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Board of Directors
Jack CarstenManaging Director, Horizon Ventures
Jack Carsten is a semiconductor industry veteran with 20 years of venture experience. Prior to forming Horizon Ventures in 1999, Jack managed Technology Investments, a seed investment firm in Los Altos, California. The fund focused on the formation of seed stage information technology firms, building their management teams and organizing syndicates of professional investors.
Before founding Technology Investments in 1991, Jack was a General Partner at U.S. Venture Partners in Menlo Park, California - a $750M venture capital partnership managing a broad portfolio of medical, retail and information technology investments. Prior to U.S.V.P., Jack was a Senior Vice President of Intel Corporation who from 1975 to 1987 helped them to grow from a $35M startup to revenue of over $2.5B. Originally hired as Vice President of Sales and Marketing, he was named as the first head of the Microprocessor Group. Subsequently, Jack was named Senior Vice President for the Components Group, responsible for all semiconductor manufacturing and engineering. Prior to Intel, he was a Division Manager at Texas Instruments for their MOS and TTL Divisions. Jack is a founder of the “Band of Angels” investment club and of the Valley Medical Center Foundation. He holds a B.A. degree in Physics from Duke University.
Philip “Flip” GianosPartner, Information Technology, InterWest Partners
Philip “Flip” Gianos has been with InterWest Partners for almost 25 years. With a background in engineering, Gianos has invested in multiple areas of information technology, including semiconductors, computing and networking equipment, and infrastructure and applications software. Currently, Gianos serves on the Board of Directors at Xilinx, a leading Programmable Logic Device Company. Gianos also serves on the advisory board of both Storm Ventures and the Global Semiconductor Alliance, and is a past president of the Western Association of Venture Capitalists.
Prior to joining InterWest Partners, Gianos was with IBM Corporation for eight years in engineering management. He managed both chip design and systems integration for several IBM office automation products.
Gianos earned his MBA from Harvard University and received his MS and BS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. He has one international and two U.S. patents.
Matthew D. HowardPartner, Norwest Venture Partners
Mr. Matthew Howard brings over 20 years of experience in marketing, product management, engineering, business development, and sales in a wide range of technologies to Norwest Venture Partners. In 2006, Matt joined the Forbes Midas List as a top 100 dealmaker.
Matt focuses his efforts on communication and storage systems, embedded systems, semiconductors, security and rich media. He currently serves on the board of MovieBeam, Omneon Video Networks, Reconnex, SpectraLinear and Summit Microelectronics. Previously, Matt was on the board of Airespace (acquired by Cisco Systems), Skystream Networks (acquired by Tandberg Television), Spinnaker Networks (acquired by Network Appliance), Swan Labs (acquired by F5 Networks) and Webstacks (acquired by Extreme Networks). Matt is a board observer with FireEye, TestQuest, Veraz Networks and Yipes. He was a board observer with ZettaCom when it was acquired by IDT and he previously served on the board of the Wireless Communications Alliance (WCA).
Prior to joining the firm in 2000, Matt held a number of senior positions with Cisco’s IOS organization and the Internet Business Unit. He established Cisco’s security and VPN strategy, situated Cisco as the leading firewall appliance manufacturer, and launched the first load-balancing product.
Previously, Matt was vice president of marketing at Vertical Communications, where he focused on voice over IP and launched the first MGCP enabled media gateway. In addition, Matt has held various positions at Digital Equipment Corporation, BDM International, and Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN) Communications Corporation. He began his career as a cryptological analyst with the U.S. Naval Security Group.
Matt holds a bachelor of business administration, with an emphasis in information systems, and a master of science degree in telecommunications management.
Baris KaradoganPartner
Baris Karadogan focuses on investment opportunities in the Internet, new media and semiconductor markets.
Baris joined Com Ventures from U.S. Venture Partners where he was a board member of Minerva Networks, and worked closely with companies such as Podtech, Redline Communications, Aspendos Communications, Dilithium Networks, Maxxan Systems and Ciphertrust.
Prior to U.S. Venture Partners, Baris worked in both engineering and marketing at 3Com/U.S. Robotics, where he helped to develop the company’s networking and cable industry products. His work at U.S.
Robotics resulted in a number of U.S. patents. Fluent in English and Turkish, Baris is advisor to Friends of Anatolia, a nonprofit supporting education in Turkey , and is active in the Turkish-American Community.
Baris earned a BS in Electrical Engineering from Lafayette College , where he graduated summa cum laude. Karadogan also earned an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University and an MBA from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, where he was an Arjay Miller Scholar.
Ilhan RefiogluPresident & Chief Executive Officer, SpectraLinear
Dr. Ilhan Refioglu, founder, president and CEO of SpectraLinear has 35 years of experience in the semiconductor industry. Ilhan has spent more than 25 years as a CEO and at other high level executive positions in the industry and has successfully led both private and public companies.
He has been President and CEO of IMI (International Microcircuits Incorporated) from 1995 to 2000. After the acquisition of IMI by Cypress Semiconductor he ran the timing technology division (the largest division of the company by volume) until 2005 reporting to the President and CEO, T.J. Rodgers. He founded SpectraLinear in 2006. He acquired Cypress’ PC clock division in October 2006, and established SpectraLinear as the largest pure play integrated timing devices company.
Ilhan holds Ph.D. and MSEE degrees in Electrical Engineering. He is married and has two boys.
Greg RichmondVice President of Engineering & Chief Technical Officer, SpectraLinear
Mr. Greg Richmond is Vice President of Engineering and Chief Technical Officer for SpectraLinear and brings over 25 years of integrated circuit design and development experience to the company. He has served as V.P. of Engineering for the timing product lines at Cypress Semiconductor, International Microcircuits Incorporated (IMI), and Integrated Circuit Systems (ICS), during which time he successfully managed the development of over 200 high performance timing products. He has 8 patents issued or pending in the area of integrated timing circuits and holds an MSEE from Stanford University and BSEE from Walla Walla College.
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