About the Team

Richard Ling

Board of Directors

Mr. Ling is a serial entrepreneur and investor with over 30 years of experience in building successful technology companies as a founder, CTO, CEO and venture capitalist. Mr. Ling has served as a board member of a dozen companies.

Mr. Ling founded three venture-backed technology start-up companies. ImpulseBuy (data-driven ad targeting) acquired by Inktomi (NASDAQ:INKT); AlterEgo (mobile/cloud-based web transcoding) acquired by Macromedia (NASDAQ:MACR); and MetaLincs (enterprise e-mail search) acquired by Seagate (NASDAQ:STX). These companies collectively raised over $50M in venture capital funding from top-tier venture funds, corporate and angel investors (including Mayfield Fund, Softbank, Canaan Partners, Granite Ventures, Arrowpath (ETrade), Newbury, Yahoo Inc, Interwoven, SRI (Stanford Research Institute), Frank Quatrrone, John Chambers among many others) and returned almost $350M in value to the investors.

Mr. Ling is a Founding General Partner of Rembrandt Venture Partners (RVP), established in 2004 to provide venture capital to early stage technology companies. RVP raised over $300 million under management in three funds that has invested in over 40 companies and has had over a dozen exits including Ironport (Cisco), Convio (IPO), MetaLincs (Seagate), LGC Wireless (ADC), Cavium (IPO), LiveRamp (Acxiom), Good Technology (Motorola), Xactly (IPO), Buysight (AOL) among others. Mr. Ling has also been an angel investor in over 20 companies including CommerceOne, Good Technology, ComScore, eBates, YesMail, Intuitive Surgical, Socializr, UserTesting.com, Atomic Labs, Hims&Hers, Facet Wealth, LEXI, Riptide, SuperWorld, Vectice, Irrigreen, etc. Mr. Ling holds several patents and has been featured in the Wall Street Journal and on the television program Business Today.

Mr. Ling holds a Bachelor of Science in Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley (robotics and control/learning systems focus).

Harsha Agadi

President & CEO, Crawford & Company / Chairman, GHS Holdings, LLC

Since 2016, Agadi has served as the president and chief executive officer of Crawford & Company before previously serving as the interim CEO. Additionally, Agadi currently serves as chairman of GHS Holdings, LLC and on the Board of Directors for Belmond Ltd. and Diversified Foodservice Supply, Inc.

Agadi has over 30 years of experience and has worked in multiple senior leadership roles, including five other CEO terms, throughout his career. His experience varies between food service and franchise companies to Fortune 500 companies. Some of the companies he has worked with include: Little Caesar Enterprises, Inc.; American Express; PepsiCo Inc.; General Foods and Orient Express Hotels. Agadi’s expertise lies in global growth for American companies and allows him the opportunity to travel around the country to speak at conventions, universities and professional associations.

Brett Bonner

Former VP, R&D and Operations Research, The Kroger Co.

Brett Bonner was formerly the Vice President of Research & Development/Operations Research at The Kroger Co., America’s largest grocery retailer. For nearly 14 years, Brett focused on creating sustainable competitive advantage by inventing advanced technologies and developing projects for retail and logistics that individually had at least a $50 million contribution.

Before joining Kroger, Brett served 25 years at Federal Express in various positions, including Technical Fellow, Managing Director of Scanning Technologies, and VP of FedEx Internet Technologies.  During his time at FedEx, he invented and developed many diverse systems and his profit contribution for such systems exceeded $600 million per year.

Brett formerly served on the Zigbee Alliance Board of Directors, the TechPoint Advisory Board and others throughout his industrious career. His FAST Alerts system was featured in Popular Science and on national TV shows, won a 2015 CIO 100 award, and ranked #3 in InfoWorld Elite 100 for QueVision for 2014. He was awarded the 2013 Franz Edelman Laureate for Achievement in Management Science and  2010 Planet Retail Innovator of the Year. Brett is a named inventor on 33 US patents from Federal Express and Kroger.

Cyril Brignone

Former CEO, Arrayent

Cyril Brignone worked for the past 20 years as an entrepreneur, R&D leader and sales executive in the field of IoT and enterprise solutions where he has over 20 patents granted. He is the former CEO of Arrayent, a B2B IoT enterprise platform used by manufacturers including Whirlpool, Sylvania and P&G to launch their smart products.

Cyril sold the business in 2017 to Prodea Systems. Before joining Arrayent, he co-founded Vator.tv, an online portal for emerging startup companies to showcase themselves.

Cyril came to Silicon Valley in 2000 from France to work at Hewlett Packard Laboratories as a Senior

Bill Brown

Former CEO, Matterport

Bill has been CEO of two early-stage start-ups and has also held key operating roles at Motorola Mobility/Google, Canesta (acquired by Microsoft), Touch Revolution (acquired by TPK group), and General Instrument (acquired by Motorola) along with other start-up businesses. Most recently, Bill successfully led Matterport’s launch and growth as CEO, taking the company from pre-product to a dominant SaaS market position with $50M+ run rate within 4 1/2 years of product launch while building a significant data advantage to drive unique AI capabilities.

Bill has diverse industry experience in IoT/connected home, vertical SaaS for enterprise and SMB, AI, XR (AR, MR, VR), immersive 3D media, touch and 3D sensor tech, e-commerce, converged media, and social. Bill received his BS from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania

Jeff Cassis

Former SVP, Global Lighting Systems, Philips

Mr. Cassis was the Senior Vice President, Global Lighting Systems at Philips Lighting (now Signify) from 2012 to 2018 that created and managed the global Professional LED Lighting Systems Business. His portfolio included luminaires, including Philips Hue, electronics, communication devices, application software, controls, cloud and data analytic services.

He previously served as the CEO of Philips Color Kinetics from 2007 to 2012. Color Kinetics was acquired by Philips Lighting in 2007. Prior to joining Color Kinetics in 2006, Mr.Cassis served as President and CEO for Millennial Net, a wireless sensor software company that was acquired by FESTO GmbH.

Mr. Cassis has more than thirty five years of experience in serving the discrete manufacturing, semiconductor and electronics industries and he received a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Connecticut, Master’s degrees in Environmental Engineering and Environmental Science from Yale University, and a M.B.A. from Boston College.

Jim Hunter

Founder/CEO, nCent , Former CTO, Delos

Jim is an accomplished Founder, Speaker, Author/Novelist, Visionary, Entrepreneur (twice exiting into Fortune 500 companies) and Advisor of all things Data, IoT and Tech. Jim lead all Delos’™ technology efforts as Chief Technology Officer, including the continued integration of Delos wellness-based algorithms across technology platforms for residential and commercial environments to help people be well in spaces where they live, work, sleep and play.

Prior to joining Delos, Jim provided oversight for technology, architecture and innovation at Greenwave Systems, led Motorola/Google’s architecture and strategy for driving the future of the smart home and shaped a powerful standards-based platform as the Founder and Chief Architect of 4Home, Inc. Jim is an active contributor to leading tech publications such as TechCrunch and VentureBeat

Karl Jonsson

Sr. Director Product Management, IoT, Belkin International Inc.

Karl has held several executive positions with industry leading companies including Belkin International, Cisco Systems, GreenWave and Tridonic. Karl has a proven track record of innovative and visionary thinking with over 70 filed patents. In 2009 he became a founding member of GreenWave Systems where he pioneered the world’s first IP based smart light bulbs, paving the way for technology leaders like Philips Hue and LIFX. Karl’s smart lighting patents where eventually acquired by Signify.

In 2014 he joined Austrian based Tridonic to spearhead net4more, a visionary IoT solution for commercial lighting, based on Thread and Power over Ethernet (PoE) protocols. Karl co-founded the IoT Ready alliance while at Tridonic that was eventually incorporated under the DIIA and has had strong influence on major standards bodies in the industry including TCLA, ZigBee, Z-Wave, DLNA, IPSO, Fairhair and the Thread Alliance. He holds a M.Sc. in Information Technology, B.Sc. in Electronics Engineering, Electrical Science degree from the Technical College of Reykjavik.

Kurt Robson

Former VP Development / Chief Applications Architect, Oracle

Kurt is Founder and CEO of Modern Logic International, a niche market event management and ticketing application. Kurt continues to do 95% of the programming and system administration and the revenue from this business is funding his angel investments. He is also CTO of IT Capital, which mainly invests in mature software companies. Previously, Kurt was with Oracle Corporation for 16.5 years in various roles helping to design and build the Oracle E-Business Suite (ERP) software. He was also directly responsible for development and product management of other product families within the suite. His final role/title was VP Development/Chief Applications Architect responsible for design and architecture for the applications division, a team of over 5,000 engineers. Prior to Oracle, for 8 years Kurt was with Professional Computer Resources, an ERP software company that was acquired by Computer Associates. He helped build ERP applications for IBM Minicomputers, and later transitioned to consulting, pre-sales, and finally sales roles.

Kurt holds an MBA and a BA from the University of Chicago.

Evert Schaeffer

VP – Head of Europe, APAC and LATAM for Digital Lumens & Encelium | Digital Lumens INC / Managing Director Digital Lumens Europe BV

Evert Schaeffer has over 25 years of experience in International Sales and Global Product Management of smart lighting systems, in both the business to consumer as business to business domain. Currently he is heading the International sales and application engineering teams for Digital Lumens Industrial IoT and Encelium Light Management in Europe, MEA, APAC and LATAM. At Signify he was head of the product management and partnership teams for Philips Hue.

Ted Sergott

EVP, Product Development, PRO Unlimited

Ted is a product & tech visionary leader specializing in software as a service (SaaS).  Over the span of his career he has been the CTO or head of product at 6 companies, most recently at PRO Unlimited Inc,  and has 10 patents.

Mark Skeen

Former VP, Business Development, Johnson Controls (JCI)

Through his work with Johnson Controls, Mark has a deep understanding and expertise in the building controls environment, the business of smart, healthy, and sustainable buildings, and in selling into commercial buildings and organizations across the globe.

Prior to JCI, Mark was the co-founder and VP of Life Safety and Compliance for Qolsys, a Silicon Valley-based technology startup. Standing for “Quality of Life Systems,” Qolsys is a home security, home automation and life safety device company. Qolsys was acquired by JCI in 2020.

Mark Slee

Developer of LX Studio

Mark was employee 30 at Facebook where he worked from 2006-2012 in multiple roles across software engineering and product management.

Mark is the creator of LX Studio, a software package for real-time LED animation, and has created or collaborated on numerous LED artworks, including installations at the offices of Facebook, Dropbox, Asana – and most recently the Tree of Ténéré at Burning Man. In 2013 he founded Heron Arts, an independent art space in SOMA that hosts a variety of exhibitions and creative community events.

Mark is also an avid electronic music DJ and producer, performing regularly in San Francisco clubs since the late-2000s, as well as managing and operating the house and techno record label Manjumasi.

Richard Stephens

President, Cellpoint Systems

Rich has worked in development and manufacturing of technology products at Cellpoint for more than 20 years, and is focused on bringing commercial IoT platforms and hardware from concept to market. Cellpoint started by developing cellular network infrastructure components, and eventually began developing low power radios and sensor systems for early IoT applications. Rich has developed and built a wide range of products including modular wireless sensor platforms, solar power management devices, an IoT combat sport training and gaming platform, retail management platform, and smart building sensor and network infrastructure products.

Matthew Stepka

Former VP, Special Projects, Google

Until recently, Matthew was Vice President, Special Projects at Google, where he led and incubated strategic initiatives, especially mission-driven projects with high social impact. Over nine years with the company, he led efforts ranging from expanding internet access, developing clean energy, strengthening freedom of expression and democracy, innovating in robotics, establishing novel pricing strategies and extending Google’s footprint in emerging markets, especially Africa.

Prior to joining Google, Matthew was Vice President, Pharmacy for drugstore.com, a leading online health and beauty retailer, and Chief Operating Officer for WorldRes, an online hotel reservations network. He was a management consultant with McKinsey & Company for over 5 years. Matthew holds a Juris Doctorate from UCLA School of Law. He has Bachelor of Science degrees in Computer Engineering and Management from Case Western Reserve University. He is currently a Visiting Scholar/ Executive in Residence at UC Berkeley, Haas School of Business.

Suna Taymaz

Former Chief Strategy Officer for AAA Mountain West Group

Suna was previously Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer at AAA Mountain West Group, serving 10 Million Members in the areas of Transportation, Home Care, Insurance and Travel. In her roles at AAA she oversaw Venture Capital and Acquisitions, AAA’s innovation lab, A3Ventures, Corporate Strategy and Information Technology. Prior to AAA, Suna was the Director of Corporate Strategy Development for Pacific Gas & Electric, where she established and operated PG&E’s $250M technology incubation and investment fund to advance California’s renewable energy goals.

Suna received her MBA from the University of California, Irvine and her BS in Finance from Carleton University.

Josh Tretakoff

VP, Partnerships, Just Answer

Joshua Tretakoff has led loyalty and business development efforts for the last 20 years. Over a decade in online and offline electronics retail, he was VP, Account Management for ImpulseBuy Network when it was acquired by Inktomi as part of a $113 million exit.

He went on to co-founded Loyalty Lab, where he worked as EVP Services, until the successful sale to TIBCO. Josh has led business development for $100M+ companies in the local retail and promotions space, and helped hundreds of brands and retailers with their online businesses.

He is currently the VP- Partnerships for JustAnswer, the leader in online professional services, and serves on several boards of innovative companies.