Running SolidFire
Dave Wright, Founder and CEO
Dave Wright left Stanford
in 1998 to help start GameSpy Industries, a leader in online
videogame media, technology, and software. While at GameSpy, Dave
led the team that created a backend infrastructure powering
thousands of games and millions of gamers. GameSpy merged with IGN
Entertainment in 2004 to create one of the largest Internet gaming
& entertainment media companies. Dave served as Chief
Architect for IGN and lead technology integration with FIM /
MySpace after IGN was acquired by NewsCorp in 2005.
In 2007 Dave founded Jungle Disk, a pioneer and early leader in
cloud-based storage and backup solutions for consumers and
businesses. Jungle Disk was acquired by leading cloud
provider Rackspace in 2008 and Dave worked closely with the
Rackspace Cloud division to build a cloud platform supporting tens
of thousands of customers. In December 2009 Dave left Rackspace to
start SolidFire.
Jay Prassl, VP of Marketing
Jay
Prassl is leading the marketing efforts at SolidFire. Prior to
SolidFire, Prassl was employee number five at LeftHand Networks,
where he spent the last 10 years breaking new ground in the storage
market with the company's distributed SAN solution. He led multiple
parts of the LeftHand business through its acquisition by HP, and
was most recently responsible for the management of the full
HP/LeftHand product line in Canada, U.S., and Latin America. Prassl
earned a bachelor of science degree from Michigan State
University.
Mark Glasgow, VP of Worldwide Sales
Mark joins SolidFire as the head of worldwide
sales bringing more than 20 years of sales and sales management
experience within the data storage and enterprise computing
markets. Before joining SolidFire, Mark lead sales at Xiotech for
more than 6 years where he developed the sales team world wide and
refocused the company's sales efforts towards performance centric
solutions. Mark helped launch a totaly new storage platform and
drove the sales of that new platform to a compound annual growth of
nearly 80%, delivering over 5,000 units to the market within a 4
year period. In addition to his most recent success, Mark has
also been instrumental in guiding sales teams to successful exits
at Talk2 Technology (acquired by PumaTech) and TenFold Corporation
(acquired by DevonWay).
Daniel Berg, VP of Engineering
Daniel is responsible for the engineering,
development, and quality of all products at SolidFire. He is
focused on expanding SolidFire's core and sustaining engineering
teams while driving excellence in execution, innovation, and
technical strategy.
Daniel joins SolidFire from Avaya where he served as Vice
President of Research and Development. Prior to Avaya he served as
Chief Technology Officer and head of Research and Development at
Skype where he was responsible with developing Skype's full range
of technologies and products. During Daniel's time at Skype he was
based in Europe and recently returned home to Colorado with his
wife and son. Prior to Skype, Daniel spent 15 years at Sun
Microsystems in a variety of engineering and management roles
including being named a Distinguished Engineer at Sun. Prior
to his career at Sun, Daniel held positions at IBM and Honeywell as
well as a few technology related startups. Daniel has also
authored a number of books and papers detailing Java technologies,
concurrent programming and development methodologies and
architecture.
Adam Carter, Director of Product Management
Adam Carter is an expert in storage virtualization
and 10 year veteran of scale-out IP storage systems. Adam has
led product management at LeftHand Networks, HP, and VMware,
bringing revolutionary products to market. Adam pioneered the
industry's first Virtual Storage Appliance (VSA) at LeftHand
Networks and helped establish VMware's VSA certification
category. Adam brings deep product knowledge and broad
experience in the storage ecosystem to SolidFire and heads up all
aspects of product development.
Jim Burglin, Director of Support and Services
Jim Burglin has over 25 years of experience
building world-class product support and services processes,
measurements, and teams capable of scaling in high-growth
environments. He has held key leadership and management positions
in account management, operations, product support, and
professional services. Prior to SolidFire, he built a support and
services team for Scale Computing, a start-up SMB storage company.
His expertise was also instrumental in helping LeftHand grow their
base to over 3000 customers and subsequent acquisition by HP. Prior
to LeftHand, he was instrumental in helping Boulder based
SignalSoft Corporation deploy the first wireless 9-1-1 location
system in the US. He holds a Bachelor of Business Computer
Systems from New Mexico State University.
Ulysses Owen, Director of Software Engineering
Ulysses Owen is passionate about building world
class engineering teams. He brings years of leadership experience
in creating teams from the ground up, hiring key contributors,
driving quality, and ensuring on time delivery. Ulysses was
responsible for leading the management interface team for his
previous distributed data storage company which had over 7,000
customers. With 4 previous start ups under his belt he has been a
key contributor to ensuring the success and rapid growth of these
fledgling enterprises. Ulysses graduated summa cum laude with
a B.S. in computer science, and has held a DOD top secret security
clearance.
Havish Vinnakota, Director of Quality Assurance
Havish Vinnakota oversees all aspects of
SolidFire's quality assurance efforts. He is a Six Sigma certified
professional with a strong track record in technical leadership and
delivery of complex highly available enterprise storage solutions.
In the past 8 years, Havish has held various engineering roles at
LeftHand Networks and HP. Most recently, he was an architect at HP
in their enterprise storage business where he led the quality
efforts to deliver the industry's first bladed SAN solution. He
holds a Masters degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from
the University of Colorado, Boulder and also a Bachelors in
Electrical Engineering from Kakatiya University, India.
Tom Hartzell, Director of Operations
Tom has been leading operations growth engines and
global supply chain partnerships for over 20 years. His expertise
lies in building processes and support teams that reduce cost and
increase profitability. At IBM Tom negotiated and implemented an
Inventory Materials Management Support system for 1800-plus oil rig
drilling operations in the Middle-East that resulted in a cost
savings of $300M a year. As a Naval Officer he automated an
International Air Force supply chain and directed the construction
and operations of their data processing and telecommunications
infrastructure. At Rhythms NetConnections his extended supply
chain team designed, assembled and installed a nationwide telecomm
network of over 1400 sites in 37 cities. Tom has produced
highly organized and very successful Materials Management and
Manufacturing teams at both CompuServe and Schlage Lock by
implementing Lean, JIT and other highly productive concepts in
materials management. Tom brings not only experience, but also a
B.S degree from Penn State and a Masters from the Naval
Postgraduate School.
Dave Cahill, Director of Strategic Alliances
Dave comes to SolidFire with 10 years of experience
in, and around the enterprise storage industry. Prior to SolidFire,
Dave was the founder of Diligence Technology Advisors, a strategy
consulting practice focused on emerging enterprise technologies.
Starting his career at EMC, he was an early member of the Centera
business unit. After EMC, Dave spent 6 years on Wall Street in
analyst and investor capacities. While at RBC Capital Markets, he
was a key contributor on one of Wall Street's top equity research
teams in storage. At SolidFire Dave is charged with heading up the
company's strategic alliance efforts.
Derek Kraus, Director of Finance
Derek brings more than 15 years of financial
management experience to SolidFire across an array of industries -
including computer manufacturing, real estate, online
higher-education, online marketing, and software - where he managed
the finance, HR, operations, legal and administrative functions.
He brings a deep understanding of how to successfully grow
organizations, having grown 3 other firms to as many as 400+
employees. For the past 8 years, he has worked for
venture-backed technology firms and assisted in raising over $15
million in equity. Derek earned a bachelor-of-science degree
in business and technology development from Montana Tech, and
successful completion of the CPA (CPA-inactive status).
