Board of Directors
W. M. Coughran, Jr. — Senior Vice President
of Engineering, Google
Bill is responsible for large-scale distributed computing programs underlying
Google's products. Bill joined Google in early 2003 where he began working
with the web crawling, storage and other systems’ teams. During
his more than 20-year career in computing, Bill has been involved with
embedded software for networking systems, security system products,
and computational science and engineering. Prior to Google, Bill co-founded
and served as CEO and in other executive roles at Entrisphere in Silicon
Valley. Prior to that, he worked at Bell Labs and headed up the Computing
Sciences Research Center, where C, C++, Unix, Plan 9, and Inferno were
created.
Bill is an author of more than 50 publications and has served on several
editorial, conference boards, and technical advisory committees. In
addition, he has held adjunct and visiting positions at Stanford, the
ETH, and Duke Universities.
Bill holds an MS and Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University
as well as a BS and a MS in mathematics from Caltech.
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John Dillon — Chief Executive Officer, Engine Yard
John Dillon is chief executive officer of Engine Yard, the leader in Ruby on Rails automation and management technologies. From 2002, John served as CEO for Navis, LLC, a private company, specializing in software systems for operating large Marine Container Terminals and distribution centers. Prior to Navis, Dillon was the CEO for salesforce.com, the widely recognized online salesforce automation and CRM solutions provider. Joining salesforce.com in 1999 shortly after it was founded, Dillon pioneered the "software-as-a-service" business model, laying the foundation for the company's successful IPO in 2004.
Previously, Dillon was CEO for Hyperion Solutions, a leading vendor of enterprise software for business reporting, analysis and planning. He joined Hyperion through its acquisition of Arbor Software, where Dillon served as CEO. Earlier in his career, he held management positions in sales and engineering for Oracle Corporation and EDS.
Dillon holds a BS in Engineering from the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis and an MBA from Golden Gate University. He served on active duty in the United States Navy as an officer in the nuclear submarine service and retired as a commander.
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Tom Dyal— Founding Partner, Redpoint Ventures
Tom Dyal is a founding partner of Redpoint Ventures. Prior to founding Redpoint, Tom was a general partner with IVP, a firm he joined in 1997. Tom focuses on infrastructure investments, including software, systems and components for the communications, datacenter and wireless sectors. Tom was a Director or actively involved in such companies as TopSpin Communications (acquired by Cisco), TiMetra Networks (acquired by Alcatel), StratumOne Communications (acquired by Cisco), Growth Networks (acquired by Cisco), Shasta Networks (acquired by Nortel), Vivace Networks (acquired by Tellabs), Netcore Systems (acquired by Tellabs), Santera Systems (acquired by Tekelec) and Velio Communications (acquired by LSI Logic). Currently, he is leading the firm's investments in Clearwell Systems, Cortina Systems, Kazeon Systems and Wichorus.
Prior to joining the venture business, Tom spent ten years in operating roles in the communications and networking industry. He worked in product management at Bay Networks, where he was responsible for its network management application business. Tom began his career as a systems engineer with AT&T Bell Laboratories, where he held various system engineering and management positions in the areas of wide-area networking products and services.
Tom is the President of the Western Association of Venture Capitalists (WAVC). He holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.
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Jim Goetz — Partner, Sequoia Capital
Jim Goetz, partner at Sequoia Capital, focuses on systems and software investments. Prior to joining Sequoia Capital in 2004, Jim served as a General Partner at Accel Partners where he led the investments in Entrisphere (ERIC), Peribit (JNPR), RGB, and Rhapsody (BRCD) and was part of the team responsible for BroadJump (MOTV), Timetra (ALA) and Topspin (CSCO).
Earlier, Jim was a Founder of VitalSigns (LU) where he went on to serve as VP/GM of the VitalSoft division of Lucent. Prior to VitalSigns, Jim was the Vice President of Network Management for Bay Networks. Prior to Bay and Synoptics, he held various product and marketing positions at AT&T, AT&T Bell Labs, and Digital Equipment.
Jim has a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Cincinnati and an MS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.
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Aaref A. Hilaly — President and Chief
Executive Officer, Clearwell Systems
Aaref brings extensive technology, entrepreneurial management, and Fortune
500 consulting expertise to his position. Prior to Clearwell, he was
Co-Founder, President and CEO of CenterRun, which he led from inception
in 2000 to its acquisition by Sun Microsystems for $66 million in August
2003. CenterRun was a leading provider of application provisioning software
and today forms the basis of Sun's data center automation product suite.
Prior to co-founding CenterRun, he worked in corporate and business
development at Excite@Home Networks, which at that time was one of the
largest internet companies. He joined Excite@Home from The Boston Consulting
Group (BCG), a global management consulting company. At BCG, Aaref led
projects advising Fortune 500 companies on a variety of sales, marketing
and product development issues, with particular focus in the software
and telecommunications industries.
Aaref earned an MBA from Harvard Business School with high distinction
as a Baker Scholar. He holds a BA Honor’s degree from Oxford University,
and a Master’s degree from McGill University, where he was awarded
the Arthur Tagge Fellowship.
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Venkat Rangan — Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer, Clearwell Systems
Venkat has more than 23 years of enterprise software development experience.
Prior to founding Clearwell Systems, he served as Vice President, Technology
with Rhapsody Networks Inc. After its acquisition by Brocade Communications,
he continued as Director of its award-winning Fabric Application Platform.
Prior to Rhapsody, Venkat was Vice President and Chief Architect at
VitalSigns Software, and was responsible for the architecture of VitalSuite,
an enterprise application and network performance management solution.
He continued in this role at Lucent Technologies, as a result of the
acquisition of VitalSign Software. Venkat also served as a lead Program
Manager at Microsoft, responsible for WEBM, WMI and CIM technologies
of Microsoft, and as an R&D Manager at Hewlett Packard’s NetMetrix
division, after the acquisition of Metrix Network Systems. Additionally,
he developed PC NFS communications stack for Sun Microsystems, and was
a member of Wang Laboratories Advanced Technologies team.
Venkat obtained his Master’s degree in Computer Science from
the University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida, and an undergraduate
degree in Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras,
India.
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