NorthScale Leadership

NorthScale Management Team

• Bob Wiederhold, President and Chief Executive Officer

  Bob has more than 25 years of high technology experience. Until an acquisition by IBM in 2008, Bob served as chairman, CEO, and president of Transitive Corporation, the worldwide leader in cross-platform virtualization with over 20 million users. Previously, he was president and CEO of Tality Corporation, the worldwide leader in electronic design services, whose revenues and size grew to almost $200 million and had 1,500 worldwide employees. Bob held several executive general management positions at Cadence Design Systems, Inc., an electronic design automation company, which he joined in 1985 as an early stage start-up and helped to grow to more than $1.5 billion during his 13 years at the company. Bob also headed High Level Design Systems, a successful electronic design automation start-up that was acquired by Cadence in 1996. Bob has extensive board experience having served on both public (Certicom, HLDS) and private company boards (Snaketech, Tality, Transitive, FanfareGroup).

• James Phillips, Co-Founder and Senior Vice President, Products

  A twenty-five year veteran of the software industry, James Phillips started his career writing software for the Apple II and TRS-80 microcomputer platforms. In 1984, at age 17, he co-founded his first software company, Fifth Generation Systems, which was acquired by Symantec in 1993 forming the foundation of Symantec's PC backup software business. Most recently, James was co-founder and CEO of Akimbi Systems, a venture-backed software company acquired by VMware in 2006. Book-ended by these entrepreneurial successes, James has held executive leadership roles in software engineering, product management, marketing and corporate development at large public companies including Intel, Synopsys and Intuit and with venture-backed software startups including Central Point Software (acquired by Symantec), Ensim and Actional Corporation (acquired by Progress Software). Additionally, James spent two years as a technology investment banker with PaineWebber and Robertson Stephens and Co., delivering M&A advisory services to software companies. James holds a BS in Mathematics and earned his MBA, with honors, from the University of Chicago. He currently serves on the board of directors of Teneros and as an investor in and advisor to a number of privately-held software companies including Delphix, Replay Solutions and Virsto.

• Steve Yen, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer

  Steve is a world-class technologist and successful entrepreneur with a track record of founding and building groundbreaking companies. Prior to NorthScale, Steve co-founded Escalate, and architected its unique, multitenant e-commerce and order management software-as-a-service application. Escalate was acquired by GE Retail Systems in 2004. Previously, Steve co-founded Kiva Software, where he was a key part of the technology team that created the world’s first application server with high-scale deployments at E*Trade, Bank of America and Sabre. Kiva was acquired by Netscape in 1997. Steve is a UC Berkeley Computer Science graduate.

• Dustin Sallings, Co-Founder and Chief Architect

  Dustin is a core committer for memcached, and the creator and maintainer of spymemcached, the high-performance memcached client for Java. Previously, Dustin was half of the Beyond.com performance engineering team and core developer of the Beyond.com ecommerce engine. Later, he was the lead engineer responsible for scaling 2Wire’s device network infrastructure enabling it to manage and monitor millions of distributed devices, while simultaneously supporting the continuous addition of features to the system.

• Sharon Barr, Vice President, Engineering

  Sharon has more than 15 years of experience developing infrastructure software and leading software development teams, having built and managed world-class engineering teams at large companies and start-ups alike. Sharon joined NorthScale from Yahoo, where he was director of engineering, responsible for the development of Yahoo’s Real Time Targeting platform, which processes billions of events daily. Prior to Yahoo, he led the server development team at AppStream, a provider of on-demand software distribution and virtualization (acquired by Symantec). Before AppStream, Sharon drove engineering efforts at early stage start-ups in the areas of messaging and CTI. Sharon holds a degree in Computer Science from Tel Aviv University and an MBA from San Jose State University.

• Melinda Wilken, Vice President, Marketing

  Melinda brings 20 years of enterprise software marketing experience to NorthScale. Previously, she was senior director of product marketing at VMware, where she launched the company’s line of virtualization management and cloud automation solutions. She joined VMware in 2006 when the company acquired Akimbi Systems, where she was vice president of marketing. Prior to Akimbi, Melinda held marketing leadership roles with high technology companies including Informix Software, Brio Technology (acquired by Hyperion), Actional Corporation (acquired by Progress), and Rightworks (acquired by i2). Melinda was also a senior executive with Cunningham Communications where she drove corporate and product PR strategy for enterprise software clients including Adobe Systems and Novell. Melinda holds an MBA from Santa Clara University and a BA from the University of New Mexico.

NorthScale Investors

• Kevin Efrusy, Accel Partners

  Kevin joined Accel in 2003. His background is primarily as an entrepreneur and operating executive. He served two stints as an entrepreneur-in-residence at Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers where he started Corio, an ASP/SaaS pioneer which went public on Nasdaq and was acquired by IBM in 2005. Later he built and served as the first CEO of IronPlanet, an online marketplace for heavy equipment with current annual gross sales over $500M. Prior to KPCB, Kevin worked at Zip2 and Bain & Company. Kevin focuses primarily on two areas for investment: consumer internet services and SaaS/open source software. Within consumer services, he sourced Accel’s investment in Facebook, and led Accel's investments in Groupon, Tumri, RAMP, Metacafe, Medio Systems, and Mig33. Within SaaS/open source software, he led investments or serves on the boards of Xensource (acquired by Citrix for $500M), Genius, SpringSource (acquired by VMWare for $420M), Terracotta, Aptana, and NorthScale. He also served on the board of BBN Technologies (acquired by Raytheon). Kevin has an MSEE, BSEE, and BA in Economics all from Stanford University, and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business where he was an Arjay Miller scholar.

• Paul Santinelli, North Bridge Venture Partners

  Paul Santinelli joined the team at North Bridge Venture Partners in 2005, focusing on investments in open source, software, security, internet applications and infrastructure and communications. Previously, he served as director of Red Hat Network and was responsible for product definition, strategy, engineering, product management, marketing and lifecycle management for the company’s flagship software services offering. Paul also served as the director of global information systems and technology during his tenure at Red Hat. Prior to Red Hat, Paul was founder and CEO of NOCpulse, Inc., a Silicon Valley software startup focused on delivering the next generation enterprise systems management platform (acquired by Red Hat in October 2002). While at NOCpulse, Paul was nominated for the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2002. Before founding NOCpulse, Paul was chief technology officer of Global Center and vice president of technology for Global Crossing, a telecommunications company that built and operated the world’s first independent global fiber optic network. During the past 12 years, Paul has held various engineering, product management and marketing positions in companies including Red Hat, IBM, Lotus Development and Compuware. Prior to North Bridge, Paul served on the advisory boards of Arrowpoint Communications (acquired by Cisco), Inflow, Kiva Software (acquired by Netscape), Mobility.net (acquired by Software.com) and One Secure (acquired by Netscreen). Paul received a BS from Emerson College in Boston.

• Robin Vasan, Mayfield Fund

  Robin is a software entrepreneur and investor. He invests in cloud computing applications, open source, virtualization, and security sectors in enterprise software. Prior to joining Mayfield in 1999, Robin was a founder and/or key member of several successful software startups including CATS Software, Infinity Financial Technology, acquired by SunGard (SDS) and Risk Management Solutions. Robin earned an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and a B.A.S. dual degree in industrial engineering and economics from Stanford University.

NorthScale Advisors

• Frank Artale, Vice President, Business Development, Citrix

  Frank Artale is vice president, business development at Citrix Systems. He has 24 years of experience in the software industry and is responsible for all aspects of Citrix’s business development with software and hardware technology partners. Frank joined Citrix from XenSource where he was responsible for strategic marketing and business development. Prior to XenSource, Artale was a founder and CEO of Consera Software, a management software company, which was acquired by HP in 2004. Before founding Consera, Artale was vice president of the Windows Solutions Group for VERITAS Software, where he oversaw overall product strategy of the Windows targeted solutions. He also held the position of general manager in the Windows 2000 group at Microsoft Corporation, one of the many and varied product management and sales positions he held during his nine-year career with the company. Before joining Microsoft, he held positions as a software engineer and engineering manager building trader workstation and retail brokerage delivery systems first at an IBM/Merrill Lynch joint venture (IMNET) then at FD Consulting. Frank attended Polytechnic Institute of New York as a Board of Trustees Scholar where he studied Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

• Robert Johnson, Director of Engineering, Facebook

  Robert Johnson is Director of Engineering at Facebook, where he leads the software development efforts to cost-effectively scale Facebook’s infrastructure and optimize performance for its many millions of users. During his time with the company, the number of users has expanded by more than fifty-fold and Facebook now handles billions of page views a day. Robert was previously at ActiveVideo Networks where he led the distributed systems and set-top software development teams. He has worked in a wide variety of engineering roles from robotics to embedded systems to web software. He received a B.S. in Engineering and Applied Science from Caltech.

• Cadir Lee, Chief Technology Officer, Zynga

  Cadir oversees the development and innovation of Zynga’s technology platform and large-scale infrastructures. He manages the analytics, network operations, security, and India operations team. Before joining Zynga, he spent 11 years as the CTO of Support.com, an online technology support company he co-founded with Zynga founder Mark Pincus. Prior to that, he spent two years as an engineering consultant for Hewlett Packard. Cadir got his start as an entry-level programmer at SpaceWorks, a technology company in Washington, D.C. Cadir earned his bachelor’s degree in biology and music and graduated with honors and distinction at Stanford University.

• Matt Ocko, Partner, Sevin Rosen Funds

  Matt Ocko has over 25 years of experience as a technology entrepreneur, operating executive, and venture capitalist, during which he has actively helped create over $10 billion in fully realized shareholder value. Matt joined Sevin Rosen Funds in 2008 as a partner after serving as a venture partner, and was previously a partner at VantagePoint Venture Partners and a founding general partner of Softbank Technology Ventures. During his venture capital tenure, he has invested in and served on the boards of a number of successful companies (both IPOs and majoracquisitions) including DataMirror, SupportSoft, Critical Path, Prio, Zip2, Verisign, Alantro, nDSP, UltraDNS, and 3Ware. He also helped start, personally invested in, and advised a number of venture-backed startups, including XenSource (acquired by Citrix), Akimbi (acquired by VMware), Fortinet (IPO), Zynga Game Network, Facebook, MetaWeb, PanoLogic, Market6, Aggregate Knowledge, Playlist Inc., On Ramp Wireless, and Da Vinci Systems. He holds a degree in physics from Yale University.

• Michael Olson, CEO, Cloudera

  Michael Olson was formerly CEO of Sleepycat Software, makers of Berkeley DB, the open source embedded database engine. Mike spent two years at Oracle Corporation as vice president for embedded technologies after Oracle's acquisition of Sleepycat in 2006. Prior to joining Sleepycat, Mike held technical and business roles at database vendors Britton Lee, Illustra Information Technologies and Informix Software. Mike has Bachelors and Masters degrees in Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley.

• InSik Rhee, General Partner, Rembrandt Venture Partners

  In Sik Rhee brings 18 years of experience as an entrepreneur, advisor, and investor across a broad spectrum of technology enabled markets. Prior to joining Rembrandt, In Sik spent two years as a venture partner at Accel Partners. There he helped identify new investment opportunities and served as an advisor or board member to various portfolio companies. As an entrepreneur, In Sik co-founded two successful venture-backed companies: he was a co-founder and chief tactician at Opsware, which was acquired Hewlett Packard for US$1.6 billion in 2007; and co-founder of Kiva Software Corporation, a pioneer of the application server middleware market acquired by Netscape Communications in 1997 for $180 million. In Sik holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley, where he also serves on the Executive Advisory Board for the College of Engineering and the Advisory Board for the Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology.

• Chris K. Wensel, CTO/Founder, Concurrent, Inc.

  Chris Wensel is the founder of Concurrent Inc., and the author of the Cascading data processing open-source project. He also co-founded Scale Unlimited, the first Hadoop and "Big Data" related professional services and training company, where he mentored companies like Sun Microsystems, Apple, and numerous startups in the Bay Area. Chris bootstrapped his first Internet startup in the early 90's, creating an early Web server-side scripting language used by companies in the real estate and insurance verticals. During the late 90's, Chris focused on distributed-agent based systems where he received several patents on distributed computing. From there he became Chief Architect for the fastest growing business unit at Thomson Reuters. Just prior to Concurrent, Chris was a Consulting Architect to TeleAtlas geo-content management group in Belgium.