Board of Directors
Abbas El Gamal, Board Member and Founder
David Ladd (Mayfield), Board Member
Elton Sherwin (Ridgewood Capital), Board Member
Ron Yara (Tallwood Venture Capital), Board Member
Chris Adams, Board Member and CEO
Abbas El Gamal
Board Member and Founder
Dr. El Gamal is a professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University and a leading expert in the digital imaging and semiconductor fields. In recent years, he has been one of Silicon Valley's most successful entrepreneurs.
Currently, Dr. El Gamal is the principal investigator of the Stanford Programmable Digital Camera program. Research from the program resulted in the invention of the revolutionary Digital Pixel System® technology, now licensed to Pixim.
Dr. El Gamal previously founded several leading technology companies, including Actel, Silicon Architects (now part of Synopsys), Numerical Technologies, and Lightspeed. He also founded the Research Lab at LSI Logic Corp., which later evolved into that company's Consumer Products Division.
Dr. El Gamal is a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), has co-authored over 100 papers and holds 25 patents.
Additional information on Dr. El Gamal is available here.
David Ladd
General Partner, Mayfield Fund
Board Member
David, a successful former entrepreneur, sits on the boards of Pixim, Casabi, LGC Wireless, LV Sensors, Pure Networks, and Sylantro Systems. David's notable past investments include Orative.
David was an early engineer at ROLM Corporation. After eight years at ROLM, he co-founded voice messaging company Opcom/VMX, which grew to a $100 million publicly held company. In 1994, VMX merged with Octel Communications and David became CTO. After Lucent Technologies acquired Octel in 1997, David joined Mayfield part-time while continuing to help Lucent form spin-out companies based on Bell Labs technology. David joined Mayfield full-time in May 1999.
David holds a B.S. degree in Engineering Physics from U.C. Berkeley and an M.S. in Computer Science from Stevens Institute of Technology.
He is an avid sailor and can be found frequently on his boat in the San Francisco Bay.
Elton B. Sherwin
Senior Managing Director, Ridgewood Capital
Board Member
Prior to founding Ridgewood Capital Palo Alto in 1999, Elton Sherwin established the West Coast office of Motorola Ventures. Elton spent twenty years at IBM and Motorola where his products won numerous awards. He wrote The Silicon Valley Way which is used by entrepreneurs and professors around the world; and has been translated into Chinese, Japanese and Korean.
While in college at UC Berkeley he programmed robotic cameras and then started his career at IBM selling mechanical design tools (CAD systems) to west coast manufacturers including Lockheed and Boeing. The U.S. Patent Office has granted him eight patents.
Elton received his BA from the University of California at Berkeley. He is a member of the Board of Directors of Peregrine Semiconductors, Scintera Networks, Ethertronics and CleverSet
http://www.ridgewoodcapital.com/eltons.htm
Ron Yara
General Partner, Tallwood Venture Capital
Board Member
With his first-hand knowledge of being a successful entrepreneur, Ron has a strong sense of what it takes to build a successful company. This experience allows Ron to ensure that Tallwood makes value-added contributions to its portfolio companies.
Ron co-founded two technology startups, S3 (SBLU) and Chips & Technologies (INTC). He also held various technical and management positions at Intel Corporation, Raytheon Semiconductor, Scientific Microsystems and Data Pathing.
Ron serves on the boards of directors of Axiom Microdevices, Collinear Corporation, H-Stream Wireless and Silicon Clocks.
Ron holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University and an M.S.E.E. from Santa Clara.
http://www.tallwoodvc.com/team/ron_y.html
Chris Adams
Board Member and CEO
Biographical information on Chris Adams is available here.