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Suresh Pai

Suresh Pai has over 25 years of commercial development and general management experience in a wide variety of medical device segments spanning plastic surgery implantables (Mentor/J&J), vascular stents (Cordis/J&J and SquareOne), stent-grafts for thoracic aortic aneurysms (ProGraft Medical/W.L. Gore), devices for crossing chronic total vascular occlusions (LuMend/J&J), carotid artery stents and embolic filters (Boston Scientific), and femoral closure device technologies (AccessClosure/Cardinal Health). He co-founded Axiom Technology Partners, a startup that developed a novel laparoscopic fascial closure device, which was acquired in 2012 by Teleflex Medical (NYSE: TFX). Axiom’s device was awarded Innovation of the Year by Society of Laparoscopic Surgeons, as well as the Excellence in Surgical Products Award by Surgical Products Magazine, both in 2012. Most recently, Suresh was the founder of the ear, nose and throat device startup CogENT Therapeutics (a Band of Angels portfolio company), which developed and commercialized a unique hemostatic nasal packing technology which was acquired by Entellus Medical (NASDAQ: ENTL) in mid-2016. Currently, Suresh is Managing Partner at LamaMed Solutions, Inc., a Silicon Valley based medical device consultancy focused on startups. He has received over fifty US and international patents covering a variety of technologies in the medical device field. Suresh holds a MS in biomedical engineering from the University of Miami and a BS in biomedical engineering from Tulane University.

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Demetris Paraskevopoulos

Demetris Paraskevopoulos is the Founder and Managing Director of Nif/T, L.L.C., a new business catalyst consulting firm assisting new companies, or new business within existing companies, to improve their business and marketing direction, structure and negotiate business deals, develop Intellectual Property strategy, enhance the valuation of the firm, and assist with financing and M&A activities. A key emphasis is on the development and monetization of patents. He has held several positions in large and small companies including Tower Semiconductors, USA, Inc. where he served as General Manager and Vice President, and Corporate Business Development, Vice President of Business Development at Fourth Communications Network, Inc. He has directed corporate strategic marketing developments at National Semiconductor, and has also managed the marketing and sales for the board level products. Prior to National Semiconductor, he worked at Xerox Corporation, rising from a design engineer to managing a 100+ person organization in the U.S. and in Europe. He is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers; American Physical Society; a founder of the Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (CICC); the Association for Corporate Growth, and other professional organizations. He has published over 30 publications in professional journals (IEEE, APS) and Xerox or NSC internal technical reports in the areas of science, microelectronics, technology, economics and management. He also has over 20 professional society speeches, and 4 patents issued. He attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, National Magnet Lab, Post Doctoral studies in Superconductivity, Instrumentation, and Solid state devices; Boston University, Ph.D. in Physics; University of Rochester, M.B.A. in Financial Economics; Boston University, M.A. in Physics; Brown University, Sc.M. in Electrical Engineering and University of Athens, Greece, Diploma of Sciences.

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Pirooz Parvarandeh

Pirooz Parvarandeh has over 30 years of experience in the high-tech sector. He joined Maxim Integrated in 1987 when it was a pre-IPO company. During his 27-year tenure at Maxim, he has played a key role in Maxim’s growth to a $2.4B/year company. As Group President, he has led new product development activities, and has had P&L responsibility for a number of business units whose aggregate revenues were approximately $800M/year. Pirooz led the creation of Maxim’s Automotive Business Unit from the ground up. This business unit has grown to have revenues well in excess of $100M/year. He became Maxim’s first CTO in 2011. As CTO he championed innovation, and led advanced technology development organizations that provided foundational technologies for many of Maxim’s products. Pirooz also led Maxim Labs which is chartered with developing disruptive technologies that have a 3+ year time horizon. In early 2015, he moved on from Maxim to pursue new professional challenges. He currently serves in senior advisory and consulting roles in a broad range of technologies such as Roche’s DNA sequencing unit, and multiple startups in the semiconductor, software and systems areas. Pirooz is also an angel investor in 10’s of start-ups. He has been active in the IEEE where he has served in the Technology Directions sub-committee of ISSCC for the past several years. He is well versed in the areas of technology, strategy, growing and running businesses and the management of highly diverse disciplines.

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Sangeeth Peruri

Sangeeth Peruri started in tech investment banking at Morgan Stanley in 1998. Most of his career was spent at Seligman, an investment manager with offices in New York City and Menlo Park. He joined Seligman in 2000 on the venture capital team and eventually moved over to the public equities team as a lead semiconductor analyst. Sangeeth helped launch and grow Seligman’s tech hedge fund which peaked at $2Bn. In 2006, he founded and ran the Seligman Spectrum Focus Fund, a diversified market neutral hedge fund that managed over $1Bn in assets at its peak. After the firm was sold to Ameriprise, he was a portfolio manager there until 2012. Since then, Sangeeth has been managing his family office and has focused on improving the US education system through philanthropic endeavors. He served on multiple education related boards (Beyond12, Boys and Girls Clubs of the Peninsula, Orenda Education, Principal’s Exchange, and Think Together). In 2014, Sangeeth ran for his local school board and was elected to the Los Altos School Board of Trustees. In 2015, Sangeeth founded OutreachCircle, a political SaaS software company that makes it easy for volunteers, activists, and donors to support their favorite cause, campaign, or organization. He grew OutreachCircle into a profitable startup with an international team of 30+ people working with clients in all 50 states and on 5 continents. He sold the company to PDI in 2020 and agreed to join PDI as Chief Strategy Officer (currently part-time). PDI is trusted by thousands of candidates and organizations to help them mobilize voters and activate supporters. In his spare time, Sangeeth loves practicing a variety of martial arts and pursuing fitness activities. In 2014 he competed on season 6 of “American Ninja Warrior”.

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Kurt Petersen

Kurt Petersen received his BS degree cum laude in EE from UC Berkeley in 1970. In 1975, he received a PhD in EE from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Petersen established a MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical-Systems) research group while at IBM Research from 1975 to 1982. Since 1982, Dr. Petersen has co-founded six silicon valley companies in MEMS technology: Transensory Devices Inc. in 1982, NovaSensor in 1985, Cepheid in 1996, SiTime in 2004, Verreon in 2008, and Profusa in 2009. Each of these companies have become technical and commercial leaders in the field of MEMS devices and applications. NovaSensor develops and manufactures silicon pressure sensors and accelerometers. The company is now owned by General Electric. Cepheid is now a public company (CPHD) with annual sales over $400M and a market cap of over $3B. The company sells advanced DNA diagnostic products; particularly to the US Postal Service for detecting anthrax in the US mail (all US mail is screened for anthrax using Cepheid systems), as well as eleven FDA-approved human diagnostic tests. SiTime was established with the mission of commercializing MEMS- based resonators for electronic timing products, and transforming a large fraction of the $5B, 40-year-old quartz crystal resonator marketplace. SiTime resonators are cheaper, smaller, more reliable, and perform better than quartz oscillators. SiTime has shipped over 120M resonators since late 2007 and will break in 2013. Verreon was a company developing technology for building MEMS devices on glass and was acquired by Qualcomm in 2010. Profusa is a private company developing implantable glucose sensors. Since 2011, Profusa has been awarded contracts from DARPA and NIH contract totaling over $7M. Dr. Petersen has published over 100 papers, and has been granted over 35 patents in the field of MEMS. In 2001 he was awarded the IEEE Simon Ramo Medal for his contributions to MEMS. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of IEEE in recognition of his contributions to “the commercialization of MEMS technology”.

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Mike Pinelis

Dr. Mike Pinelis is the President and CEO of Microtech Ventures, a global firm based in Birmingham,Michigan focusedon venture capital, merchant banking, and M&A advisory services for MEMS, sensors, andmicrotechnology companies. Mike is also the President and CEO of MEMS Journal, an independentpublication based in Southfield, Michigan that he founded in 2003 and grewto the current 34,800+subscribers worldwide. Along with MEMS Journal, Mike has also developed a strategy and market researchconsulting practice focused on MEMS, sensors, and microsystems. He is the chairman and the main organizerof some of the leading industry conferences such as ADAS Sensors, Medical Wearables, MEMSManufacturing, Automotive LIDAR, Medical MEMS and Sensors and Microtech Innovation Summit.Mike is an active angel investor and a limited partner in several venture capital and private equity funds. He isalso an advisor and mentor to technology startups, including those participating in the Techstars Mobilityaccelerator in Detroit. Mike is a member of the Michigan Angel Fund (MAF), the largest angel group inMichigan with over 100 members. Mike is also a member of the Michigan Venture Capital Association(MVCA).Mike is an active participant in the MEMS, sensors, and semiconductors industries and has been an advisor orpartner with organizations such as SEMI, CVTA, GSA, MSIG, SMTA, IMAPS, SAE, SAA, and IEEE. Hehas a large social media network with 29,700+ direct connections on LinkedIn.Prior to MEMS Journal, Mike served asDirector of Business Development for ISD Technology Group inMansfield, Massachusetts. Prior to that, Mike foundedand was the CEO of MindCruiser, a companyspecializing in developing online intellectual property marketplaces that was sold to Akiva Corporation. Mike earned a Bachelor's degree in Engineering from Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California, and Master's and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering with a focus in MEMS and microfluidics at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

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Richard Pivnicka

Hon. Richard Pivnicka, was named Honorary Consul General of the Czech Republic in 1994, founded CzechTech, a tech people and VC network in Silicon Valley, which was awarded the Czernin Palace bronze medal by the Czech government (www.czech-tech.net). In 2012, he received his first patent and is currently engaged as an advisor to international venture capital funds and start-ups. He is a frequent speaker and judge at business plan competitions, both in the Bay Area and in Europe. He served as Vice President and General Counsel for Gerson Bakar & Associates for over two decades and is currently a Member of its Board of Directors and its Legal Advisor. The firm is one of the largest developers, owners, and managers of a diversified billion-dollar portfolio of residential, office, and retail properties, which includes Levi’s Plaza World Headquarters in San Francisco and Carmel Plaza Shopping Center. He and his wife Barbara founded Atherton Heritage LLC, an enterprise dedicated to the acquisition, restoration, and sale of significant historic homes. Their restoration of the Mark Hopkins Family Mansion in Atherton, California, received the California Heritage Council’s Award and was selected the Decorators Showhouse. Subsequently, their project, located in San Francisco’s Presidio Heights, was selected as the San Francisco Decorator Showcase house. He holds a BA in Accounting from the University of Notre Dame, an MBA in Finance from New York University, and a JD from the University of San Francisco, where he served on the Law Review. Mr. Pivnicka served in the US Marine Corps Reserves and has been active in numerous international, national and community organizations. Mr. Pivnicka is active in Bay Area and Silicon Valley General Counsel Groups, and is the Vice Chairman and Trustee Emeritus of the Djerassi Resident Artists Program. For over 20 years he has been a Member of the Board of Governors of the Commonwealth Club, the nation’s oldest and largest public affairs forum, where he is currently an Advisory Board Member. He is a sculptor, swimmer, author, documentary film producer and mentor.  A 22-year Woodside resident, he grows and produces wine on his property -- “Bohemia” was named a 2014 award winner in the Golden Gate Wine Society Competition.

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Joan Plastiras

Joan is a real estate broker and investor (80% commercial, 20% residential). She is a certified commercial investment member (CCIM) and a Realtor. Most of her education, training, and experience are in mathematics, statistics, operations research, systems engineering and the application of these methodologies to engineering. Joan has worked in energy (solar and nuclear), consumer and industrial products and facilities (automotive, all-terrain vehicles, chemical and rocket motor plants), terrorism (military facilities and weapons), and aerospace (space payload systems safety, reliability, and quality). Joan worked in two pre-IPO companies (Failure Analysis and Google), but exited early to raise children. As a retail strip owner and Broker/owner of Prospect Properties in Palo Alto, Joan continues to learn from her experiences with small businesses. Joan’s biggest accomplishments include: Leading the first probabilistic risk assessment for NASA on the shuttle main engine main pressurization system (as an employee of Lockheed Research and Development, now Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center, following the loss of Challenger). She presented these results on CNN Investigated a chemical plant fire and identified ball bearing lubrication failure as the cause of the accident (after a team of PhDs from multiple engineering disciplines took six weeks to investigate and failed to identify cause (as an employee of Failure Analysis). Identified a weapon vulnerability that could be exploited by a terrorist; this forcing a major redesign of the weapon, already in manufacture (while at Sandia Labs). It had sensitive political ramifications, as Lawrence Lab severely criticized Sandia for this oversight, and she was cautioned to stop talking about it or would lose her security clearance. Showed that insolation and air conditioning loads were inversely correlated for many sites, thereby proving that central receiver solar plants were not cost-effective as peaking plants (while at Sandia Labs). She presented the results at the International Solar Conference—a paper based on a Sand publication that was, decades later, stolen and sold on Amazon England. Several managers above received a letter from the head of DOE Energy in Washington complimenting the technical rigor of the paper while noting that it didn’t promote solar funding. Used simple Boolean Algebra to show that Google Page Counts were mathematically wrong; presented the result as a bug on the external user interface and was informed that the problem would require a multi-man year, full press re-engineering effort to correct it.
Wrote Quasi-triangular C* Algebras on Hilbert Space, which won honorable mention from the American Mathematical Society for the best dissertation that year. Joan asked a question about an important class of C*algebras that had not been asked before and invented a metric that completely classified all such algebras up to *isomorphism. Education: PhD mathematics UC Berkeley AB mathematics/English Vassar College License: PE mechanical Engineering, CA , M 22362

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Mark Putney

Mark Putney has had direct involvement in the high-tech industry since 1984. He has lived in the Silicon Valley since 1978. In 1985 he founded Techsystems Inc. a sales and marketing company promoting high end capital equipment to the semiconductor and printed circuit board assembly industry. The company started from scratch and ultimately exceeded $30M in sales. In 1987 Mr. Putney founded Screen Manufacturing Technologies servicing the PCB assembly industry. After selling his interest for a multiple of 25, the company was sold to an international public firm. Mr. Putney has founded several other businesses in the PCB assembly, electronic product and financial services industries returning well over 200% IRR. He has direct experience with start-ups and has an extensive network of management, manufacturing and marketing contacts and is well connected with the Venture Capital industry in the Northern California and Texas markets. Mr. Putney founded TAT Capital Partners Ltd. in 1997 and contributed in raising 2 funds totaling approx. $120M in venture partnerships. He has made investments in several early stage technology companies. He has served on the Board of Directors for ZF Micro Devices Inc., Surface Interface Inc. (acquired by FEI Company, NASDAQ: FEIC), Optcom Corporation and Scivac Corporation. Mr. Putney is also serving of the non profit Board of Directors of Teen Challenge of Northern California/Nevada for the rehabilitation of teenage drug and alcohol abuse.

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Paul Quadros

Paul has been a member of the Band of Angels since 2006 and served as Chairman or Co-Chair of the Life Science Special Industry Group from its inception in 2008 through 2016. He has also been a very active participant in the Energy SIG. Paul has been an angel investor since 1998 co-founding Tenex Medical, a life science focused angel group with 125 members that invested $30 million in startups, and was its President for eight years. Paul has served as an independent public company director since 1988, including service as Chairman of Audit Committees and Compensation Committees, and Co-chair of a Governance and Strategic Alternatives Committee. In addition he has served as Executive Chairman of Corautus Genetics (NASDAQ), Chairman of Cardiac Science (NASDAQ), both of which were later acquired, and as a director, President & CEO of GenStar Therapeutics, the top performing biotech on the AMEX in 2000. Paul is a “Financial Expert” as that term has been defined under Sarbanes-Oxley. In addition to his service as a public company director, in both the life science and defense electronics industries, Paul has served as a private company director of numerous companies in the life science, and cleantech industries. From 1985 – 1995 Paul was a General Partner of Technology Funding, a venture capital firm that invested $300 million across a broad range of technologies including IT, cleantech, and life science. While at Technology Funding Paul served for three years as Chairman of the Investment Committee, two years as Director of Research, and five years as the Life Science portfolio manager. After an active period of entrepreneurship, including co-founding GenStar, Paul raised a new venture capital fund, Tenex Greenhouse Ventures with a focus on early stage life science startups. He was the Managing Partner of the Greenhouse through 2013. Paul currently serves on the board of directors, or formal advisory board member, of two medical device companies, and two cancer therapy biotech companies. Prior to joining Technology Funding Paul spent five years in the real estate finance industry, including serving as a Senior Vice President of Public Storage, Inc and EVP of its public, affiliated REIT. Before Public Storage, Paul was a financial executive at The Times Mirror Company, which was a Fortune 250, NYSE listed, multi-media organization. Paul holds a BA in Finance from California State University at Fullerton and an MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management.

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Art Reidel

Art Reidel is a Partner in the Band's Acorn Fund and one of the Life Science/Biotech Screening Committee members. Art has helped build and scale profitable businesses in the electronic design automation, pharmaceutical software, semiconductor, and communications industries for more than 30 years. He was most recently CEO of Scintera, a mixed signal wireless IC company he joined in 2006. Prior to joining Scintera, he was co-founder, chairman and CEO of Pharsight Corporation (now part of Tripos International) where he led its IPO in August 2000. He was also president and CEO of Sunrise Test Systems (acquired by Viewlogic Systems) and has held executive positions with Weitek, Interactive Training Systems, and Schlumberger Computer-Aided Systems. In addition to management roles, Art is well known in the investment community. Art is a partner with Horizon Ventures, and was a venture partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners from 2003 through 2005 where he provided management assistance to portfolio companies and was responsible for several new investments. He earlier served as a general partner at ABS Ventures for 7 years where he invested in and was a director of numerous technology-based companies.

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Jenkin Richard

Jenkin is a Social Commerce entrepreneur based in Langley, Virginia, who founded Chatly Social Commerce which was recently acquired by Salesforce. He has deployed over 200 Social Platform projects and integrations across fortune 500 brands in banking, luxury, travel, and for the US government. In addition, Jenkin has been a representative on trade delegations about social media technology. He has 9 patents in data storage and transport and is a Data Architect for enterprise systems. Jenkin is focused on the use of AI Agents for swarm and edge applications and is currently the co-founder of a LuxTech start-up called ChatLabs. Jenkin is also a social impact leader and has built an orphanage and community center called the Center of Hope in India.

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Mike Rossi

Mike Rossi is a retired Supply Chain Specialist and Software Technologist from Cypress Semiconductor (recently acquired by Infineon, the largest European semiconductor company with approximately $10B in annual revenue). Mike's involvement with Cypress stemmed from their enterprise deployment of a software solution Mike helped develop/commercialize several years earlier as a startup venture. Over the course of his career, he was involved with a few startup software technology companies. One startup he founded here in Palo Alto was funded by Softbank and Accenture Ventures that was later acquired by Manhattan Associates (a large publicly traded supply chain solution provider MANH). Mike started his career at Texas Instruments as an applied research engineer/developer for their Advanced Software Technology Lab exploring AI based solutions for Defense and enterprise planning/scheduling applications.

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Paul Russo

Dr. Paul Russo is the Founder, Chairman and CEO of Kyto Technology and Life Science, Inc., a public entity actively investing in thoroughly vetted start-ups (www.kytotech.com ).  He is also the Founder and Chairman of GEO Semiconductor, a world-leading supplier of automotive camera processors with over 300 design wins, where he was also CEO from its founding in 2008 through 2015. He sits on several start-up boards in the US and Canada, including Beam Semiconductor, Achelios Therapeutics, InBay Technologies and  Dynamount, and is an advisor to other start-ups including Kuantsol, Promaxo and Shyft Moving.  He is a former board member of ATI technologies through its acquisition by AMD and is active in both the Band of Angels and the Keiretsu Forum and has recently joined the Silicon Catalyst Angels. Before GEO, Dr. Russo started Silicon Optix and Genesis Microchip.  The latter dominated the chip market for flat computer displays and had a hugely successful NASDAQ IPO in 1998.  Prior to the above, he served as GM of GE’s Microelectronics Center and Manager of the GE Industrial Electronics Laboratory.  Prior to GE, he was at RCA Laboratories, where he helped develop the world’s first CMOS microprocessor, and the first uses of these devices in video games, auto engine control, and global communications.  He received his B. Eng. in from McGill and his MSc and PhD in EECS from UC Berkeley.  He holds 8 patents, has published extensively, and is the recipient of numerous awards, including the IEEE Centennial Medal and the Tech Pioneer Award from the World Economic Forum. 

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Jayesh Sahasi

Jayesh Sahasi is a Technology Executive and Investor with significant experience in SaaS, Entrepreneurial ventures, focused on delivering software solutions that add significant value to various customers and industries. From concept, to roadmap, delivery, and sales enablement, a big-picture executive who can also roll up his sleeves and dive into the code. Jayesh has over 20 years of experience in Entrepreneurial Management, and has been Head of Product Management, Product Marketing, Engineering, Systems (SFDC), and Quality Assurance. Jayesh has significant experience with Product Strategy and Execution, having scaled new ventures from $0 to $70MM+ ARR. Jayesh has significant experience managing and steering a company's Intellectual Property portfolio to maximize value and build a moat around the business, and has about half a dozen patents in his own name.Able to consistently meet tight deadlines with a small, cost-effective core team of specialists, Jayesh has excelled at hiring, motivating, managing, retaining, and growing key talent.
Specialties:
-General Management, SaaS, Internet, Rich Media, UX, Marketing, AI, Deep Learning
-Operations, Product Development, Product Management, Product Marketing, Professional Services, Quality Assurance
- Neural Networks, Expert Systems, AI, Machine Learning
- High Scalability, Distributed Software, Weblogic, Java, EJB, JPA, Multi-Threaded applications, Asynchronous processing, Responsive Design, AJAX, HTML5, MPEG-DASH, Node.js, JSON/XML, Mobile, ASP, .NET,

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Mansour Salame

Mansour Salame is an entrepreneur who founded two successful companies. His first startup NextAge Technologies was acquired by Alcatel (NYSE: ALU). His second startup Contactual, was recently acquired by 8x8 (Nasdaq: EGHT). Previously Mansour was an early employee at Genesys and was also a Consultant with Andersen Consulting (now Accenture). He has a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Northwestern University and a Masters in Electrical Engineering From Stanford University.

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Antonio P. Salerno

Antonio is a Sr. executive, startup founder and a venture investor since 1981.  Currently he is CEO of SuperQuantumAI Inc. &  SuperGrids Inc. - companies that develop/use advanced technologies in Quantum/HPC, CyberSec, AI/Large Data and Privacy.  SuperGrids protects sensitive information for G2000 companies.  SuperQuantumAI will reclaim the privacy of individual information - and return control of use to the individual – while keeping information quantum encrypted and the access quantum secured.  Company partners include very large companies in Finance, Insurance, Telecom, Real Estate, plus large R & D firms working with US Gov. Agencies.  

Previously, as CEO/CTO of Conxion Inc.(‘94-‘04), he started with $25k and a spare bedroom. Then grew it to 400+ people on three continents and $130M+ ARR. Conxion was profitable in its 2nd yr, and the only debt free company in its industry.  He raised a $100M Series A, retaining 90% ownership for founders & employees.  The company made acquisitions both domestic and international. The company had notable achievements, tech milestones and patents (Gartner Magic Quadrant; Only company ever awarded “IronMan of Hosting” (2800+ days; No downtime & No breaches); First/Largest OC-192 Internet Backbone [1998 Lumen Annual Report]; Executive Committee of IOPS [largest Internet backbone operators]).  Conxion operated the largest Cloud/CDN of its time, with 99.9% of business PCs accessing Conxion daily. Conxion was sole-source OEM of fully-managed webhosting services for IBM ((IaaS).  In 2000 Conxion implemented an Angel Incubator + Complete Inet Services + Banking + Mentoring consortium for Internet-centric ventures {“Web University”). Partners were IBM, SVB, Garage.com, and others.  This was featured in IBM’s Annual report.  Conxion was sold (2004) to a division of Time-Warner.

Earlier career: SVP, Atari (1990) - Revamped the software developer program, getting a headline article in SoftLetter;  As  SVP at Forte – He led M&A team to sell company to IBM (Candle);   At Borland Software (1987) - Conceived of the "Borland Bundle" (integrated WP, Spreadsheet, DB – w/yrly subscription);  At EFHutton – Pioneered (1980) using multi-PC-real-time-options-hedging for brokers, and directed hedged options portfolios for large institutional funds in Denver.  

He has invested in several dozen ventures, including the Series A for Osborne Computer (1981).  Joining the Band in 1995, he later served 2 ½ yrs on the first Deal Committee.  He serves as a Director of several companies, is a member of the National Association of Corporate Directors, and a member of the Chief Executive Forum.  He will be starting a "fully integrated" private investment consortium  (Venture Integrated), that will partner with: 1) Multiple Angel investing groups;  2) A world class R&D company, with 300+ PhD researchers in CyberSecurity, Privacy, AI, Big Data, BlockChain, Quantum Computing; 3) Will have an Accelerator (for post-product & post-seed ventures) – funded/supported by several G500 companies & their VC arms;  4) Select top Venture Capital groups;  5) Two, world Top 10 Investment Banks. 

Education/Personal:  U.S.A.F. Academy- Physics; Univ. of Colorado- Computer Science;  Stanford- Business;  Prometheus Society;   Hobbies: Flying, Hangliding, Tennis, Cycling.  Philanthropy –  All is to be bequeathed to a charitable foundation.

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Rachid Salik

Rachid  Salik is VP of Research & Development at Cadence Design Systems.  Prior to Cadence, Rachid was at Silvaco Data Systems where he was responsible for the development of Parasitic Extraction, Signal Intergrity, IR-Drop, and Electromigration Analysis Tools.

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Kian Sandjideh

Kian Sandjideh has a 30+ year career in technology (largely in the video game industry) with a variety of roles in IT, network operations, developer relations, and some minor involvement in intellectual property management and business development. His career in the video game industry began as one of the first employees at one of the first online gaming companies founded in the mid 1990s before moving to Electronic Arts in the late 1990s/early 2000s. Kian also ran his family real estate appraisal company Valorem Appraisal, Inc. from the early to mid-2000s during the early part of the real estate boom. In the mid 2000s he spent five years as part of the founding management team of a startup at the intersection of sports (auto racing) and game technology. After that, he founded two mobile app startups with both reaching MVP stage, but neither gained market traction and both are now defunct. Kian received bachelor’s in Political Science from UC Berkeley in 1992 and joint MBA from Columbia University and UC Berkeley in 2010-2011. He enjoys evaluating, advising, and investing in startups.

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Dan Schwartz

Dan Schwartz has over 40 years’ experience in the financial and publishing industries. Dan began his career on Wall Street. An innovative entrepreneur, he setup his own securities firm (Ulmer Brothers); turned around a struggling financial publication, the Asian Venture Capital Journal in Hong Kong, which was bought out by a British acquiror; and founded the world’s first digital media delivery platform for print publications Qiosk.com, sold to a Canadian buyer. He also invested successfully in DCG, a cryptocurrency firm and some other less successful ventures (!).

In 2014, Dan was elected to a four-year term as Nevada State Treasurer (2015-2019). During his term, Dan revamped the State’s investment program, quintupling (5x) returns on the General Fund; was the first to question the largest tax increase in Nevada history; successfully defeated a scheme to fund the Faraday Future project in North Las Vegas, sparing Nevada taxpayers $175M in defaulted bonds; and, led the charge on parental choice (ESAs), registering 10,000 students before the program fell to political bickering. He launched a College Savings Program aimed at creating a “culture of education” in the state; and, reduced the processing period in unclaimed property from 120 to 25 days. In 2020, Dan ran for and was defeated in the Republican primary for a Congressional seat.

Dan has authored two books (both available on Amazon): The Future of Finance: How Private Equity and Venture Capital Will Shape the Global Economy (Wiley, 2012); and Principals of the American Republic (Sturdy Oak Press). Dan grew up in suburban Chicago and received his undergraduate degree from Princeton, J.D. from Boston University, and MBA from Columbia. He is also a member of the Illinois bar.

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Collin Sebastian

Collin Sebastian is a serial entrepreneur who has taken three early-stage companies from zero-to-$50M ARR and three profitable exits as both CT/PO and a P&L owner.

A classically trained software engineer with 20 years’ experience in AI/ML, robotics, and Industrial IoT, Collin has also led Enterprise R&D divisions for major corporations like Verizon Communications and SoftBank, and is an active mentor with multiple early-stage accelerator programs in the San Francisco Bay Area. His portfolio includes companies like Sanctuary AI, Covariant, and Bright Machines.

While specializing in AI & Machine Learning, Collin has extreme interest in energy, agriculture, and medical technology and is actively looking to expand his portfolio into those segments.

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Eugene Shklar

Gene Shklar is an active angel investor and president of the Shklar Foundation. He is also a founding investor and board member at software-development outsourcing company Lohika Systems (www.lohika.com) and board member at several other companies. He retired from Keynote Systems (Nasdaq:KEYN) where he was a Vice President, a Series A and B investor, and a board member. Gene was a founding employee and Executive Director of Product Marketing of Siebel Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:SEBL, acquired by Oracle). He also worked at Gupta Corporation as Vice President of Marketing, at Oracle Corporation as Director of Marketing for both the PC Products Division and the Networked Products Division, at 3Com Corporation as Director of Software Product Marketing, and as Vice President of Marketing and Sales at a relational-DBMS vendor acquired by CompuServe.

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Dean Sirovica

Dean Sirovica is currently VP Business Development for Huawei Technologies USA. Dean is an active member of the Band of Angels, where he led the Energy and Cleantech SIG. Prior to that Dean was Managing Director of Vodafone Group R&D USA, leading Vodafone's R&D activities outside of Europe including Vodafone Ventures. Dean was founding President and Chairman of the Mobile Wireless Internet Forum. MWIF had 100 member companies working to converge mobile, fixed and internet networks. MWIF merged with OMA. Prior to Vodafone, Dean was one of four cofounders of Malibu Networks responsible for product strategy and business development. Prior to Malibu Dean was Director with Sprint PCS where he deployed Sprint’s CDMA network in Southern California & Nevada.Prior to Sprint PCS Dean was a Director at USWEST Technologies where he was responsible for wireless strategy and its integration with fixed access. Dean spent several years in academic research on communications and distributed systems. He is involved with a number of startups. Current and past Advisory Boards: Tatara Systems, Telesoft Partners, Radar Corp. Boards: MWIF, Center for Telecom Management – USC Marshall. Dean holds BSEE and PhD from the University of Sussex, UK, and MBA from Golden Gate University, San Francisco.

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Greg Smith

Greg Smith has worked in tech with high level sales and management positions for 32 years and is now retired. He directly closed over $540M in revenue selling multiple IT solutions to the Fortune 500, SMB, and startups in all market segments. He has worked for 4 startups that were acquired as well as Sun Microsystems, Teradata, McDonnell Douglas Automation, and NaviSite. He won Cisco’s vendor of the year award by providing significant value, creating new business processes, and developing executive relationships. Greg was responsible for 5 of Sun’s most strategic accounts. He is an active hiker, real estate and stock market investor, skier, and traveler. 

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Ian Sobieski

Ian Patrick Sobieski leads the Band of Angels, an exclusive group of high-net worth individuals who were also former officers or founders of many of the high technology companies that made the Silicon Valley famous. Since its inception, the Band has invested approximately $230M into 270 startup companies helping to create more than 4,000 jobs. Of these companies, more than 54 have exited for a profit to Band of Angels investors and 10 have had IPOs. Dr. Sobieski has been a founding partner of three Band related seed venture funds totaling $65M in capital, and a partner at a $120M early stage venture fund. He is currently helping invest the Band Acorn Fund, which backs entrepreneurs who have the strategy of building profitable companies or exiting on the Fund's sole investment. His previous two funds were focused on seed round financings as stepping stones to larger VC rounds. Ian has made more than a hundred early stage investments and has served on twenty boards of directors. Seven of his investments have exited for a gain via M&A including SeaDragon Software, Quorum Systems, Nellix, Novus Packaging, and Ordinate. Two of his investments have gone public on the Nasdaq: Genitope and PortalPlayer. Ian is a frequent speaker, lecturer, and commentator in entrepreneurship and startup issues in the Silicon Valley and nationally. He is the author of a dozen technical publications and is a former lecturer in the Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology at the University of California at Berkeley. Dr. Sobieski has a Ph.D. and MS in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Stanford University, and a Philosophy BA as well as a BS in Aerospace Engineering from Virginia Tech. He is a founding board member of the Angel Capital Association and is a member of the Venture Capital Network, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and the National Ski Patrol Alumni Association. Ian serves on the Board of Meals on Wheels of San Francisco.

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Rakesh Sood

Rakesh Sood is currently Managing Director of Sood Ventures, the firm he founded for his investment and advisory services practice. He also serves as Venture Advisor to NTT Docomo which currently manages multiple funds for strategic interest to NTT and Docomo. Earlier, Rakesh served as Venture Advisor to Docomo Capital directing the investment activity of Docomo Capital’s $100m fund in mobile/wireless start-ups in N. America, while delivering significant strategic benefits to Docomo. The portfolio of 26 companies accumulated over the past 8 years ranks in the top quartile of returns in the venture capital industry. Recruited as a Partner for Reed Elsevier Ventures, Rakesh Sood previously established the Silicon Valley headquarters for the London- based media company’s strategic venture operation in the US, generating stellar returns for the fund. Prior to joining Reed Elsevier Ventures, Rakesh was a General Partner at Sprout Group in Menlo Park. Prior to his career as a VC, Rakesh was a leading senior equity analyst at Goldman Sachs in New York, and prior to that at Hambrecht & Quist in San Francisco where he did pioneering work in wireless, Internet and software sectors. In senior operating roles prior to becoming an analyst, Rakesh was worldwide director of marketing and business development at AT&T's Personal Communications Systems division, and previously held sales and marketing positions at Hewlett-Packard and Intel. Throughout his career, Rakesh has engaged in several professional organizations, quoted extensively in business and technical publications, and an invited speaker at major industry conferences. Rakesh received a BSEE/CS (with Distinction) from the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi, India; an MSEE from the State University of New York, Stony Brook; and an MBA (Dean's List) in finance from the Wharton School.

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Chris Sporck

Chris Sporck has a diverse experience spanning over several companies and roles in the semiconductor industry focusing on power electronics and battery management. Currently, Chris is Director of the Battery Management Product Line at Monolithic Power Systems (MPS) where he manages the business and leads a global team of over 40 engineers. His team develops high-voltage battery management solutions for renewable energy and E-mobility applications, along with battery charger ICs for consumer and industrial applications.

Chris has had an interest in technology from a very early age - he founded Pinnacle PCs in high school, a custom PC building and troubleshooting business. He attended Cornell University and graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Operations Research and Industrial Engineering in 2010. After graduating in 2010, he started working at startup Summit Microelectronics as a Product Engineer where he focused on automating all the company’s bench validation testing and later becoming a Field Applications Engineer. During this time, to improve his knowledge of power electronics, he pursued a Professional Certificate in Power Electronics specializing in Electrical and Electronics Engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder. Two years later, Qualcomm acquired Summit, where he held various roles including systems engineering, product definition, and leading the battery charger and fuel gauge PMIC system engineering group.

Chris has a strong passion for technology and innovating new IP. He is the lead inventor of parallel charging technology utilized in many phones to create the fastest and most thermally optimized battery charging designs and holds over 20 patents dealing with battery management and DC/DC power conversion. Chris has invested in 12 startups over the past 10 years, with 1 exit (RenovoRX) and 1 failure (Aspire). His two largest investments are with TigerGraph (graph database analytics) and Burrow (direct to consumer furniture).

He looks forward to being an active member of the Band where he hopes to learn more about early stage investing and meet other members. Chris enjoys spending time with his wife (Meagan) and their two boys, Carter (5) and Christian (3). In his spare time, Chris loves to travel, be outdoors, invest, and anything related to fitness and sports

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Rebecca Stafford

Rebecca Stafford is a Managing Director and the CFO/COO at Strada Investment Group, a real estate investment and development firm, where she manages investments on behalf of large institutions; structures and finances joint ventures and programmatic platforms; and ensures governance and compliance within. Prior to joining Strada in 2014, she was a Portfolio Manager of a family office-backed start-up investment fund that acquired portfolios of non-performing loans and developed an in-house technology solution to aid in restructuring into performing assets. (Alas, it did not work!) From 2005 through 2013, Rebecca was an Investment Officer at the University of California pension and endowment funds, where she managed the hedge fund and real estate portfolios, each with a $3B allocation, and sat on the Advisory Boards of portfolio investments. Before joining UC, she was a Vice President at Rosen Consulting Group, a real estate economics research firm headed by UC Berkeley economist Ken Rosen. Rebecca began her career in corporate finance, including work at a fund of hedge funds, a Chilean bank, and in the turnaround consulting group at Arthur Andersen. Rebecca holds an M.A. in economics from Duke University, a B.S. in accounting from the State University of New York at Albany, and is a Certified Public Accountant in the State of New York. She is a current Advisory Board member at the U.S. Green Building Council.

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Phil Strause

Phil Strause has 40 years of management consulting experience focused on strategy and business planning, corporate governance, financial management and operations. He has in-depth expertise in the financial services industry working with commercial banks, investment banks, brokerage firms, insurance companies and other specialized financial institutions. He was a member of the firm’s Financial Services Leadership Team from 1988 through his retirement in 2006. From 1997- 2003, he was Practice Director, Asia Pacific Africa Financial Institutions Practice, for Deloitte Consulting based in Hong Kong. In that capacity, Mr. Strause led Deloitte’s consulting practice to financial services firms in Japan, Greater China, Southeast Asia, Korea, Australia and South Africa, quadrupling the business and integrating the practices across the region. Mr. Strause directed projects throughout Asia including helping to start the retail securities business of a major global brokerage firm in Japan, reengineering the back office functions of one of Korea’s largest banks, working with the People’s Bank of China to develop improved governance processes for the State Owned Commercial banks and developing a more effective organizational structure for a major Provincial Branch of China’s largest bank. He wrote frequently in regional publications, spoke at financial institution conferences across the region and is currently Chairman of the Advisory Committee for the Asian Banker Retail Banking Awards. From 1993-1997, Mr. Strause led Deloitte’s global financial management service line which included Value Based Management, Performance Measurement, Strategic Cost Management and Activity Based Costing, Cash Flow Productivity, Shared Services and Reengineering the Finance Function. From 1983-1992, Mr. Strause was Managing Director of Deloitte Consulting’s San Francisco practice. In 2005 and 2006 Mr. Strause led the planning and implementation of Deloitte Consulting’s Strategy and Operations Advisory Center in Hyderabad, India. The Center is a unique business model in India in that Advisory Center consultants are integrated with US and global consulting teams to offer around the clock research, analysis and solution development services to Deloitte clients in the high tech, telecommunications, health care, life sciences, financial services and manufacturing industries. Mr. Strause is an early stage investor in several Band and non Band companies He is on the Board of several non profits. He is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (BSEE, 1965) and the Harvard Business School (MBA, 1967).

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