Board of Directors
Abbas El Gamal, Board Member and Founder
David Ladd (Mayfield), Board Member
Elton Sherwin (Ridgewood Capital), Board Member
Dado Banatao (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
Elton Sherwin is a Senior Managing Director of Ridgewood Capital and founded the Ridgewood Capital Palo Alto office in 1999. Prior to joining Ridgewood, Mr. Sherwin established the West Coast office of Motorola Ventures. Earlier in his career, Mr. Sherwin spent twenty years at IBM and Motorola where the products he developed won numerous awards. The U.S. patent Office has granted him eight patents. Mr. Sherwin is currently working on his second book, Addicted to Energy-How to Save our Economy and Our Climate. His first book, The Silicon Valley Way, is used by entrepreneurs and university programs around the world. Mr. Sherwin received a BA from the University of California at Berkeley.
Dado Banatao
Managing Partner and Founder, Tallwood Venture Capital
Board Member
Dado Banatao is the managing partner of Tallwood Venture Capital, a
venture capital firm in Silicon Valley with $500M+ under management.
With his past experiences as an entrepreneur, Dado provides Tallwood
with a unique perspective in technology investments. Tallwood invests in
unique and hard-to-do semiconductor technology solutions for computing,
communication, and consumer platforms
Prior to forming Tallwood, Dado was a venture partner at the Mayfield
Fund. He co-founded three technology startups: S3 (SBLU), Chips &
Technologies (INTC) and Mostron. He also held positions in engineering
and general management at National Semiconductor, Seeq Technologies,
Intersil and Commodore International. Dado pioneered the PC chip set and
graphics acceleration architecture that continue to be two of the
foundation technologies in every PC today. As an engineer, he is
credited with developing several key semiconductor technologies and is
regarded as a Silicon Valley visionary.
Dado holds a B.S.E.E., cum laude, from the Mapua Institute of Technology
in the Philippines and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford
University.
http://www.tallwoodvc.com/team/dado_b.html
Chris Adams
Board Member and CEO
Biographical information on Chris Adams is available here.
