Experience

BrdgAI

• United States
• IT Services and IT Consulting

• Chairman

  • Sep 2020 - Present

  Brdg applies machine learning to optimize cattle ranch operations including land management for carbon sequestration and cattle management for cattle health and market timing. The land pipeline uses satellite data from sentinel (visibile and SAR), planet and satelogic with cheap cameras on the ground to optimize grazing using ML. The animal pipeline uses cheap cameras to monitor animal health and ML to predict weight from imagery alone. The company has developed unique internal technology… Show more Brdg applies machine learning to optimize cattle ranch operations including land management for carbon sequestration and cattle management for cattle health and market timing. The land pipeline uses satellite data from sentinel (visibile and SAR), planet and satelogic with cheap cameras on the ground to optimize grazing using ML. The animal pipeline uses cheap cameras to monitor animal health and ML to predict weight from imagery alone. The company has developed unique internal technology especially to label large data sets. The company has also devised techniques to do inference in remote locations together with intelligent data transfer capabilities. Company cofounded with David Andersen, Robbie Sedgewick and Michael Kaminsky Show less



Pepperdata

• United States
• Software Development
• 1 - 100 Employee

• Chairman

  • Jul 2016 - Present

  Santa Clara, California, United States Rebuilt and restructured startup taking it from almost no revenue to $10M ARR. Repositioned the company to optimize Spark, and other Big Data workloads across on-premises and cloud. Moving the company to optimize arbitrary workloads on Kubernetes. Deeply involved in product direction and hands on day to day management



Creative Destruction Lab

• Canada
• Venture Capital and Private Equity Principals
• 200 - 300 Employee

• ML7 Fellow

  • Dec 2015 - Present

  Rotman School of Management Actively advise startups on business models, technology, markets etc. Emphasis is on startups applying machine learning to business problems.



CryptoNumerics

• Canada
• Software Development

• Exec Chairman and Co-Founder

  • Jun 2018 - Jul 2020

  Toronto, Ontario, Canada Company developed innovative solutions for data privacy and privacy protected machine learning using Secure Multi-Party computation. Helped build the product vision, go-to-market strategy and hired key personnel. Also raised $2.5M in seed capital from US based VCs. Sold company to Snowflake.



Marianas Labs

• United States
• Software Development

• Executive Chairman and Founder

  • Feb 2015 - Jun 2016

  Deep learning startup founded with Prof. Alex Smola, Prof. David Andersen and Mu Li. Company was sold in December 2015. Transitioned out June 30, 2016



Graphite Systems, Inc.

• United States
• Computer Hardware Manufacturing
• 1 - 100 Employee

• CEO

  • Jan 2015 - Oct 2015

  Mountain View CA Hardware company focused on building very large Flash memory machines. Refocused the company to analytics on large data sets. Optimized Apache Drill to leverage the hardware. Delivered outstanding TPC-DS benchmark results across all 103 queries. Sold company to EMC / DSSD in August 2015. Transitioned staff and technology to EMC post sale.



Knobout

• Strategic Management Services

• Founder and Chairman

  • Jul 2012 - Feb 2014

  San Francisco Bay Area Built one of the best recommendation engines on the planet leveraging user generated reviews as the source material. Using NLP scanned all amazon reviews, IMDB, rotten tomatoes and all yelp reviews. We delivered better recommendations for content (esp movies) than anyone else at that time. Company founded together with Nando de Freitas and Peter Cnudde



Cognitive Match

• United States
• Technology, Information and Internet
• 1 - 100 Employee

• Exec Chairman

  • 2013 - 2014

  London, United Kingdom Asked by VCs to exit the business. Successfully sold business to Magnetic in May 2014



Yahoo!

• Information Technology and Services
• 1 - 100 Employee

• CTO

  • Oct 2011 - Jun 2012

  Sunnyvale, CA Came in to help restructure company. Did a deep dive on all 8000 engineers and recommended structural changes. Also in charge of CI/CD across the company, key technical architects and overall technical decisions



MSC Software

• United States
• Software Development
• 500 - 600 Employee

• CEO

  • Jan 2009 - Oct 2009

  Stepped in off the Board to restructure this $225M revenue simulation software company with 2000 employees operating globally (Traded on NASDAQ at $4.50). Restructured sales and marketing removing layers and delivering 17% EBITDA in 7 months. Things were complicated by the fact that Elliot Management was an activist and the mortgage crisis was roiling the markets. Took the company private at $8.40 per share at one of the worst possible times in financial markets in 8 months.

• Board Member - chair of comp, member audit

  • Jul 2005 - Oct 2009

  Served on various committees including governance & nominating, audit and compensation. concluded with chairing compensation committee. Actively participated with recruiting of CFO and eventually replacing management.



Level 5 Networks

• Computer Networking Products
• 1 - 100 Employee

• CEO

  • Dec 2005 - Jun 2006

  Asked by VCs to finish building a 10G controller. Decided best outcome was to merge with Solarflare which was developing a 10G phi. Taped out the chip and successfully received samples which along with the new TCP stack delivered advertised performance



Radiance Technologies Inc.

• CEO

  • Jul 2000 - Nov 2005

  Founder and CEO of software company that focused on reliable delivery of large datasets across unreliable networks. Developed unique algorithms for routing and data delivery. Applied for several patents. Company was acquired by Comcast



SpecialtyMD

• Medical Practices

• CEO

  • Jun 1998 - Mar 2000

  CEO of startup that provided the very first video streaming solutions integrated with clinical trials information for specialty physicians. Company was acquired by Chemdex for $120M+



Applied Materials

• United States
• Semiconductor Manufacturing
• 700 & Above Employee

• Corporate Vice President Factory Automation

  • Nov 1996 - Jul 1997

  CVP responsible for embedded software. helped with consilium acquisition.



Silicon Graphics

• United Arab Emirates
• IT Services and IT Consulting
• 1 - 100 Employee

• VP Enterprise Business

  • Feb 1992 - Jun 1996

  Served in various capacities at the company including Director of Compilers, Development Environments, OS, Data Warehousing etc. Delivered world class performance numbers on floating point and integer performance. Worked closely with John Hennessey on MIPS R10000 architecture which was at that time the highest transistor count in the world. Took companies DSM machine and built an enterprise server business to $300M. Delivered world record TPC-C and TPC-D results on the machines. Division… Show more Served in various capacities at the company including Director of Compilers, Development Environments, OS, Data Warehousing etc. Delivered world class performance numbers on floating point and integer performance. Worked closely with John Hennessey on MIPS R10000 architecture which was at that time the highest transistor count in the world. Took companies DSM machine and built an enterprise server business to $300M. Delivered world record TPC-C and TPC-D results on the machines. Division was 300 people. Show less



Oracle Corporation

• 1 - 100 Employee

• Director

  • 1988 - 1992

  Hired into company by Larry Ellison and Bob Miner the two founders. Did many projects for the company including IOUG, global pricing, and product management. Built the Oracle Toolkit together with Edward Screven and ran tools product management and development



IBM

• IT Services and IT Consulting
• 1 - 100 Employee

• Research Staff Member

  • May 1984 - Jul 1985

  RSM at IBM Almaden Laboratory. Worked on parallel machines, computer science theory and scheduling problems.