Directors

David Helfrich brings over 20 years of experience investing in, and building, technology companies. Helfrich helped found and build a number of the most successful and innovative networking companies in the industry—Newbridge Networks, Ascend Communications, Centrum Communications/3Com, and Copper Mountain Networks. He has also played a key role in starting and building two private equity investment funds—Garnett & Helfrich Capital and ComVentures.

In 2003, Helfrich joined forces with Terry Garnett to form Garnett & Helfrich Capital, a private equity investment fund focused on Venture Buyout (VBO) investments. Garnett & Helfrich Capital acquisitions are concentrated in three market segments: software, communications, and Internet. Before founding Garnett & Helfrich Capital he was managing member of ComVentures, an early stage venture capital fund. There he was responsible for investments in a number of innovative startup companies, including:

• CoSine (NASDAQ: COSN.PK)
• Entera (acquired by CacheFlow/Blue Coat Systems, NASDAQ: BCSI)
• IntruVert (acquired by Network Associates, NYSE: NET, now McAfee, NYSE: MFE)
• Internet Photonics (acquired by Ciena, NASDAQ: CIEN)
• P-Cube (acquired by Cisco, NASDAQ: CSCO)
• Kagoor (acquired by Juniper, NASDAQ: JNPR)

Prior to ComVentures, Helfrich was Vice President of Sales and Marketing of Copper Mountain Networks, a leading provider of high performance DSL networking products. He was a member of the founding team and was responsible for developing strategy, defining the market/product requirements, implementing the sales and distribution channels, building the strategic partnerships, and securing customer contracts. His contribution led to a successful IPO and a public market valuation that reached over $5 billion. As a founding executive of Centrum Communications, he successfully positioned the company as the early leader in the multi-protocol Remote Access Server (RAS) market. This led directly to the acquisition of Centrum by 3Com six months after initial venture funding was received. Helfrich remained with 3Com as Vice President, Marketing. Prior to Centrum Communications he was Vice President of Sales and Marketing and a founding team member with Ascend Communications.

Helfrich joined the four founders of Ascend with the specific task of identifying and defining the target market opportunity, specifying the products to build, setting up sales and distribution channels and generating revenues. These efforts led to a successful IPO, a billion dollars in annual revenues, and ultimately the acquisition of Ascend for $24B by Lucent. Prior to joining Ascend, Helfrich was Assistant Vice President of Marketing at Newbridge Networks, Inc., responsible for the flagship products (MainStreet 3600, 3645, and 3612) that generated over 70 percent of company revenues. He was one of the first 20 employees hired and played an active role in promoting the company and its products and growing revenues at an unprecedented pace in the networking industry. Newbridge completed its IPO roughly three years after formation and grew revenues to over $1 billion before it was acquired for $5 billion by Alcatel. Prior to Newbridge Helfrich held various sales and marketing positions with Motorola (Codex Division) and Infotron Systems.

David holds an MBA degree from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) and a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from California State University.

Terry Garnett has been on the operating side of companies for about 15 years. From 1990 to 1994, he worked with Oracle Corporation where he reported to Larry Ellison. As part of the Managing Committee, he held the positions of Senior Vice President, New Media Division, and Senior Vice President, Worldwide Marketing and Business Development.

Garnett has actively participated in the founding and building of several startup enterprise software companies, including CrossWorlds, and Lightyear. Previously he served as a consultant in the Electronics Practice at McKinsey & Company and held management positions with Tandem Computers, which has since merged with Compaq and is now a part of HP.

From 1995 to 2003, Garnett was at Venrock, both as a venture partner and as a general partner. Many of the deals he has worked on have either gone public or been acquired. During his tenure at Venrock, he has led early stage financings and served on the boards of:

• New Era of Networks, acquired by Sybase (NASDAQ: (NASDAQ: NEON / SY)
• Niku (NASDAQ: NIKU)
• WhoWhere? (acquired by Lycos)
• CrossWorlds Software (NASDAQ: CWLD, acquired by IBM)
• Neoforma (NASDAQ: NEOF)
• Netobjects (NASDAQ: NETO.PK)

In addition, he was an early stage personal investor in Siebel Systems, acquired by Oracle (NASDAQ: SEBL / ORCL) and Checkpoint Software (NYSE: CHKP).

During 2001, Forbes magazine recognized Garnett for his venture capital contributions by placing him 22nd on their Midas list of dealmakers.

He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with a bachelor’s degree, and received his MBA from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business.

Vikram Mehta brings 20 years of global experience in the technology industry and has been at the helm of the company since its inception. Under his leadership BLADE Network Technologies has become the industry’s #1 provider of blade server switch solutions. He co-founded Nortel’s Blade Server Switch Business (BSSBU) in 2002 and led the business through June 2005. Under his leadership, BSSBU partnered with the world’s largest suppliers of blade server systems—IBM and HP—and became one of Nortel’s fastest growing businesses.

In July 2005, Vikram joined Garnett & Helfrich Capital as CEO-in-Residence and brokered the alliance between Nortel and Garnett & Helfrich Capital to spin out BSSBU and establish it as an independent company.

Vikram came to Nortel through its acquisition of Alteon Web Systems, the leading provider of Web & application switches, in 2000. At Alteon, he led the company’s strategic alliances and laid the foundation for what would later become BSSBU.

Prior to Alteon, he served as Vice President of Marketing at Ensim, a leading supplier of service enablement and automation software for hosted IP and application services.

Before Ensim, Vikram spent 12 years at HP in various leadership and executive positions across the company’s diverse operations in India, Singapore, Australia, Hong Kong, and the US. His last position at HP was GM, Enterprise Servers, North America Region. Vikram is an electrical engineer from the Birla Institute of Technology, Ranchi, India. 

George Riedel

Ford Tamer, Ph.D., is an operating partner at Khosla Ventures. Prior to that, Dr. Tamer was senior vice president and general manager at Broadcom where he led the growth of the Enterprise Networking Group four fold, to over one billion dollars.

Dr. Tamer co-founded and served as the president and chief executive officer of Agere, Inc., a semiconductor manufacturer, until it was acquired by Lucent Microelectronics. Following the acquisition, he served as vice president at Lucent’s Agere Systems business unit. Prior to founding Agere, he was part of the founding executive teams at Dazel Corporation (which was acquired by Hewlett-Packard) and at MegaKnowledge (which was acquired by IntelliCorp).

Dr. Tamer received an M.S. and a Ph.D. in Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He serves as Director on the boards of eASIC, Kaai, Ecomotors, PAX Streamline, Soraa, and Topanga.

Hajime Fukuzawa