Vlingo

Dave is President & CEO of Vlingo. He joined Vlingo in 2007 from Nokia, the world's largest mobile phone maker, where he was a General Manager and responsible for leading Nokia's entry into the mobile email market.

Grannan has extensive experience in the mobile and software industries and a proven track record for launching and growing new businesses. Prior to Nokia, Grannan held various executive positions in the wireless and software industries. Early in his career Grannan was part of the communications industry group at Accenture, where he advised new entrants in the PCS market on market entry strategies, and from there he joined Sprint PCS as a General Manager to help launch what became the fastest growing US wireless carrier. Later, Grannan served as President and CEO of Geoworks, a global wireless data software company. Prior to joining Nokia, he was vice president of partners at Openwave.

Grannan started his career in the US Marine Corps where he led a unit responsible for the deployment of spread spectrum wireless position location systems in Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm in Kuwait and Iraq. Dave holds an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley.

Mike is Co-Founder and CTO of Vlingo. Mike has been active in the speech technology world for over twenty years. He started his career as a researcher first at Carnegie Mellon University and then at the Spoken Language Systems group at MIT working on core technology for automatic speech recognition. In 1994, he founded SpeechWorks based on technology that he and others had developed at MIT.

Over the next ten years, Mike and team grew SpeechWorks from a small startup in a new market into the market leader in the now established market for speech enabled call center solutions. SpeechWorks was responsible for many of key innovations in use today in the speech recognition systems deployed throughout the world.

In 2003, SpeechWorks was acquired by ScanSoft (now named Nuance). Mike joined ScanSoft as CTO and oversaw technology integration and development across the product groups. In 2005, Mike left ScanSoft to spend a year as a visiting scientist at MIT before starting Vlingo in the summer of 2006.

Izhar joined Charles River Ventures in 1997. His investment focus is on software, services, and Intellectual Property. He is currently a director of BusRadio, Gridstone Research, iSkoot, July Systems, Vlingo, Optaros, ThinkFire and Virtusa. He is also a member of the Advisory Boards of the Invention Science Fund and the Invention Investment Fund. Previously, he served as a director of Guardent (acquired by VeriSign, Nasdaq: VRSN), iBasis (IPO in 1999, NASDAQ:IBAS), iPhrase (acquired by IBM, NYSE: IBM), Yantra (acquired by Sterling Commerce), Global Food Exchange (acquired by Instill Corporation), Celarix (acquired by GXS) and ThinQ (acquired by Saba Software, Nasdaq: SABA). He also invested in Oberon, which was acquired by OnDisplay (then Nasdaq:ONDS).

Prior to joining Charles River Ventures, Izhar was with Onyx Interactive, an interactive training company based in Tel Aviv where he served as vice president of marketing and business development. Izhar also served as an officer in the Israeli Army for four years prior to Onyx.

Izhar earned an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and an MA in Cognitive Psychology from the University of Tel Aviv in Israel.

Bob joined Sigma Partners in 1995 and has 25 years of experience in the high technology industry. His ability to identify and motivate innovative founding teams has been an essential ingredient of his investment success. Bob regularly leverages his deep operational experience and technology intellect to support the firm's portfolio companies.

Most recently Bob was President & CEO of Epoch Systems, the leading vendor of client-server data management software products. He sold the firm in 1993 to EMC for $141 million. Previously, he was the Founder, President and CEO of SQL Solutions, a leading purveyor of services and tools for the relational database market. Bob sold SQL Solutions to Sybase for stock eventually worth over $100 million. Bob served as an executive officer of Sybase for over two years.

In recent years, Bob has appeared three times on the Forbes' Midas list, a ranking of top venture capitalists. He also appeared on the cover of Business Week in a features story describing how VCs thrive through good and tough times.

Most recently, Jeff served as both the Chief Operating Officer of the Nickelodeon Networks group and the Chief Executive of Nickelodeon Film and Enterprises. The Nickelodeon Networks group was the largest business unit within its parent MTV Networks and was comprised of some of America's best known media brands: Nickelodeon (America's highest rated cable network), Nick@Nite, TV Land and Spike-TV. Under Jeff's leadership, Nickelodeon became the first ever TV brand to build a significant business off air. Nickelodeon Film and Enterprises included divisions operating in the digital media, feature film, video and casual games, consumer products, magazine and book publishing, live theatrical, hotel, restaurant and theme park industries. In less than ten years, Jeff built Nickelodeon into the world's largest digital media business for kids and the third largest licensing business in the world. Today, Nickelodeon is among the globe's most well-known and diverse brands with activities in more than a dozen industries in 167 countries.

Dr. Hassan Ahmed is chairman of the board of Sonus Networks. Hassan successfully lead Sonus as chairman, president and CEO from 1998 until June 2008. During that time he grew Sonus from its startup roots to the global market leader in IP-Voice infrastructure with the world's five largest global operators within its customer base.

Prior to Sonus, Hassan was executive vice president and general manager of the Core Switching division of Ascend Communications, which grew to a $1 billion business under his direction. He served as chief technology officer and vice president of engineering prior to Ascend's acquisition of Cascade Communications another successful global company founded in the Boston area. Previously, Hassan was president and founder of WaveAccess, a pioneer in high-speed wireless network products. He has also led engineering at the DSP Division of Analog Devices, and founded and served as the director of the VLSI Systems Group of Motorola Codex, which brought the world's first VLSI based high speed networked modems to the market and grew to lead market share.

Dr. Ahmed was Associate Professor of Electrical, Computer and Systems Engineering and Associate Professor of Finance at Boston University. There his research focused on nonlinear signal processing and the pricing of options and derivatives with nonlinear models of asset returns. He is the author of over 50 professional publications and six book chapters. During his time at Boston University, he consulted with several global organizations.

In addition to the board of directors of Sonus Networks, Ahmed also serves on the board of Airvana (NASDAQ: AIRV), on the Board of the Massachusetts Networking and Communications Council, on the Board of Overseers of the Boston Museum of Science and on the Advisory Board of the LUMS (Lahore University of Management Sciences) School of Science and Engineering.

Hassan holds a BSEE and MSAE from Carleton University and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford University.