Roger Blethen was appointed Chairman of the Board of LTX Corporation in 2001—a recognized leader for innovative semiconductor test solutions, selling to the world’s major integrated-circuit manufacturers. Mr. Blethen was President/Chief Executive Officer for 11 years, from 1994 through 2005.
A co-founder of LTX in 1976, Mr. Blethen led the development and marketing of three generations of LTX semiconductor test equipment (STE) systems, including the industry’s first scalable, single-platform system in 1999—named Fusion®. Mr. Blethen also guided LTX through a transition from high fixed costs and vertically integrated manufacturing to a leaner business model whose cornerstone is 100% outsourced manufacturing. This new business model created a nimble company that is better able to cope with the inherent volatility of the STE industry.
Roger Blethen received his Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Northeastern University in 1974. He now serves Northeastern as an advisor to the School of Technical Entrepreneurship and on its Industrial Advisory Board to the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
Mr. Blethen served for many years as a member of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Technical Advisory Committee on Exports. Recently, he became a charter member of the Corporate Directors™ Club, an education and networking organization for Public Company directors.
Mr. Blethen is a Director of MEMSIC Corporation, a maker of MEMS sensor ICs; Chairman of Diablo Technologies, a start-up producer of ICs for Advance Memory Buffer applications; and was formerly Chairman of Synad Technologies Ltd., a manufacturer of Wireless LAN ICs.
As Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, he has worked closely with lead customers and technology partners to translate Diablo’s high-speed mixed signal design expertise into a winning product portfolio. In his capacity as Chief Technical Officer, Riccardo has been defining Diablo’s technology roadmap and IP development programs since inception. Riccardo has been directly responsible for three rounds of equity financing, and has been a member of Diablo’s board of directors since the start of the company in 2002.
As a senior designer at Nortel Networks, Riccardo was pivotal in delivering one of the world’s most advanced Serializer/Deserializer (SerDes) technologies for switching and framer applications. He was involved in backplane protocol engineering and developed phase align algorithms for backplane and optical link SerDes macros. Riccardo was also manager of the OEM Hardware design group at Matrox Graphics Inc., where he and his team designed and supported multiple generations of desktop motherboard platforms for all the major PC OEMs including HP, Dell, Compaq, Siemens, and Fujitsu.
Riccardo holds a Bachelor Degree in Electrical Engineering from Concordia University, where he specialized in Microwave and Optical Theory.
With over 30 years technology industry experience, Mr. Stibitz has extensive business management, global market, hardware / software product development and corporate governance expertise. Currently President and Co-Founder of Adaptive Chips, Inc., an early-stage Silicon Valley, CA start-up, he is also Principle of Peak Value Solutions, LLC, a technology management consulting firm. Mr. Stibitz has served as Board Director at Anobit Technologies Ltd, an Israel based-company that successfully developed technology and products to optimize NAND-Flash storage systems across a broad set of consumer and enterprise applications.
From December 2001 to September 2010, Mr. Stibitz was Corporate Officer, Vice President and General Manager of PMC-Sierra’s Enterprise Storage Division. Prior to joining PMC-Sierra, he was Vice President and General Manager at Agere Systems (formally Lucent Technologies Microelectronics Group) from 1996 to 2001, with responsibility for Agere’s communications IC business in data networking, networked computing and storage area network applications. Prior to that, Mr. Stibitz was ASIC Product Line Director at AT&T Microelectronics and a member of AT&T Bell Labs technical staff for fifteen years.
Mr. Stibitz holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Lafayette College and is a member of the Tau Beta Pi and Eta Kappa Nu engineering honor societies.
Scott joined Battery in 1997 and currently leads investments in Israel, the US and Europe. His investments include ActivePath, Akamai Technologies (NASDAQ:AKAM), Anobit Technologies (acquired by Apple), @stake (acquired by Symantec), Champions Oncology, Diablo Technologies, Istra Research, ITA Software (acquired by Google), Kashya (acquired by EMC), The London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange (LIFFE; acquired by Euronext), MetroPCS (NYSE:PCS), ProfitLogic (acquired by Oracle), Pursway, Sabre, The Tennis Channel, Ximian (acquired by novell), and ZeRTO.
Scott was named multipled times to the Forbes Midas List, which ranks top venture capitalists from around the world and in 2009 relocated to Battery’s Israel office to build the team there and to lead the firm’s expansion into Israel, the Middle East, and Europe. Prior to joining Battery, Scott spent time in corporate finance and was previously the Director of Corporate Development at FutureVision, a venture-backed software company that was sold to Softkey International. He graduated with honors from Brandeis University with a BA in International Relations and Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies.
Alex joined Battery in 2001 and currently works out of Battery’s Waltham office. From 2001 through 2006, he was based in Menlo Park. Alex focuses on investments in infrastructure technologies for Enterprise, Data Centers, and wired/wireless service providers. He has also been actively involved in building Battery’s semiconductor portfolio. Alex is also the focal point for Battery’s relationships with technologists and end-users at Fortune 1000 enterprises and large web scale operators. He is particularly interested in the challenges of building web scale data center networks and distributed computing systems.
During his tenure at Battery, Alex has been involved with several of the firm’s investments including Achronix, Anobit Technologies (acquired by Apple), Aurora Networks, Cumulus Networks, Diablo Technologies, MaxLinear (NYSE: MXL), Nutanix, Optichron, Tracelytics (acquired by AppNeta), Veraz Networks (NASDAQ: VRAZ), VSS Monitoring (acquired by Danaher), and ZeroG Wireless (acquired by Microchip).
Prior to joining the firm, Alex was an Analyst at The Yankee Group, where he performed market research and consulting focused on local, wide area, and transport networks. While in this position, he executed strategic marketing and competitive analysis for clients including major telecommunications equipment and service providers. Alex earned a BA in Government from Wesleyan University.
Alex co-authors www.thewholestack.com, a blog focused on infrastructure IT, and was named a top cloud investor by GigaOm in 2012.
Prior to joining Celtic House, Tom was a research analyst at Eagle & Partners (now Dundee Securities).
He was also a partner at FiberMetrics and a research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Tom serves on the boards of Diablo Technologies, NOVX Systems, Ontology Partners and VirtenSys.
He has served on the boards of BlazePhotonics (acquired by Crytal Fibre), Cambrian Systems (acquired by Nortel Networks), Extreme Packet Devices (acquired by PMC-Sierra), iMagicTV (IPO on TSE), ITF Optical Technologies (acquired by Avensys), March Networks, Northchurch Communications (acquired by Newbridge Networks), PixStream (acquired by Cisco), SkyStone Systems (acquired by Cisco) and Tropic Networks (acquired by Alcatel-Lucent).
Yaron Valler has over fifteen years of experience in IT and venture capital, having built and invested in emerging technologies, bringing them to global markets. Throughout his career, even before becoming Partner at Hasso Plattner Ventures in 2010, Yaron was involved in the creation of over twenty startup companies, initially as an engineer and later as an entrepreneur and investor. Having experienced full product and company life cycles with successful and unsuccessful phases, Yaron assists in identifying, avoiding and dealing with the pitfalls faced by portfolio companies. A true geek, Yaron adores technology. There is nothing that makes him happier than finding the next cool trend.
Yaron holds an MBA from INSEAD in France and a B.Sc. in information systems engineering from Ben-Gurion University in Israel.
Glenn Egan became Managing Partner of the stage and sector agnostic Diversified Venture Fund in 2011.
He leads a team of seasoned investment and operating professionals with backgrounds in information and communication technology (ICT), life sciences, electronics and advanced materials who are responsible for maximizing value creation across the investment portfolio.
Mr. Egan has over 20 years of operational experience, including 15 years in wireless products and services.
He joined BDC Venture Capital in 2000 as an investment professional. He became Managing Partner of the Telecom Group in 2003 and Vice President Information and Communication Technologies Venture Capital in 2008.
Prior to joining BDC, he spent 3 years as Vice President, Business Development for EMS Technologies. Over the course of his career he has held various senior positions in sales, business development, marketing, and product development with wireless products companies and wireless carriers, including a start-up.
Mr. Egan holds a Bachelor of Applied Science degree in Engineering from the University of Waterloo and an MBA from the University of Western Ontario.
Christopher Rust (rust@usvp.com) is a Partner at U.S Venture Partners, and joined the firm in 2004. Chris focuses on information technology investments, with experience that spans components, systems, software, and services. He was the Chief Executive Officer at Mahi Networks (acquired by Meriton Systems) from 2002 to 2004, and a Partner at Sequoia Capital from 1998 to 2002. Before starting his career as an early stage technology investor, Chris held a variety of operating roles in product and engineering management positions from 1987 to 1998.
Chris is currently a Director of Accelops, Akros, Clustrix, Diablo, Exablox, Kaiam, and PlumGrid. Chris is also an active Board Observer of GoPro and Zerto. Previously, he was a founding Director or lead investor in the following: Abrizio (acquired by PMC Sierra); Afara WebSystems (acquired by SUN Microsystems, now the Oracle Exadata product line); Dune Networks (acquired by Broadcom); LVL7 Systems (acquired by Broadcom); Mellanox (Nasdaq: MLNX); Nexsi (acquired by Juniper Networks); SwitchOn Networks (acquired by PMC Sierra); and VxTel (acquired by Intel Corporation). Chris earned a B.S.E.E. and M.S.E.E. from the University of Lowell, an M.S. Telecommunications Engineering from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and an M.E. Engineering Management from the University of Colorado, Boulder.