called appliances. These appliances were designed to handle one thing well: storage. Prior to 1992, Dave worked as a senior engineer at Auspex Corporation, an enterprise storage solutions provider, where he was responsible for file systems and microkernel design. He also held engineering positions at MIPS Computer, focusing on file system and I/O subsystem design for the System V kernel development effort. Before his career in the computer industry, Dave worked as a cowboy, getting valuable management experience by herding, branding and castrating cattle. Dave documented these and other formative business experiences in his autobiography, “How To Castrate A Bull, Unexpected Lessons on Risk, Growth, and Success in Business.“ Dave holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science and electrical engineering from Princeton University.
Follow Dave Hitz:
About NetApp: NetApp is a hybrid cloud data services company .
Peter Reinhardt
CEO & Co-Founder of Segment
Peter Reinhardt is CEO and co-founder of Segment, the Customer Data Infrastructure (CDI) company. Founded in 2011, Peter has successfully grown Segment from three founders in a dorm room at MIT to a global company that has raised over $280 million. Segment has thousands of customers across 71 countries, from fast-growing businesses such as Atlassian, Bonobos and Instacart to some of the world’s largest organizations like Levi’s, Intuit, and Meredith. Peter was named to Forbes’ “30 Under 30” list in 2015. Before leaving to start Segment, Peter studied aerospace engineering at MIT.
Follow Peter Reinhardt:
About Charm Industrial, Segment: Segment provides customer data infrastructure that helps businesses put their customers first.
Vlad Shmunis
Founder, CEO, Chairman of RingCentral
Vlad Shmunis founded RingCentral in 1999 and launched RingCentral’s cloud business phone service in 2003. He developed the service based on the need he saw among businesses for an alternative to inflexible and expensive hardware-based phone systems. Since founding RingCentral, Shmunis has led the company in reimagining business communications. Today, the company empowers hundreds of thousands of businesses and their employees to work with unparalleled freedom and in imaginative new ways, via a wide variety of mobile and fixed line devices in traditional as well as dispersed work environments. Shmunis has more than 25 years of industry and management experience. Prior to launching RingCentral, he founded and served as the CEO of Ring Zero Systems, a desktop software communications company. After shipping more than 25 million copies of its Windows software through partnerships with leading PC manufacturers, Ring Zero Systems was acquired by Motorola. Shmunis was named the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2011 Northern California Award finalist. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in computer science from San Francisco State University, and is a named inventor in a number of U.S. patents.
Follow Vlad Shmunis:
About RingCentral: RingCentral, a global distributor of cloud-unified communications and collaboration solutions, offers its users with technology services.
Eric Benhamou
Founder & General Partner of Benhamou Global Ventures
Eric Benhamou is the CEO and founder of Benhamou Global Ventures, LLC. Benhamou Global Ventures, started in 2003, invests and plays an active role in innovative high tech firms throughout the world. He is an adjunct professor of Entrepreneurship and Family Enterprise at INSEAD. He is also a visiting professor at IDC Herzliya’s Arison School of Business. He served as chairman of the board of directors of Palm, Inc. from 1999 until 2007 and as chief executive officer of Palm from 2001 until 2003. Benhamou served as chief executive officer of 3Com Corporation from 1990 until 2000 and as chairman of the board of directors until its sale to HP in April 2010. Previously, he held a variety of senior management positions at 3Com. In 1981, Mr. Benhamou co-founded Bridge Communications, an early networking pioneer, and was vice president of engineering until its merger with 3Com in 1987. In 2003, Eric Benhamou was appointed to the Joint High Level Advisory Panel of the U.S.- Israel Science and Technology Commission by U.S. Commerce Secretary Donald Evans. He currently serves as chairman of the board of Cypress Semiconductor and as a member of the board of RealNetworks, Inc and of Silicon Valley Bancshares. He serves on the board of directors of several privately held companies. He is the chairman of the Israel Venture Network, a venture philanthropy organization for a stronger Israeli society. Eric Benhamou received a Masters degree from Stanford University’s School of Engineering. He also holds a Diplome d’Ingénieur and a doctorate from Arts et Metiers ParisTech.
Follow Eric Benhamou:
About Benhamou Global Ventures, IDC Herzliya: Benhamou Global Ventures is a venture capital firm sourcing startups to build them into the next-generation of B2B technology companies.
Jonathan Hirsch
Founder of Syapse
Jonathan Hirsch is the Founder and President of Syapse, a software company transforming healthcare by bringing omics into routine medical use. At Syapse, Jonathan works closely with diagnostic and healthcare providers, helping translate customer problems into software solutions. Jonathan is an Advisory Board member of the SXSW Accelerator, a mentor for UCSF Lean Launchpad for Healthcare course, and a member of the Steering Committee of Free the Data!, an effort started by Genetic Alliance and UCSF to crowdsource the interpretation of cancer genes. Earlier in his career, Jonathan worked in Neuroscience Commercial Development at Abbott Laboratories, where he developed strategies to fund drug development through partnerships and private equity financing. His research at the Center for Molecular Neurobiology at the University of Chicago helped establish the effect of exercise on promoting hippocampal neurogenesis and combating Alzheimer’s disease. Jonathan received an M.Sci. in Neuroscience from Stanford University, and an A.B. in Biology and Political Philosophy from the University of Chicago.
Follow Jonathan Hirsch:
About Syapse: Syapse is a real-world evidence company dedicated to extinguishing the fear and burden of serious disease by advancing real-world care
Kenneth Duda
Founder, Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President, Software Engineering of Arista Networks
Kenneth Duda is a pioneer in high-performance networking software and lead architect of Arista Networks EOS, a stateful modular operating system for all Arista Networks products. He is also the co-author of network virtualization specifications including VXLAN with VMware and NVGRE with Microsoft. From 2005 to 2008, Ken was also the Acting President of Arista Networks. Prior to joining Arista Networks, Ken was the CTO at There.com, where he played a lead role in designing a real-time 3-D distributed system that scaled to thousands of simultaneous users. Ken was also the first employee of Granite Systems and led the software development effort for the Catalyst 4000 product line after the acquisition by Cisco. Ken has 3 simultaneous engineering degrees from MIT and holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University.
Follow Kenneth Duda:
About Arista Networks: Arista Networks is a computer networking firm delivering cloud networking solutions for large data center and computer environments.
Stephen Balaban
Co-Founder & CEO of Lambda
Stephen Balaban is the Co-Founder & CEO at Lambda.
Follow Stephen Balaban:
About Lambda, Lambda: Lambda provides Deep Learning servers, workstations, and GPU cloud services to Microsoft, Tencent, MIT, Princeton, Airbus, and more.
Michael Balaban
Co-Founder & Head of Engineering of Lambda
Michael Balaban is the Co-Founder & Head of Engineering at Lambda.
Follow Michael Balaban:
About Lambda: Lambda provides Deep Learning servers, workstations, and GPU cloud services to Microsoft, Tencent, MIT, Princeton, Airbus, and more.
Gautham Viswanathan
VP of Product & Co‑Founder of Workato
Gautham created the first integrated middleware platform, BusinessWorks, that became the template for the more cloud integration platforms of today. Gautham was an early employee of TIBCO, where he held several leadership positions – engineering, product marketing & management, and corporate development. BusinessWorks powered TIBCO’s growth from a startup to one of the top names in enterprise software. After TIBCO, Gautham founded and was the CEO of two SaaS startups.
Follow Gautham Viswanathan:
About Workato: Workato is an enterprise automation platform that helps organizations work faster and smarter without compromising governance and security.
Vijay Tella
CEO & Co‑Founder of Workato
Vijay has led creation of market leading integration technologies for over 25 years. Prior to Workato, he was the CEO of Qik, a consumer video communications company acquired by Skype. Before Qik, he helped create two multi-billion dollar integration products. He was part of the team that created world’s first middleware platform, TIB (The Information Bus) at Teknekron Software Systems, which was acquired by Reuters Plc, in 1994. He was also on the founding team and SVP, Engineering of TIBCO through its IPO. As Chief Strategy Officer, he then helped launch Oracle’s Fusion Middleware platform in 2005.
Follow Vijay Tella:
About Workato: Workato is an enterprise automation platform that helps organizations work faster and smarter without compromising governance and security.
Harish Shetty
VP of Engineering & Co‑Founder of Workato
Harish has extensive experience leading engineering teams and building highly scalable products. Prior to Workato, he led engineering at two SaaS companies and before that was Director of Engineering and Lead Architect at TIBCO and for products like BusinessWorks, ActiveMatrix and Tibbr.
Follow Harish Shetty:
About iProfile, Thinkspeed, Workato: Workato is an enterprise automation platform that helps organizations work faster and smarter without compromising governance and security.
Greg Shenkman
Founder of EIS Group
Greg Shenkman is the founder of EIS Group.
Follow Greg Shenkman:
About EIS Group, Exigen Capital: EIS Group is focused on providing IT solutions that enable companies to convert their technology into strategic assets.
Derek Collison
Founder & CEO of Synadia Communications
Derek Collison is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Synadia Communications. An industry veteran and pioneer in large-scale distributed systems and enterprise computing, Derek founded Apcera and has held executive positions at VMware, Google and TIBCO Software. Derek created NATS.io and CloudFoundry as well as TIBCO’s messaging systems. As Chief Technology Officer and Chief Architect of Cloud Application Platforms at VMware, he co-founded the cloud computing group and designed and architected Cloud Foundry, the industry’s first open PaaS. During Derek’s time at Google, he co-founded the AJAX APIs group. Prior to Google, Derek spent more than a decade at TIBCO, where he designed and implemented a wide range of messaging products, including Rendezvous and EMS. As TIBCO’s Senior Vice President and Chief Architect, Derek led technical and strategic product direction and delivery. Derek is a sought after speaker and collaborator. Derek holds more than 20 software patents and is a recognized leader in distributed systems design and architecture, as well as emerging cloud platforms. Derek earned a Bachelor’s degree with honors in Computer Science from the University of Maryland.
Follow Derek Collison:
About Covaxx, Heavybit, NATS, Savonix, Synadia Communications, Vicarious, Xperiel: Powering the secure connective technologies to drive cloud and edge native
Chris Hornor
Founder & CEO of Powerhive
Chris is founder and CEO at Powerhive, Inc., a technology venture founded in 2011 that offers access to productive, affordable, and reliable microgrid electricity. Powerhive focuses on financing, monetizing, and managing distributed electricity solutions through its proprietary technology platform and business model. Chris is an entrepreneur and recognized pioneer of consumer renewable energy product and services. During the last 15 years he has delivered renewable energy to more than two million people. As founder and CEO of Better Energy Systems he launched Solio, a portable solar charger that defined a new category of small-scale consumer energy solutions. In 2008 Chris led the expansion of Better Energy Systems into East Africa where he and his team introduced Club Solio, leveraging mobile money to create the first pay-as-you go renewable energy service for remote, off-grid regions. Chris has held senior posts at technology startups in the US, UK, and Japan where he identified and developed new revenue streams through emerging internet applications.
Follow Chris Hornor:
About Powerhive: Powerhive unlocks productive, clean electricity for millions of households and businesses in emerging markets.
David Richards
Founder, Chairman, President & CEO of WANdisco
David is CEO, President and co-founder of WANdisco and has quickly established WANdisco as one of the world’s most promising technology companies. Since co-founding the company in Silicon Valley in 2005, David has led WANdisco on a course for rapid international expansion, opening offices in the UK, Japan and China. David spearheaded the acquisition of Altostor, which accelerated the development of WANdisco’s first products for the Big Data market. The majority of WANdisco’s core technology is now produced out of the company’s flourishing software development base in David’s hometown of Sheffield, England and in Belfast, Northern Ireland. David has become recognised as a champion of British technology and entrepreneurship. In 2012, he led WANdisco to a hugely successful listing on London Stock Exchange (WAND:LSE), raising over £24m to drive business growth. With over 15 years’ executive experience in the software industry, David sits on a number of advisory and executive boards of Silicon Valley start-up ventures. A passionate advocate of entrepreneurship, he has established many successful start-up companies in Enterprise Software and is recognised as an industry leader in Enterprise Application Integration and its standards. David is a frequent commentator on a range of business and technology issues, appearing regularly on Bloomberg and CNBC. Profiles of David have appeared in a range of leading publications including the Financial Times, The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail.
Follow David Richards:
About WANdisco: WANdisco, the world leader in Active Data Replication™, enables the replication of continuously changing data to different environments.
Iddo Gino
Founder / CEO of RapidAPI
Follow Iddo Gino:
About RapidAPI: RapidAPI is an API Hub that enables developers to find, manage, and connect to thousands of APIs.
Fabien Beckers
Founder & CEO of Arterys
Fabien Beckers is the CEO and co-founder of Arterys, a cloud/deep learning startup that is disrupting the medical imaging space and building image-based precision medicine tools. Fabien has led the growth of the company from four co-founders to a team of 34 today. Under his leadership, the company has become a pioneer in cloud-based medical imaging software, offering the first FDA-cleared end-to-end cloud infrastructure for medical imaging. They key advantages of the platform being automatic aggregation of real-world data and ability to scale and distribute the processing of increasingly large, complex datasets. Fabien’s vision for the company is to accelerate data-driven medicine by building precision medicine tools based on the consistent quantification of medical image features in combination with molecular, genomics and patient history data. Fabien holds a PhD in Quantum Physics from the University of Cambridge and a masters of business from Stanford University.
Follow Fabien Beckers:
About Arterys: Arterys is a medical imaging platform to deliver clinical AI products over the internet.
Bastin Gerald
Founder, CEO of Apptivo Inc.
Have a proven track record of taking initiatives and turning them to market-leading products and world-renowned award-winning positions. Established product strategy, recruited top talent and led international development teams that delivered profitable multi-million dollar new business application products covering Finance, Supply Chain Management & Product Lifecycle Management. Established mutually profitable strategic alliances to get favorable positioning for products. Developed aggressive field readiness plans and coordinated with marketing, analyst relations and media relations for several product launches. Authored well-received book targeted at business users and consultants.
Follow Bastin Gerald:
About Apptivo Inc., Profit.co, Sirahu Technologies: Apptivo is an integrated Cloud Suite with over 40+ apps for all types of businesses, including CRM, project management, invoicing, and more.
Glen Kacher
CIO, Founder of Light Street Capital
Glen Kacher founded Light Street Capital Management in May of 2010. Glen Kacher joined Integral as a Managing Director in January 1998. At Integral, Glen lead both private and public investments primarily in the Internet, software, Software as a Service, information security, computer services, and consumer technology markets. Glen is frequently quoted in the financial press regarding industry developments. Prior to joining Integral, Glen spent four years with Tiger Management as a research analyst and consultant where he focused on investments in the hardware, software, and networking industries. While Glen was at Tiger, the company experienced rapid growth in assets under management, beginning at $3.5 billion and growing to over $12 billion. Tiger was one of the largest and most respected hedge funds of its time. Glen also worked in the marketing department at Calico Commerce, one of Integral’s former portfolio companies. Glen earned a B.S. from the University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce with Distinction, and an M.B.A. from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business.
Follow Glen Kacher:
About Light Street Capital: Light Street Capital invests globally in public and private equities with a focus on technology and media sectors.
Renee James
Founder , Chairman & CEO of Ampere Computing
Renée James is President of Intel Corporation and is part of the company’s Executive Office. Renée has broad knowledge of the computing industry, spanning hardware, manufacturing, security, software and services, which she developed through product R&D leadership positions at Intel and as chairman of Intel’s software subsidiaries. Renée has also been an overall leader in the development and implementation of the corporate strategy. During her 25 plus year career at Intel, Renée has spearheaded the company’s strategic expansion into providing proprietary and open source software and services for applications in enterprise, security and cloud-based computing. In her most recent role as executive vice president and general manager of the Software and Services Group, she was responsible for Intel’s global software and services strategy, revenue, profit, and product R&D. In this role, Renée led Intel’s strategic relationships with the world’s leading device and enterprise operating systems companies. Previously, she was the director and COO of Intel Online Services, Intel’s datacenter services business. Early in her career Renée also served as chief of staff for former Intel CEO Andy Grove. Renée is Vice Chair of the President’s National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee. She served 7 years as independent director on the VMware Inc. Board of Directors and was a member of the Audit Committee. She is also a member of the C200 and a non-executive director of Sabre Corporation. Most recently Renée was nominated to Fortune’s Most Powerful Women in Business list, ranking 21st and was named on Forbes 100 list at number 37. She holds a bachelor’s degree and an MBA from the University of Oregon.
Follow Renee James:
About Ampere Computing, Intel, The Carlyle Group: Ampere Computing develops data center processors for cloud servers.
Krishna Kumar
CEO & Founder of App Orchid Inc
Follow Krishna Kumar:
About App Orchid Inc: The App Orchid platform helps enterprises build AI fueled apps for the energy, utilities, Insurance and healthcare industries.
Joe Zhu
Founder & CEO of Zenlayer
Joe Zhu is the Founder and CEO of Zenlayer, a global software defined network and service provider with offices in Los Angeles, Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong. Zenlayer’s mission is to power a better connected world. To that end, under Joe’s leadership, Zenlayer has developed several software defined networking products that drastically simplify traditional storage and networking solutions. Prior to founding Zenlayer, Joe was the SVP of Global Business at ChinaCache, where he built up from scratch the global business unit of China’s largest CDN provider. Before ChinaCache, Joe worked as the Director of Network Operations at China Telecom (USA), where he oversaw China Telecom’s North American network operations and led the development of China Telecom’s global peering policy.
Follow Joe Zhu:
About Zenlayer: Zenlayer operates as a software-defined network and services provider.
Nils Puhlmann
Co-Founder of Cloud Security Alliance
Nils Puhlmann leads Zynga’s converged security department, managing all security risks for the company and chairing the Security Risk Committee. He oversees the company’s security domains of product & application security, security engineering & architecture, investigations & incident response, security intelligence & threat assessments, physical security, security compliance & audit. Nils is also a Co-Founder and member of the Board of the Cloud Security Alliance, a community of over 33,000 security professionals in over 50 chapters worldwide with the goal to promote the use of best practices for providing security assurance within Cloud Computing. The Alliance also educates on the uses of Cloud Computing to help secure all other forms of computing. Before joining Zynga, he served as Chief Security Officer of Qualys, where he was responsible for security, risk management and business continuity planning. His responsibilities included the security of the cloud-based QualysGuard SaaS platform. He also led the Qualys CSO Advisory Board and evangelized at various international industry events in areas of security management and cloud security. Prior to Qualys, Puhlmann was the Chief Information Security Officer for Electronic Arts, with global responsibility for information security, intellectual property protection, risk management, compliance, physical security, forensics & investigations and business continuity management/disaster recovery. He was also previously the Chief Information Security Officer at Robert Half International, where he had global responsibility for managing information security, risk management, privacy, forensics & investigations, CERT and Business Continuity Management enterprise wide. Prior to that, he was Director Global IT & Security and Chief Privacy Officer at Mindjet Corp, where he managed Mindjet’s global information security, physical security and privacy programs. He was also a Senior Manager of Product Security at Adobe Systems, responsible for creating and managing Adobe’s product vulnerability program, overseeing security assessments of Adobe applications, driving product security certifications, and promoting secure development practices. He created Adobe’s product security incident response team, chaired Adobe’s Security Task Force and managed Adobe’s first Common Criteria Certification. Puhlmann also held senior positions at Nortel Networks and START Amadeus, and was an independent security consultant with clients such as the State of California. He maintains numerous security certifications, including CISSP-ISSMP and CISM. He has held Board of Directors positions in the past (ISACA Silicon Valley, OVAL) and is currently a Director on the Board of the Cloud Security Alliance, a Director on the International Board of Directors of ISSA, an Advisory Board member for several Security Companies, is a member of the CSO Interchange, the CISO Executive Council and a subject matter expert for ISACA and ISC2. He was also a member of the Advisory Council for the CISO Forum of ISSA. Puhlmann was invited in 2009 by the Dept. of Defense and the Executive Office of the President to speak at the National Cyber Leap Year Summit in Washington, DC. and is a frequent speaker and keynote presenter at global security and technology conferences. He is considered a visionary in the field of information security and his advice is frequently sought after by corporations and government entities.
Follow Nils Puhlmann:
About Cloud Security Alliance, MoonPay: The Cloud Security Alliance is a not-for-profit organization with a mission to promote the use of best practices for providing security.
Tarun Thakur
Co-Founder & CEO of Datos IO
Follow Tarun Thakur:
About Confidential (In stealth mode), Datos IO: Datos IO provides enterprise-class recovery solutions for scale-out databases and cloud databases.
Prasenjit Sarkar
Co-Founder & CTO of Datos IO
Follow Prasenjit Sarkar:
About Datos IO, Rubrik: Datos IO provides enterprise-class recovery solutions for scale-out databases and cloud databases.
Ashwath Nagaraj
Founder, CTO of Aryaka Networks
Ashwath Nagaraj is the Founder, Chief Technology Officer and a Member of the Board of Directors at Aryaka since 2009. As part of the founding team, Ashwath has been responsible for building Aryaka’s vision and technology since its inception in 2009. Ashwath has previously been part of three successful San Francisco Bay Area companies. Ashwath was Founder, Chief Technology Officer and Vice President of Engineering at Allegro Systems, a security startup. Allegro Systems was acquired by Cisco Systems in September 2001 for $185M. At Cisco, Ashwath held senior management positions in the Security Technology Group, and the Internet Switching Business Unit. Prior to Allegro, Ashwath was part of the founding team at Assured Access Technologies, which developed WAN access and aggregation products. Assured Access was acquired by Alcatel in 1999 for $350M. Before Assured Access, Ashwath was one of the principal architects and Director (Engineering) at Mylex, a leading RAID/storage company in the SF Bay Area. Ashwath has also held management positions at Schlumberger, Tata Elxsi and PSI Data Systems. Ashwath holds 17 patents in storage, security, architecture and networking. Ashwath received his B.Tech. degree in Electronics from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.
Follow Ashwath Nagaraj:
About Aryaka Networks: Aryaka Networks provides a network optimization and application acceleration platform that addresses the connectivity needs of enterprises.
Anurag Gupta
Founder and CEO of Shoreline.io
Anurag Gupta is the founder and CEO of Shoreline Software. Prior to this, Anurag has served as a vice president of Amazon Aurora at Amazon Web Services.
Follow Anurag Gupta:
About Shoreline.io: Shoreline provides fleet-wide debugging and incident remediation tools that increase availability and streamline production operations.
Armando Kirwin
Co-Founder of Artie
Armando is co-founder of Artie, a platform for next-gen games powered by AI. He is one of the most experienced technologists in the field of interactive entertainment and has worked at the highest levels in both Hollywood and Silicon Valley. He has worked with and for some of biggest media and tech companies in the world.
Follow Armando Kirwin:
About Artie: A Web3 mobile gaming company. Play on social media. No app download needed.
Suresh Katta
Founder & CEO of Saama
Suresh founded Saama Technologies, Inc. with a vision to turn raw data into actionable insights that enable enterprise leaders to make timely and reliable decisions for critical business discovery. As the CEO of Saama, Suresh is responsible for the strategy, vision and the execution of the company’s long-term plan. Suresh applied his lifelong love of mathematics to solve complex data analysis well before the term “big data” became ubiquitous. Today, Saama is made up of intelligent, helpful people with a passion for math, data, and analytics. Since the company’s launch, Suresh and his team have built an extensive history of providing data scientist led solutions and services in the big data and business analytics market for top enterprise companies, and public sector agencies. Suresh has successfully launched two start ups, including co-founding GVI, which developed groupware applications and was sold to Netscape in 1995. His work has earned industry-wide recognition and he can frequently be seen at IT conferences as a discussion panel member and featured speaker. Suresh earned his M.S. in Computer Engineering at the University of Southwest Louisiana, and his B.S. in Electronics Engineering at the University of Bangalore in India.
Follow Suresh Katta:
About Saama: Saama is the number one AI-powered clinical analytics cloud platform company delivering actionable business insights for life sciences.
Chris Kantrowitz
CEO, Founder of Gobbler
Chris is a serial entrepreneur in gaming, technology, and music. At age 14, he founded his first company– a game testing business for clients like Sony Imagesoft. After university, he co-founded 3D Groove, online gaming technology company that powered the first online 3D games at sites like shockwave.com and nickelodeon.com. In 2003, he started ODVD games, whose premiere title, “Shout!â€, a pop culture interactive DVD trivia game,was distributed globally by Hasbro and is returning in 2011. In 2006, Chris combined his passion for creative and technology and co-founded Frank the Plumber, a leading concert design and production company creating digital and live experiences for such artists as Akon, The Strokes, Lady Antebellum, Stevie Wonder, Beyonce, Katy Perry and Madonna and brands like Ford, Apple and AOL. Most recently, he founded his third technology company, Gobbler, along with his sister Jamie. Gobbler is a purpose built cloud for media creators and the software companies who provide tools to them.
Follow Chris Kantrowitz:
About Gobbler, Mootral: The largest marketplace for subscription pro-audio plugins.
Tiago Paiva
Founder and CEO of Talkdesk
Tiago Paiva is the Founder of Talkdesk, Inc. and serves as its Chief Executive Officer.
Follow Tiago Paiva:
About Talkdesk: Talkdesk offers an enterprise contact center platform that allows companies to make the customer experience a competitive advantage.
Chris Nguyen
Co-Founder of LogDNA
Chris Nguyen is the Co-Founder and CEO at LogDNA.Prior to founding LogDNA, he founded two other companies: TeamSave, which is a white label e-Commerce platform that provides sales, technology, and customer support for the social commerce and digital coupons space for two eBay Classified Group portfolio companies and JobLoft, which was acquired by onTargetjobs. Chris also held various leadership positions at onTargetjobs ranging from Vice President of Product, Vice President of E-Commerce and General Manager of online personals site. Chris received his Bachelors of Commerce degree from Ryerson University with a major in Information Technology Management. He has been recognized through many awards for his accomplishments and leadership, including: Impact.org’s Young Entrepreneur of the Year; and received Ryerson University’s Isadore Sharp Alumni Achievement Awards. He was a board member of Ryerson University’s Accelerator Seed Fund from 2012-2014.
Follow Chris Nguyen:
About LogDNA: LogDNA offers a log management solution that provides DevOps teams an aggregation of all their system and application logs on one platform.
Lee Liu
CTO & Co-Founder of LogDNA
Lee Liu is Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer at LogDNA. Prior to founding LogDNA, he was a Co-founder and CTO of TeamSave, where he developed the core web architect that handled over 4 million monthly visitors, 500K+ eCommerce transactions, and was responsible in sending over 1 billion+ campaign emails. Before co-founding TeamSave, he also held leadership positions at onTargetjobs with responsibilities of Vice President of Research and Development and Vice President of Information Technology at portfolio company Hospitality Careers. He was also a Co-Founder and CTO at JobLoft, a unique approach to location-based job mapping along with SMS-based push notification that was acquired by onTargetjobs in 2007. Lee filed a technology patent for his location based mapping algorithm. Lee received his Bachelors of Commerce degree from Ryerson University with a major in Information Technology Management. Lee has received Ryerson University’s Isadore Sharp Alumni Achievement Awards.
Follow Lee Liu:
About LogDNA: LogDNA offers a log management solution that provides DevOps teams an aggregation of all their system and application logs on one platform.
Ashok Reddy Gudibandla
Founder, CEO of Automate.io
Founder, CEO at Automate.io.
Follow Ashok Reddy Gudibandla:
About Automate.io: Use tens of cloud apps? Connect them the way you want. Sync data, automate workflows – marketing, sales and more.
Sridhar Vembu
CEO and Founder of Zoho
Sridhar Vembu is the CEO of [Zoho Corp.](/organization/zoho) (formerly AdventNet Inc.), the company behind the Zoho suite of online applications. He co-founded AdventNet in 1996, and has been CEO since 2000. AdventNet has transformed itself from a modest beginning as a software company serving network equipment vendors to a be an innovative online applications provider. It has maintained growth and profitability, without needing outside capital. Prior to AdventNet, Sridhar worked as a wireless systems engineer at Qualcomm, Inc. where he was fortunate to work with some of the leading minds in wireless communications. He obtained his Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, and PhD in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University.
Follow Sridhar Vembu:
About Site24x7, Zoho: Zoho offers a suite of business, collaboration, and productivity applications.
Kenny Williams
Co-Founder & Lead Engineer of Compute Software
Kenny Williams joined Compute Software as Co-Founder & Lead Engineer in 2017.
Follow Kenny Williams:
About Compute Software: Compute Software is a cloud optimization platform that maximizes cloud cost savings, performance, and Engineering productivity, all at once.
Kenny Williams
Co-Founder & Lead Engineer of Compute Software
Kenny Williams joined Compute Software as Co-Founder & Lead Engineer in 2017.
Follow Kenny Williams:
About Compute Software: Compute Software is a cloud optimization platform that maximizes cloud cost savings, performance, and Engineering productivity, all at once.
Bill Huang
Founder & CEO of CloudMinds
Bill Huang is the Founder and CEO of CloudMinds, the world’s first intelligent cloud robot operator. Mr. Huang has been a new technology advocate for the telecom industry with near 30 years of work experience in the development of key technologies. He has in-depth experience and insightful thoughts in the areas of next generation mobile switching systems (3G/4G/5G), IP media streaming (IPTV/OTT), EPON/GPON, Multi-service mobile Softswitch, Operation Support System (OSS/BSS), Mobile Internet and mobile communication industry.
Follow Bill Huang:
About CloudMinds: As the First Cloud Robots services company, CloudMinds is developing an end-to-end ecosystem to support cloud connected smart machines
Benjamin Hindman
Founder of D2iq
Ben Hindman is one of the creators of Apache Mesos, a platform for building and running resource-efficient distributed systems at scale. Ben started working on Mesos as a PhD student at Berkeley before he brought it to Twitter where it runs on thousands of machines. An academic at heart, his research in programming languages and distributed systems has been published in leading academic conferences.
Follow Benjamin Hindman:
About D2iq: D2iQ offers elastically run containers and data services at scale, with complete hybrid cloud portability.
Robert Stefanski
Co-Founder and Managing Director of eLab Ventures
Robert Stefanski is an entrepreneur with deep operational and board experience in the software, mobile and Internet markets. He was on the founding management team of TIBCO Software, where he served as the Executive Vice President, Corporate Development, General Counsel and Secretary. As a member of TIBCO’s executive management team, Bob had broad responsibility for day to day business operations from its founding in 1997 to its emergence in the early 2000s as one of the leading enterprise infrastructure software companies in the world. TIBCO remains a world leader today in enterprise infrastructure software, with annual revenue exceeding $1 billion. Bob left TIBCO in 2008 to more actively pursue his passion as an advisor and board member for Silicon Valley early stage startups. He began his career as an attorney with Weil, Gotshal & Manges in New York City, where he represented technology, media and entertainment companies in a broad range of matters. He joined Reuters 1996 as Director of Intellectual Property. He has also been involved with the UM Center for Entrepreneurship since its inception in 2007 and currently serves on its Board of Directors as well as being a mentor at the student startup incubator, TechArb. In addition to his work with Michigan eLab, he is a partner with the international law firm Reed Smith in its Silicon Valley office. Bob is a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School and University of Michigan Graduate School of Engineering. He has an undergraduate degree in computer science/mathematics from Northern Michigan
Follow Robert Stefanski:
About eLab Ventures: eLab Ventures is an early stage technology venture capital fund.
Rick Bolander
Co-Founder and Managing Director of eLab Ventures
Rick Bolander is a General Partner at Michigan eLab Venture Fund. Rick has been a private investor since 1988 launching Blue Sky Ventures, a real estate investment firm, and entering the venture capital industry in 1994 at Apex Venture Partners where he was general partner. In 1999, he co-founded Gabriel Venture Partners, an early-stage venture capital firm that invests in and assists information technology startups. Rick identifies the smartest entrepreneurs and works side-by-side with them to build highly successful companies from the ground up. Rick has been involved in more than 50 venture deals, and has led over $100 million in early-stage financings and has had over $200 million in realizations. Rick has served on the boards of AccessLine Communications (acquired by Telanetix), Arula Systems (acquired by Raritan), Concord Communications (IPO – NASDAQ: CCRD), Exodus Communications (IPO – NASDAQ: EXDS, then acquired by Savvis), IPWireless (acquired by Nextwave), Jacked (acquired by Roundbox), Neopath (acquired by Cisco), NetScaler (acquired by Citrix Systems), Persistent Systems (IPO – BSE India: PER EQ), Placeware (acquired by Microsoft) Tut Systems (IPO – NASDAQ: TUTS), and Chegg (IPO – NYSE:CHGG). Education MBA – Harvard Business School MS – Electrical Engineering, University of Michigan (full fellowship) BS – Electrical Engineering, University of Michigan (with honors)
Follow Rick Bolander:
About eLab Ventures: eLab Ventures is an early stage technology venture capital fund.
Daniel Odio
CEO & Founder of Armory
Daniel Odio is CEO and co-founder of Socialize, Inc.Socialize is a cloud-based, turn-key social service distributed through APIs and SDKs with a focus on mobile integration. There are massive communities of users hiding inside each mobile app. Socialize is the first platform to leverage each app interest-graph, turning on the lights and letting passionate users rally around the app’s core content. Socialize also created AppMakr, the largest Do It Yourself mobile app creation platform for iPhone, Android and Windows Phone apps. AppMakr is used by brands like PBS, Newsweek, PGA TOUR, Harvard Business Review, US Congress, MacLife, Accenture and thousands of others. Over 1.5% of all apps in the iTunes App Store were created using AppMakr. Previously, Daniel earned his Series 22 & 63 securities licenses and real estate broker’s license to start Cardéa Commercial Real Estate Advisors, a commercial real estate brokerage specializing in tax-efficient real estate investments, and DROdio Real Estate, Inc, a residential real estate brokerage. Daniel also served on the Board of Directors for the Virginia Association of REALTORS and his real estate endeavors were featured on the cover of the The Wall Street Journal Marketplace section in July 2004. Prior to real estate, Daniel was the VP, Sales of AcceleratedServers, a Beowulf supercomputing cluster company whose customers included the Department of Defense and Paramount Pictures.Daniel has been featured on CNN, CNBC, TLC, Forbes, BBC and many other publications for his innovative use of technology in industries ranging from real estate to computer servers and mobile phones. Daniel was a member of General Electric Technical Leadership Program. Daniel worked for GE in Latin America, including Brazil and Argentina. Daniel graduated from the University of Virginia with a BS in Commerce, speaks Spanish and Portuguese, and resides in San Francisco, CA with his wife.
Follow Daniel Odio:
About Armory: Armory is an enterprise software company commercializing the open-source continuous delivery platform, Spinnaker.
Shioupyn Shen
Founder & CEO of CloudMosa
Shioupyn Shen is the Founder and CEO at CloudMosa.
Follow Shioupyn Shen:
About CloudMosa: CloudMosa is a mobile technology company committed to accelerating and enriching the mobile web browsing experience.
Suresh Sambandam
Founder & CEO of Kissflow
Suresh Sambandam is the CEO of Kissflow, the first unified digital workplace for organizations to manage all of their work on a single, unified platform. Kissflow is used by over 10,000 customers across 160 countries, including more than fifty Fortune 500 companies. Suresh is an expert and renowned entrepreneur on a mission to democratize cutting-edge technologies and help enterprises seamlessly orchestrate their work through an intuitive blend of collaboration, coordination and control. He has three US patents to his credit.
Follow Suresh Sambandam:
About Kissflow, OrangeScape: Kissflow is a leading SaaS software provider in the work management space.
Durga Gokina
CTO, Co-Founder of Macrometa
Building innovative products and teams.
Follow Durga Gokina:
About Macrometa: Macrometa specializes in developing real-time stateful server-less applications.
Amiram Shachar
Founder & CEO of Spot.io
Amiram Shachar is CEO & Founder of Spotinst.
Follow Amiram Shachar:
About Spot.io: Spot automates cloud infrastructure to ensure performance, reduce complexity and optimize costs.
Ricardo Oliveira
Co-Founder & CTO of ThousandEyes
Ricardo is the co-founder and CTO of ThousandEyes (www.thousandeyes.com), a network intelligence startup based in San Francisco. Ricardo is also the creator of Cyclops (http://cyclops.cs.ucla.edu), a platform to detect attacks to the Internet routing infrastructure, like the one that brought youtube.com down in Pakistan in 2008. Ricardo is a technologist at heart and a believer in the importance of simplicity and good design in any product. He is also a caffeine junkie. Ricardo received the B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the Engineering Faculty of Porto University (FEUP), Portugal in 2001, the M.S. degree in Computer Science from University of California, Los Angeles in 2005, and the PhD degree in Computer Science from UCLA in 2009. During his PhD he did several internships, including AT&T Labs, Thomson and Juniper Networks in Silicon Valley. During his PhD he developed research in inter-domain routing, network security and Internet topology. He is the main author of several patents and dozens of papers in international conferences and journals, including ACM SIGCOMM, ACM SIGMETRICS and IEEE Transactions on Networking. He is a member of the ACM and the IEEE. In 2009 he was the recipient of the Cisco Outstanding Graduate Student Research Award and the Edward K. Rice Outstanding Doctoral Student Award.
Follow Ricardo Oliveira:
About ThousandEyes: ThousandEyes empowers businesses to see, understand, and improve the experience for every user and every application over any network.
Mohit Lad
Co-Founder & CEO of ThousandEyes
Mohit Lad received a Ph.D. from UCLA where he worked on building systems for Internet routing fault diagnosis and security. Mohit built Link-Rank, tool for visualizing routing dynamics. His work on route hijacking led to PHAS, one of the first systems to detect and alert on routing security problems. Mohit spent a year at Nokia building tools for analyzing the quality of Nokia’s mobile services. Since January 2010, Mohit has been involved in Thousand Eyes, a company he co-founded with Ricardo Oliveira.
Follow Mohit Lad:
About ThousandEyes: ThousandEyes empowers businesses to see, understand, and improve the experience for every user and every application over any network.
Raj Narayanaswamy
Co-Founder & Co-CEO of Replicon
Raj Narayanaswamy is the Co-Founder & Co-CEO at Replicon Inc.
Follow Raj Narayanaswamy:
About Replicon: We help businesses capture, manage and optimize their most underutilized asset – time.
Praful Saklani
Co-Founder and CEO of Pramata
Follow Praful Saklani:
About Pramata: Pramata helps B2B enterprises maximize revenue by knowing the exact contract details and order history for each customer.
Ashley Crowder
CEO & Co-Founder of VNTANA
Ashley Crowder is the co-founder and CEO of VNTANA, an industry leading augmented reality platform for creating and distributing premium mixed reality experiences. Prior to co-founding VNTANA she graduated from USC with a bachelors and masters in engineering and gained valuable manufacturing experience at Gulfstream, Northrop Grumman and BP. She leverages her engineering background to guide VNTANA’s overall direction and technology development. Ashley was featured as one of USC’s leading engineering CEOs of 2016. Ashley is a part of the Microsoft Early Developer Program along with the Microsoft Bizspark Plus program. Ashley has been a speaker at SXSW, Digital Summit, Internet Summit, Augmented World Expo, TEDx Venice, the World Economic Forum’s Global Growth Companies & Technology Pioneers, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, The Montgomery Summit, Siemer Summit, Digital LA, and others.
Follow Ashley Crowder:
About VNTANA: Democratizing 3D for the world through the only automated 3D Collaboration Platform.
Ben Conway
COO/Co-Founder of VNTANA
Follow Ben Conway:
About VNTANA: Democratizing 3D for the world through the only automated 3D Collaboration Platform.
Anshu Agarwal
CEO & Co-Founder of Nimbella
Anshu Agarwal has over 15 years of experience in the technology industry, building products for organizations large and small across the globe. Most recently she was CMO and VP of Product at Cedexis. She has also served on the Board of Directors of the OpenDaylight Project, promoting the adoption of an open-source software-defined networking (SDN) platform. She led product and marketing teams at four infrastructure startups: Cedexis (acquired by Citrix, 2018), ConteXtream (acquired by HPE, 2015), Ankeena Networks (acquired by Juniper Networks, 2010), and Speedera Networks (acquired by Akamai, 2005). Anshu holds a B.S. in Electronics from IIT/Roorkee, India; an M.S. in Electrical from Rutgers, New Jersey; and an MBA from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Illinois.
Follow Anshu Agarwal:
About Nimbella: Cloud-agnostic, developer-friendly serverless cloud platform
Vijay Rayapati
Founder and CEO of Minjar
Vijay Rayapati cofounded Minjar, Inc. He serves as Chief Technology Officer of Giza Network Private Limited. Mr. Rayapati has been Chief Technology Officer at Kuliza Technologies since March 2011. He served as Chief Technology Officer and Product Management at GizaPage.com from May 2009 to March 2011. He was a Consultant at Smm-strategist.com from February 2009 to February 2010 and served as Technical Consultant at Trilogy from January 2007 to May 2009. He Co-founded Amnigos Technologies Pvt Ltd in January 2007 and served as Java Developer at Michelin – TCS from August 2006 to January 2007. He serves as a Director of Minjar, Inc. He received B.E, Computer Science Engineering from Osmania University in 2006.
Follow Vijay Rayapati:
About Minjar, Nutanix Beam: Minjar is a global cloud solutions company providing cloud optimisation and intelligent operations platform to businesses.
Mohit Aron
Founder & CEO of Cohesity
Follow Mohit Aron:
About Cohesity: Cohesity offers hyperconverged secondary storage for backups, test/dev, file services and analytics use cases.
Ali Jelveh
Founder & Chief Revolutionary Officer of Protonet
Ali Jelveh is Co-Founder and CEO of Protonet. The German-Iranian software engineer previously was amongst the first developers at XING and studied physics. He’s on a mission to transform the Internet from centralization in the cloud to a state of distributed infrastructure and independent users. Ali is also the initiator of the Free Your Data campaign, which opts for a new kind of transparency law in Europe. When he isn’t working, he spends his time thinking, planning and simulating.
Follow Ali Jelveh:
About Protonet: Protonet provides a cloud-based social project management and collaboration platform.
Vladimir Lounegov
Co-Founder, CEO of Mbanq
Follow Vladimir Lounegov:
About Mbanq: Mbanq builds digital banking technology that enables you to create a better bank for your customers
JP La Torre
Co-Founder & CEO of Caylent
JP La Torre is the Co-founder and CEO of Caylent, which provides DevOps managed service and consulting for software teams running containers and Kubernetes. Early crypto adopter. Co-founder and CEO of Vulcan Mines, a provider of turnkey crypto mining solutions. Southwest Director and founding board member of Blockchain & Crypto Mining Association (BCMA).
Follow JP La Torre:
About Caylent: Full spectrum AWS Cloud Native and DevOps consulting partner
Said Ouissal
CEO & Founder of ZEDEDA
Said Ouissal is the CEO and founder of ZEDEDA, the leader in orchestration for the distributed edge. He has extensive experience in senior leadership positions across IP networking (routing, switching, and security), telecommunications, cloud, and mobile broadband. Prior to ZEDEDA, he held executive product management and (technical) sales roles at various infrastructure companies, including Ericsson, Juniper Networks, Redback Networks, and Violin Memory.
Follow Said Ouissal:
About ZEDEDA: ZEDEDA is a provider of distributed edge orchestration and virtualization software.
Michael Rodriguez
Founder & CEO of DreamHost
Founder at DreamHost.
Follow Michael Rodriguez:
About DreamHost: DreamHost provides web hosting, domain registration, and cloud services for individuals, small businesses, and developers.
Dallas Kashuba
Co-Founder & Webmaster of DreamHost
Dallas Kashuba is a Co-Founder and Head Honcho at DreamHost where he spends most of his time making sure the company stays committed to its democratic principles. Dallas uses his third-eye to make sure the company is looking at things from every angle, and always has at least one eye looking forward. Before starting DreamHost with Josh, Michael and Sage, Dallas spent about a year with a company called BoxTop (which later became the foundation for iXL, Los Angeles.) Before it went down in glorious flames they did design, programming, and hosting for big name websites. Dallas’ professional experience, affinity for facial piercings and lack of appreciation for personal space have helped create a company where people that doesn’t let egos get in the way; DreamHost is committed to pursuing any good idea, no matter how disruptive. Dallas holds a degree in Computer Science from Harvey Mudd College. He resides in Northern California with his wife and children.
Follow Dallas Kashuba:
About DreamHost: DreamHost provides web hosting, domain registration, and cloud services for individuals, small businesses, and developers.
Paul Martini
CEO, CTO and Co-Founder of iboss
As CEO, CTO, and co-founder of iboss Cybersecurity,Paul Martini pioneered the award-winning iboss Secure Web Gateway (SWG) and has furthered iboss’ position as a leading security innovator with the introduction of FireSphere™ Advanced APT Defense. Prior to founding iboss, Paul was with an electrical engineering firm where he developed proprietary security solutions for clients such as Phogenix, the U.S. Navy and Hewlett Packard, leading the design and implementation efforts for HP’s e-tester used in their TIJ print heads. He was also a key contributor at Copper Mountain Networks and Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), both of which, launched successful IPO’s. Paul holds a computer science degree from the University of California, San Diego and has had his work published in prestigious scientific journals including, the Journal of Foundations in Computer Science, and Journal of Analytical Biochemistry. As a recognized security expert, he has been featured in a wide range of publications such as USA Today, Forbes, and CSO magazine. Paul has been recognized for his leadership and innovation, receiving the Ernst Young 2014 Entrepreneur Of The Year™ award in the technology category for San Diego, and one of Goldman Sachs’ 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs of 2014. He is committed to the advancement of San Diego as a cyber-security hub, and is a member of the Cyber Security Sub Committee for CAL OES (California Office of Emergency Services) and also serves on the board of the San Diego Economic Development Committee.
Follow Paul Martini:
About iboss: iboss is a cloud security company that provides network security as a service, delivered in the cloud, and as a complete SaaS offering.
Charles Liang
Founder, President, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board of Supermicro
Charles Liang founded Supermicro and has served as our President, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board since our inception in September 1993. Mr. Liang has been developing server system architectures and technologies for the past two decades. From July 1991 to August 1993, Mr. Liang was President and Chief Design Engineer of Micro Center Computer Inc., a high-end motherboard design and manufacturing company. From January 1988 to April 1991, Mr. Liang was Senior Design Engineer and Project Leader for Chips & Technologies, Inc., a chipset technology company, and Suntek Information International Group, a system and software development company. Mr. Liang has been granted many server technology patents. Mr. Liang holds an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Texas at Arlington and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from National Taiwan University of Science & Technology in Taiwan.
Follow Charles Liang:
About Supermicro: Supermicro is a global leader in high-performance, high-efficiency server technology and innovation.
Sara Liu Liang
Co-Founder, Vice President of Operations, Treasurer and Director of Supermicro
Chiu-Chu (Sara) Liu Liang co-founded Supermicro and has served as Vice President of Operations, Treasurer and a member of our board of directors since our inception in September 1993. From 1985 to 1993, Ms. Liang held finance and operational positions for several companies, including Micro Center Computer Inc. Ms. Liang holds a B.S. in Accounting from Providence University in Taiwan. Ms. Liang is married to Mr. Charles Liang.
Follow Sara Liu Liang:
About Supermicro: Supermicro is a global leader in high-performance, high-efficiency server technology and innovation.
Wally Liaw
Co-Founder, Vice President of International Sales, Secretary and Director of Supermicro
Yih-Shyan (Wally) Liaw co-founded Supermicro and has served as Vice President of International Sales, Corporate Secretary and a member of our board of directors since our inception in September 1993. From 1988 to 1991, Mr. Liaw was Vice President of Engineering at Great Tek, a computer company. Mr. Liaw holds an M.S. in Computer Engineering from University of Arizona, an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Tatung Institute of Technology in Taiwan, and a B.S. degree from Taiwan Provincial College of Marine and Oceanic Technology.
Follow Wally Liaw:
About Supermicro: Supermicro is a global leader in high-performance, high-efficiency server technology and innovation.
Miten Mehta
Co-Founder & COO of KloudData Inc.
Follow Miten Mehta:
About Fractal Analytics, KloudData Inc., Xoogler: KloudData is providing software solutions and services.
Amit Narayan
Founder / CEO of Autogrid
Amit Narayan is the Founder and CEO of AutoGrid, Inc. From 2010 to 2012, he was the Director of Smart Grid Research in Modeling & Simulation at Stanford University, where he continues to lead an interdisciplinary project related to modeling, optimization and control of the electricity grid and associated electricity markets. Prior to founding AutoGrid, Dr. Narayan was the Vice President of Products at the publicly traded company Magma Design Automation, Inc. (Nasdaq: LAVA), where he led the product development and product management teams responsible for Magma’s flagship product in the design implementation area. Over one third of all semiconductor chips used in consumer electronic devices — such as smart phones, blue-ray players and video games — were designed using products developed by Dr. Narayan’s team at Magma. Prior to joining Magma, Dr. Narayan founded Berkeley Design Automation, Inc. (BDA), a venture-backed company in analog and radio-frequency semiconductor design software and served as its founding CEO and later Vice President of Engineering, responsible for all research and product development activities, as well as customer engagements. Under Dr. Narayan’s leadership, BDA saw its products adopted by over 100 semiconductor companies in the world (including 20 out of the top 25). For his work at BDA, Dr. Narayan’s received the EDN’s “Innovation for the Year” award in 2006.Dr. Narayan received his B. Tech. in Electrical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur and Ph.D. from University of California at Berkeley. He has published over 25 papers about design automation, holds seven U.S. patents and is an active advisor to several startup companies in the Bay Area.
Follow Amit Narayan:
About Autogrid, Berkeley Design Automation: AutoGrid Systems organizes energy data and employs big data analytics to generate real-time predictions that create actionable data.
Laurent El Ghaoui
Executive Chairman, Co-Founder & Chief Scientist of SumUp Analytics
Laurent is a leading academic in computing. He is a professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at UC Berkeley, and holds a PhD in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Stanford, as well as an MsC from the Ecole Polytechnique. He has a great grasp of the finance sector having also worked as a quantitative analyst for the hedge fund SAC Capital Management.
Follow Laurent El Ghaoui:
About Kayrros, SumUp Analytics, University of California Berkeley: SumUp helps organizations denoise and understand their text data.
Emmanuel Vallod
CEO & Co-Founder of SumUp Analytics
Emmanuel Vallod is the CEO and Co-Founder at SumUp Analytics.
Follow Emmanuel Vallod:
About SumUp Analytics: SumUp helps organizations denoise and understand their text data.
Darpan Saini
Co-Founder & CTO of Cloud Lending
Darpan holds a master’s degree in software engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, USA. He has previously worked with global technology companies such as IBM and Oracle in the application development division for over 4 years.He co-founded Cloud Lending Solutions with Snehal and has been closely involved in every aspect of product strategy since the inception of the company, be it design, development, delivery and customer success. He is focused on creating business value through disruptive technologies such as cloud computing and mobility.He is a passionate programmer and has also worked as a researcher in programming languages at the Carnegie Mellon University.Darpan has been a critical team member in building an agile product line made for forward looking financial institutions incorporating the S.M.A.C (Social, Mobile, Analytics, Cloud) technologies.
Follow Darpan Saini:
About Cloud Lending: Cloud Lending is a company that develops software for the financial lending industry.
Rajendra Badadare
Co-Founder & Head of Customer Success Engineering, EVP – Client Services of Cloud Lending
Rajendra Badadare (Raj) holds a master’s degree in software engineering from Birla Institute of Technology, Pilani, India and a degree in Project Management from UC Berkeley, USA. He has technical leadership experience of 16 years working with Oracle, USA. Prior to Oracle, Raj worked as a professor of computer engineering in India.As Co-founder and Head of Customer Success Engineering division, Raj is responsible for forming a strong and reliable Customer Success Engineering team for Cloud Lending Solutions. He is responsible for customer satisfaction and to improve customer’s overall experience. He believes that a satisfied customer is worth much more than millions of dollars spent in advertising.Raj is an avid lover of the game of cricket and has been a coach of USA’s U-15 national cricket team.
Follow Rajendra Badadare:
About Cloud Lending: Cloud Lending is a company that develops software for the financial lending industry.
Edward Churchward
CTO & Co-Founder of Arch Platform Technologies
Follow Edward Churchward:
About Arch Platform Technologies, Solstice Studios: Plug and play creative facilities as a service. The Arch SaaS Platform creates cloud infrastructure for collaborative teams in all markets.
Aman Mann
Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Procurify
Crazy Passion for Innovation or just Crazy! Aman is our Chief Executive Officer. He creates, communicates, and implements the organization’s vision, mission, and overall direction. His experience in the business world and understanding of needs is a tremendous asset to the company. When he is not working, he is usually working out or trying to expand his mind with new adventures. Recently, he participated in the Tough Mudder 2012 competition in Whistler, BC.
Follow Aman Mann:
About Procurify: Procurify streamlines purchases, gives optimized spending, and increases visibility throughout the entire procure-to-pay process.
Arka Dhar
Co-Founder of Zinier
Arka is co-founder and CEO at Zinier – an intelligent field service automation platform that helps organizations work smarter, faster, and more efficiently.
Follow Arka Dhar:
About LIFT12, Zinier: Zinier offers a low-code field service automation platform that provides a combined power of humans and technology.
Nicolas Stehle
Co-Founder & CEO of Scalefast
Nicolas Stehle is the founder and CEO at Scalefast, a leading full-service e-commerce solution provider that builds and operates Direct-to-Consumer online stores for brands that want to accelerate online sales without the time, cost, and risk of in-house development. After creating five companies in just 15 years, Nicolas is considered a serial entrepreneur in high tech fields. With Scalefast, his biggest venture to-date, Nicolas helps clients build and manage brands’ global e-commerce channels so they can focus on their customers’ needs. Since its inception in 2014, Scalefast Enterprise Cloud Commerce Platform has processed more than 14 million transactions, in 240 countries, for major brands like Square Enix, Sega, Bandai Namco Entertainment. With offices in Los Angeles, Paris and Madrid, Scalefast brings a synchronized, international team to deliver consistent digital consumer experience around the globe. Throughout his career, Nicolas has developed a reputation for creating successful start-ups and managing the high-impact growth within each of the companies. In total, Nicolas founded and held executive roles in three companies (Scalefast, Like Me I’m Famous and Everbee), and non-executive director and board member positions in two others (Flexycore and Slimpay). Before he graduated university, Nicolas patented an innovative approach to Network Security, raised 3M€ for the technology and had a fully operational business. He has a wide swath of experience with tech companies in a variety of industries ranging from Network security (Everbee), big data (Like Me I’m Famous), Payment (Slimpay) and successfully exited Flexycore, first French company acquired by Google Inc.
Follow Nicolas Stehle:
About Scalefast: Scalefast is a digital commerce solution that simplifies and streamlines e-Commerce for inspirational brands.
Andrew Stevens
Founder/Developer of GoFormz
Follow Andrew Stevens:
About GoFormz: GoFormz helps its customers to transform into data-driven businesses with its mobile-first business productivity platform.
Ralf Schoenherr
Co-Founder of Neatleaf
Follow Ralf Schoenherr:
About Neatleaf: Data-driven & autonomous agriculture for yield optimization.
Elmar Mair
Co-Founder of Neatleaf
Follow Elmar Mair:
About Neatleaf: Data-driven & autonomous agriculture for yield optimization.
Marcin Kurc
Founder – CEO of Nobl9
marcin kurc is the Chief Executive Officer at Meshmark.
Follow Marcin Kurc:
About Nobl9: Nobl9 is a service level objective platform that connects reliability metrics to business goals via a modern engineering workflow.
Michael Neril
Founder & Managing Partner of Spider Capital
Michael has worked with technology startups for 15 years as an advisor, investor, co-founder or operator. Michael is a co-founder of Webb Investment Network (“WIN”), which he launched in 2010 with Maynard Webb. As Managing Director, Michael led all investment activities for the firm. He focused largely on enterprise cloud applications, marketplaces, and mobile marketing platforms, investing in over 50 companies across these sectors. Prior to WIN, Michael worked at LiveOps, a cloud-based contact center and labor marketplace, where he ran business development for its next-generation virtual work marketplace. While there, he also incubated and ran the fastest growing product line within the Company. Michael joined LiveOps after it acquired the second of two technology startups which he co-founded called Ooreka, a virtual work marketplace. Michael started his career as an investment banker in ING Barings’ Technology Group where he primarily advised venture-backed startups on M&A and corporate finance activities. Michael is also a mentor at several startup accelerators. Michael earned a BA in International Relations from Tufts University.
Follow Michael Neril:
About Spider Capital: Spider Capital is a seed-stage enterprise venture capital focused on the digital transformation of industry.
Christina Apatow
CEO/Co-Founder of FetchyFox
Christina is obsessed with building the future and solving complex problems. She speaks on AI, digital transformation, customer experience, and human centered design. Christina is elected to the Airport Council International Steering Group for Marketing and Customer Experience. Prior to FetchyFox, Christina was VP Client Solutions for API.AI/DialogFlow (exit Google 2016) where she helped build the successful AI company. Christina led BD, sales and served as the main technical point of contact for the company from their launch in September 2014. Christina also worked at Lockheed Martin in Ballistic Missile Defense, Satellite Systems and VR. She has a Masters in Electrical Engineering from Stanford and is deeply passionate about painting, and Jiu Jitsu.
Follow Christina Apatow:
About Airports Council International – Aci World, FetchyFox: The Digital Marketplace and AI Intelligence Platform for public spaces, like airports.
Cha Li
CTO/Co-Founder of FetchyFox
Follow Cha Li:
About FetchyFox: The Digital Marketplace and AI Intelligence Platform for public spaces, like airports.
Dan Rodrigues
CEO, Founder of Kareo
Dan Rodrigues is the founder and CEO of Kareo. He founded the company in 2004 with a vision of simplifying medical offices with web-based medical billing software that replaces the expensive and complex medical billing and practice management systems doctors have today. Under Dan’s leadership, Kareo has since created the most user-friendly, easy-to-buy, and easy-to-setup software on the market offering immediate benefits with reduced risks and costs. Prior to launching Kareo, Dan started creating technology for the healthcare industry in 2001 as a co-founder and managing partner of Skematix, a software consulting firm based in Southern California. Among the various projects he led, Dan designed and built a web-based medical billing software and healthcare information system for a national medical billing company. During his tenure at Skematix, Dan also designed an online auction service for industrial equipment, a self-service Internet kiosk for airports, and an online music service. In the late 1990’s, Dan was the co-founder and CEO of Scour, a very popular search engine for finding music and video files online used by more than 10 million consumers. Scour played a transformational role in driving the music and entertainment industries towards the digital distribution of their content over the Internet. With Scour, Dan raised $12.5 million in venture capital financing from Michael Ovitz, Ron Burkle, and Ron Conway, lead a 70-person organization, designed the Scour Exchange peer-to-peer software downloaded by more than 7 million registered users, developed other patented technologies, and sold the company in 2000. Dan began his career as a software developer for RealNetworks and Visio. With RealNetworks, Dan developed the first ad-insertion and pay-per-view technologies for streaming music and video on the Internet. With Visio, Dan developed Internet software enabling users to find and download shapes directly into Visio, the award-winning business diagramming software that was later acquired by Microsoft in 1999 and integrated with the Microsoft Office suite of business productivity software. Dan holds a Bachelor’s of Science in Computer Science from the University of California, Los Angeles and grew up in Orange County, California.
Follow Dan Rodrigues:
About Kareo: Kareo delivers cloud-based software that helps independent practices run a successful business and provide better patient care.
Razmik Abnous
Advisor and Co-Founder of Vineti
Razmik Abnous is the President at Digital Insights. He was the CoFounder & Chief Technology Officer of Vineti before that.
Follow Razmik Abnous:
About Vineti: Vineti is a commercial cloud-based platform that expands patient access to life-saving cells and gene therapies.
Amy DuRoss
Co-Founder & CEO of Vineti
Amy focuses on healthcare new business creation for GE Ventures/healthymagination. In addition to venture investments, Amy is driving growth strategy for new business creation portfolio companies as well as scoping and seeding independent business opportunities. Amy was Chief Business Officer at Navigenics, a genomics company sold to Life Technologies in 2012. She was the co-founder and Executive Director of Proposition 71,California’s $3B stem cell research initiative passed in 2004, as well as Chief of Staff at the resulting state grant oversight agency. Earlier in her career, Amy was an early employee at E-Loan, Inc., the first online consumer mortgage company, with that company through its IPO. She also worked for the World Bank Group to scale and deliver leapfrog technologies to developing economies. Amy holds an MBA and MA/BA in English from Stanford University. She was also a Coro Fellow and an Aspen Institute Socrates Fellow.
Follow Amy DuRoss:
About Vineti: Vineti is a commercial cloud-based platform that expands patient access to life-saving cells and gene therapies.
Jim Bugwadia
Founder & CEO of Nirmata
Jim is the founder and CEO at Nirmata, a San Francisco Bay area startup in the Enterprise DevOps space. Jim started his career developing large-scale distributed software at Motorola for cellular network infrastructure, where his team launched the world’s first CDMA network. Since then Jim has held several developer, architect, and leadership roles at companies like Bell Labs, Cisco, Trapeze Networks, and Pano Logic and others. In 2013 Jim founded Nirmata, a startup focused on solving Enterprise DevOps pain points, by providing multi-cloud management of Microservices style applications that are deployed using containers.
Follow Jim Bugwadia:
About Nirmata: Nirmata is a unified management plane for Kubernetes clusters and workloads.
Cheray Unman
Co Founder of CLOUDCAST
Follow Cheray Unman:
About Blackhawk Partners, CHERAY, CLOUD HORSE, CLOUDCAST, Equestrian Luxury, Gütermann Family Office, Sotheby’s International Realty, Tanner Unman & Co, ULTIMATE Group, Venture Bank, Venture Luxury, WINE LUXE: Patented Edge or Fog computing p2p mesh network for live steaming media & commerce .
JT Giri
CEO & Co-Founder of nClouds
Follow JT Giri:
About nClouds, nOps: nClouds is an award-winning provider of AWS and DevOps consulting and implementation services.
Sebastian Stadil
Founder, CEO of Scalr
Sebastian has been a Cloud developer since 2004, starting with web services for e-commerce and then for computational resources. He founded the Silicon Valley Cloud Computing Group, a user group of over 5000 members that meets monthly to present the latest developments in the industry. Recently, Sebastian founded Scalr, a software-project-turned-startup that scales website infrastructure automagically. When he is not working on Scalr, Sebastian likes to make sushi and play rugby.
Follow Sebastian Stadil:
About Scalr: Scalr is a cloud management platform that empowers enterprises to deliver and consume cloud in a secure and cost-efficient manner.
Igor Savchenko
Co-Founder, CTO of Scalr
Follow Igor Savchenko:
About Scalr: Scalr is a cloud management platform that empowers enterprises to deliver and consume cloud in a secure and cost-efficient manner.
Clint Oram
CSO & Co-Founder of SugarCRM
Clint Oram is a Chief Marketing Officer and Co-Founder. Clint helped found SugarCRM in 2004 with the goal of enabling companies around the world turn their customers into loyal fans. Today, he leads marketing and corporate development strategy for the company. Clint was one of the original architects and developers of the Sugar application and has focused on building out the product, company, partners and community in a variety of executive roles. Prior to co-founding SugarCRM, Clint held senior roles in the development, professional services and product management organizations at Epiphany, Octane Software and Hewlett Packard. He has 20 years of experience in the enterprise software industry and over 15 years designing and building award-winning CRM software solutions. Clint holds a BS in computer science from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo and is the co-author of multiple CRM software patents. Clint enjoys traveling and speaking at conferences on a variety of customer experience and entrepreneurship topics, and has visited SugarCRM customers and partners in over 25 countries.
Follow Clint Oram:
About SugarCRM: With Sugar, you let the platform do the work—no blind spots, no busy work, and no roadblocks.
Amitava Guha
Co Founder of Diamanti
Follow Amitava Guha:
About Diamanti: Diamanti is the technology leader in bare-metal container infrastructure, purpose-built for modern cloud and open-source environments.
Sunay Tripathi
Founder, Board Member & CTO of Pluribus Networks
Sunay Tripathi is the founder and chief technology officer of [Pluribus Networks](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/pluribus-networks#/entity). Prior to that, he was a senior distinguished engineer at Sun Microsystems. Tripathi holds a master’s degree in computer science from Stanford University. He has also studied at Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. Tripathi is based in Palo Alto, California, United States.
Follow Sunay Tripathi:
About Pluribus Networks: Pluribus Networks is a leader in open networking and next generation software defined networking (SDN)
C.K. Ken Yang
Co-Founder of Pluribus Networks
C.K. Ken Yang has over 15 years of consulting, design, and research experience with various companies in the electronics industry. He is a co-founder and the vice president of product engineering at [Pluribus Networks](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/pluribus-networks), an innovator in software and hardware network virtualization platforms for the cloud. Yang is also a tenured professor of EE at UCLA with a focus on high-performance communication.
Follow C.K. Ken Yang:
About Pluribus Networks: Pluribus Networks is a leader in open networking and next generation software defined networking (SDN)
Raj Mamodia
Chairman, Founder & CEO of Brillio
Raj Mamodia is Chief Executive Officer of Brillio and responsible for the company’s strategy and operations globally. Raj comes with a wealth of experience in corporate strategy, sales, go-to-market planning, operations, client engagement and financial management. At Brillio, Raj spearheads the company’s next growth wave setting the direction for a rapid and sustainable journey to become a recognized and reputed information technology service provider. Raj comes to us from Cognizant where he served as the Head of Global Markets for the IT Infrastructure business. As part of the leadership team at Cognizant, he held several key positions such as the Head of Global Markets for Manufacturing, Logistics, Energy and Utilities, Head of the Consumer Goods business and Head of Sales for various products and industries. In his 12 year tenure at Cognizant, Raj was instrumental in supporting rapid and profitable business growth by leading several business units and incubating several capabilities for the first time in the company. Prior to Cognizant, Raj was at IBM Global Services and Larsen & Toubro Ltd., where he gained valuable hands on experience with IT services and sales. Raj holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management and a BE from MNIT Allahabad.
Follow Raj Mamodia:
About Brillio: Brillio is a global technology consulting and technology services company focused on the implementation of digital technologies
Cindy Padnos
Founder, Managing Partner of Illuminate Ventures
Cindy Padnos is founder and managing partner of Illuminate Ventures, an early stage Micro VC firm focused on Enterprise cloud and mobile software investments. Current firm investments include BrightEdge, CafeX, ChannelEyes, Coupang, Hoopla, Influitive, Opsmatic, Peerlyst, Sense Platform, Xactly and Yozio. Cindy has deployed over $100 million in venture funding to help dozens of start-ups reach successful outcomes including prior portfolio companies Red Aril (acq. Hearst Corporation) and WildPockets (acq. Autodesk). A prior serial entrepreneurs, Cindy has been named one of the Most Influential Women in Technology (Fast Company) and one of the Most Influential Women in Silicon Valley (New York Times). Cindy’s high tech career includes successful stints as a management consultant (Booz), VP of Marketing (Scopus, IPO) and founder/CEO (Vivant, acq. EVLV/ORCL). Cindy is on the Business Board of Advisors for Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business where she received her MBA/MSIA and is a graduate of the University of Michigan where she recently offered the College of Engineering commencement address.
Follow Cindy Padnos:
About Illuminate Ventures: Illuminate Ventures invests in early-stage high-tech companies delivering B2B/enterprise cloud and mobile solutions
Brady Forrest
Co-Founder and CEO of Ignite
Brady is Vice President at Highway1, PCH’s incubator program. A prolific speaker and maker on the geek scene, Brady can be found at speaking engagements around the world, inventing new forms of transportation at Burning Man, or creating in the Highway1 San Francisco workshop. Additionally, Brady writes for O’Reilly Radar, tracking changes in technology. Brady is the founder of Ignite, a geek event which has spread to over a hundred cities worldwide.
Follow Brady Forrest:
About Highway1, Ignite: Ignite offers technical consulting, software outsourcing and testing, and ISO 9001 compliant software development services.
Hope Lewis
Co-Founder and CEO of MORE Health
MORE Health began with the dream of bringing the world’s best physicians and medical treatments to our close friends and family in other countries. This dream opened our eyes to the demand for cross-border medical consulting with the best doctors in the world. MORE Health can now offer you access to our dream by giving you the chance to experience top medical diagnosis, and the possibility of receiving the most technologically advanced medical treatment in the world through our network of top medical experts.
Follow Hope Lewis:
About MORE Health: MORE Health delivers access to the best physicians in the world via its cloud-based medical collaboration platform.