Board of Directors
Nagesh Challa
Founder and Board Chairman
Nagesh Challa is co-founder and Board Chairman of Ecrio. Prior to Ecrio, he founded Nexcom Technology Inc., a Silicon Valley start-up that pioneered the concept of mass storage for mobile devices. Mr. Challa assembled and managed a team of 30 professionals and negotiated several license agreements with large global OEM's. He successfully sold Nexcom to ISSI (Nasdaq:ISSI) in December 1997. During his 20 year career, he held various engineering and management positions with National Semiconductor, Exel Microelectronics and Catalyst Semiconductor. Mr. Challa received a BS in Physics from Andhra University, India, an MS in Physics from Western Michigan University and was a graduate student at Purdue University pursuing his Ph.D. before starting his career in the Silicon Valley. He has been granted 21 patents in semiconductors, software and mobile technologies.
Tad Bogdan
President and Chief Executive Officer
Tad Bogdan is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Ecrio. At Sun, Mr. Bogdan rose through sales, field training and marketing to manage the Javasoft Strategic Accounts team that drove Java's successful move into smart cards and J2ME. More recently, he championed new solutions that would come to dominate their respective markets during his tenure as SVP of Sales at Brodia, an online digital wallet company; SVP of Business Development at Mobileway (later Mobile 365), a mobile messaging and marketing firm acquired in 2006 by Sybase (NYSE: SY); VP Worldwide Sales and Business Development for ActivIdentity (NASDAQ: ACTI); and his latest success as founder/CEO for MultiMode, a communication platform acquired by global messaging provider Clickatell. Mr. Bogdan holds a BS in theoretical mathematics from Tulane University.
Ryu Koriyama
Director, Investor
Ryu Koriyama is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Aplix Corporation (TSE:3727). Aplix enabled one of the most successful wireless content businesses in Japan, and its solutions has been shipped on more than 600,000,000 devices globally, on audio visual equipment and mobile devices from companies in Europe, Korea, US and Greater China. Before founding Aplix, Mr. Koriyama was in charge of the design and development of the double byte character set version of OS/2 at Microsoft in Redmond Washington. Now he is Director and Chairman of iaSolution Inc. since 2008 and Outside Director of G-mode Co., Ltd. (JASDAQ:2333) since 2009. Mr. Koriyama grew up in New York before his family returned to Japan and now lives near Waseda University, where he studied Mechanical Engineering.
Giacomo Marini
Director, Investor
Giacomo Marini is the founder and managing partner of Noventi/CIR Ventures, an early stage, Silicon Valley technology venture capital firm. Noventi's past investments include Bitfone, acquired by Hewlett Packard; Easy Market, acquired by TUI; M7, acquired by BEA Systems; and Sygate, acquired by Symantec. From 1995 to 2001, Marini was a private venture investor, contributing to and advising a portfolio of technology companies, including Teknema, acquired by Axeda, and PCTEL. In 1981 Mr. Marini co-founded Logitech, the world leader in personal peripherals. At Logitech he served first as Vice President of Engineering and most recently as Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. Prior to Logitech, he held technical and management positions with Olivetti and IBM. He is also on the Board of Aurora Biofuels, Minerva Networks, Neato Robotics, PCTEL (NASDAQ: PCTI) and TES Automation. Mr. Marini holds a Laurea Degree cum laude in Computer Science from the University of Pisa, Italy.
Patrice Peyret
Director
French-born Patrice Peyret joined Nexit Ventures as a Partner in June 2005; he also is the co-founder and CEO of Plastyc, a Web-payment provider serving teens. Prior to his roles with Nexit and Plastyc, Mr. Peyret founded Mobileway, a global network for the delivery of SMS, MMS, mobile marketing and more. Mobileway merged with Inphomatch to become Mobile 365, a company sold to Sybase in 2006. Mr. Peyret has also served in senior technical roles for Sun Microsystems and Gemplus, the world's largest smart card vendor. Mr. Peyret studied electrical engineering at the Ecole Centrale de Lyon.
Hide L. Tanigami
Director, Investor
Hide L. Tanigami is Chairman & CEO of Marubun/Arrow USA, LLC. a joint venture between Marubun Corporation, the largest semiconductor distributor in Japan, and Arrow Electronics (1998 to present). From 1985 through 1994 Mr. Tanigami was a co-founder and Vice President of Corporate Development at Catalyst Semiconductor, Inc. He took the company public in 1993 (NASDAQ: CATS). From 1994 through 1998 he was President and CEO of Marubun USA Corporation. From 1997 through 2000, Mr. Tanigami was Chairman of Catalyst Semiconductor (CATS). He has served on the Ecrio board from the company's inception and raised initial funding in 1998. He also has previously served on numerous boards in Silicon Valley, Japan and Taiwan. Mr. Tanigami currently serves on the board of directors of Marubun/Arrow and QuickLogic (NASDAQ QUIK). He was born and raised in Osaka, Japan, and holds an MA degree in applied linguistics from San Francisco State University and a BA degree from Kansai University of Foreign Studies. He became a US citizen in 2002.
Michel Wendell
Director, Investor
Mr. Wendell is a founding partner of Nexit Ventures, a fund focused on mobile internet opportunities. Nexit has raised EUR 100 million to invest primarily in Scandinavian and U.S.-based early stage companies, leveraging Nexit's presence in the 'wireless Mecca' and Silicon Valley. Mr. Wendell has 20 years of broad experience in international building and scaling of Infocom businesses, including high tech operations in Finland, Sweden, France and the U.S. His responsibilities have included executive positions within sales, marketing and business development for companies like Mentor Graphics, OrCAD and Cadence Design Systems. Mr. Wendell also has been involved with several technology companies as an angel investor, Board Director or adviser.