Rob Genieser joined Vertex in 2002 as the Managing Director for Vertex Europe and as a Managing Partner in Vertex Israel. Prior to joining Vertex, Mr. Genieser was a Managing Director of Hambrecht & Quist, which he joined in 1996 in their San Francisco office. While in Silicon Valley, he managed the Firm's wireless, optical and communications software practices. In this capacity, he sponsored the Firm's investments into Chromatis (acquired by Lucent), Paragon Software (acquired by Openwave) and Wavtrace (acquired by Harris).
Additionally, Rob executed the IPOs of Portal Software, ONI systems, Corvis, Openwave and INET, amongst others. In the M&A field, Rob assisted VisionTech on its sale to Broadcom, I-compression on its sale to Globespan, Herrmann Technology on its sale to Lucent, Terayon on its acquisition of Telegate and MoreCom on its sale to Liberate.
Shortly after Hambrecht & Quist's merger with JP Morgan at the end of 2000, Mr. Genieser moved to London to run the company's emerging technology practice for Europe and Israel. Earlier in his career, Mr. Genieser worked as a consultant for Bain & Company in San Francisco, where he focused on the telecommunications industry.
Prior to receiving his MBA, he worked for Morgan Stanley in both New York and Hong Kong as a member of the corporate restructuring group. Mr. Genieser received both his AB (cum Laude) and MBA from Harvard University.
Sam Kingsland
Sam Kingsland is a founding member of the Granite Ventures team and has focused his investments in communications and components technologies since the firm's inception. He joined Granite from Hambrecht & Quist Venture Capital.
Sam brings extensive experience working with emerging growth companies to the Granite team. Over Sam's sixteen-year career in the venture business, he has worked with more than 60 venture-backed companies and on more than 110 financings. Although Sam has focused on the communications sector for the past decade, during his career he has worked with early-stage companies in the software, bio-tech, healthcare, and consumer markets. Sam is the team leader managing Granite's relationship with Texas Instruments.
Sam led Granite's investments in DigitalThink (acquired by Convergys), NetBoost (acquired by Intel), Nexabit Networks (acquired by Lucent), Sierra Wireless (NASDAQ: SWIR) and SnapTrack (acquired by Qualcomm). He currently serves on the Boards of Directors for Fulcrum Microsystems, Navini Networks, NetEffect, Top Layer Networks, Venturi Wireless and Zeugma Systems.
Sam Znaimer
Sam Znaimer is a pioneer of the Canadian venture capital scene with over 20 years of hands-on early stage technology investing experience. He joined Ventures West in 1983, and now leads its communications sector investing.
Sam led Ventures West's investments in Convedia (acquired by Radisys), OctigaBay (acquired by Cray), Wavemakers (acquired by Harman International), and Burntsand (TSE). He currently serves as a director of Aegis Mobility, EQO Communications, and Zeugma Systems, and acts as an observer with Belair Networks.
Sam received an A.B. from Harvard University and a M.Sc. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Mike Satterfield
Mike has over twenty five years of company-building experience in the software industry. He is a founding partner of Vancouver-based Yaletown Venture Partners where he focuses on Yaletown's software and communications investments.
Prior to Yaletown, Mike was the co-founder and CEO of two software companies, Simba Technologies and Paradigm Development. Simba developed and marketed software for the enterprise applications and analytics market, and was acquired by CRM vendor Pivotal Corporation. Paradigm provided outsourced product development services to software companies such as Microsoft, Adobe and Symantec.
Mike is active in a number of industry associations and not-for-profits. He is a member of the executive committee of the Vancouver Aquarium, one of Canada's foremost centres for aquatic education, research and conservation, and chairs the scientific advisory board of the Neil Squire Foundation, a Canada-wide organization which uses information technology to empower people with physical disabilities.
John DuBois
John DuBois is an independent director. John has been in the Telecommunications industry for nearly 20 years. He started out as a software engineer developing O/S, Telecommunications software and eventually moved into Sales and Executive Management for both equipment manufacturers and service providers. During his entire career he worked with the largest North American and overseas Telephone companies and has in depth knowledge of their operating environments, organizational issues and business models.
During his tenure at Redback Networks, where he ran North American ILEC sales among other positions, he was considered by Bell Atlantic (now Verizon) and UUNET as a key catalyst for pioneering new service concepts and strong relationships between a small unproven startup company and the service provider super powers. He also developed strong relationships with key executives at Bell South and AT&T.
John started his Telecom career engineer with GTE in the 1980s, worked in sales and sales management for various companies including Telematics (acquired by ECI Telecom), Cascade/Ascend (acquired by Lucent) and Redback Networks. He was also CEO of Netstation in 1997, a national backbone ISP, and CEO of Nx Networks in 2001. Currently, he is heading up an early stage company called Optical Crime Prevention, Inc. (OCP) in the Miami Florida area. OCP is planning on becoming a video storage vaulting service provider focused on the local surveillance and security market.
John holds both a BS in Business Administration and Economics and an MS in the Technology of Management from American University. He held Top Secret security clearance from the U.S. Government (expired 1992) for work in the Pentagon Telecomunications Center and board memberships for various charitable organizations local to the Miami Florida area.