Board of Advisors

    Advisors

    Adi Pundak-Mintz

    General Partner, Gemini Israel Funds

    Adi is General Partner of Gemini, with $700 million under management and recognized as one of the leading VC firms in the world. Since joining Gemini in 1999, Adi has specialized in seed investments in the areas of enterprise IT software and systems, and financial software. He was the first VC in Itemfield, sold to Informatica (NASDAQ: INFA), Diligent sold to IBM, and Traiana sold to ICAP. Some of the world’s leading VCs joined Adi in investments including Sequoia, Accel, Foundation, Matrix, Battery and Lightspeed. Adi was also an investor and interim CEO of Sphera, which was sold to Parallels. Adi sits on the boards of a number of Gemini portfolio companies including dbMotion, IT Structures, Neocleus, Metrolight, and OpTier.

    Adi is a graduate of the INSEAD MBA program. He holds two degrees from Ohio State University, a BSc with honors in Electrical Engineering and a BA with distinction in Mathematics. He studied for over two years towards a M.Sc. in vision-computer science at the Weizmann Institute . Adi is a frequent speaker in Israel and Europe on VC and high tech topics. Adi was chosen by Yale University as a Yale World Fellow.

     

    Ernest H. Ruehl, Jr.

    Managing Director of Credit Suisse in the Technology Group of the Investment Banking Department
    Ernie joined Credit Suisse First Boston in 2002 after working at Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers. He has worked on a broad range of financing and M&A transactions for companies in the semiconductor industry including Intel, Infineon, STMicroelectronics, Analog Devices, Qualcomm, Marvell Technology, AMD, Spansion, Conexant, LG Semiconductor, LSI Logic, PMC-Sierra, Vitesse Semiconductor, Atmel, Cypress Semiconductor, International Rectifier, Mellanox Technologies, Entropic Communications, Mindspeed Technologies, PortalPlayer, SiRF Technology, Level One, C-Cube Microsystems, Integrated Device Technology, On Semiconductor, Maker Communications, S3, Brooktree, Microtune, ASE Inc., ASE Test, Winbond, Applied Materials, KLA-Tencor, Tencor Instruments, Teradyne, Etec Systems, PRI Automation, Photon Dynamics and Advanced Energy Systems.

    Ernie graduated from Princeton University and received an M.B.A. from Stanford University.

    Jeff Tarr

    President and Chief Operating Officer, IHS Inc.

    Jeff Tarr is president and chief operating officer of HIS (NYSE: IHS), a multi-billion dollar market cap, 3,800 employee company that provides information products and services in energy, product lifecycle, security and environment. Prior to joining IHS, Jeff was chairman and CEO of Hoover’s, a publicly traded business information service provider, where he led the turnaround and sale of the company to Dun & Bradstreet. After successfully completing the acquisition, he was retained by D&B as president of the new subsidiary. Jeff began his career with Bain & Company. Later, he was a vice president and general manager at U S WEST, where he served on the executive team of the $1.5 billion revenue-producing yellow pages publishing subsidiary (now Dex Media, a division of R.H. Donnelley). In that role, he spearheaded the creation of the company’s leading Internet yellow pages business.


    Jeff received his bachelor’s degree in public and international affairs from Princeton University and his master’s degree in business administration from Stanford University.

     

    Jim Gerber

    Director of Business Development, Google

    Jim is Director of Strategic Partnerships with a focus on Google's top 40 media and publishing partnerships, covering multiple Google products. Previously, Jim was Director of Content Partnerships for Google, having spent over 5 years recruiting publishers (book, journal, newspaper, magazine) to have more of their content indexed in Google's various products. Jim has over 20 years of sales, business development and product marketing experience in technology related businesses, including as VP of Business Development of Ashford.com, a leading online luxury goods e-tailer, as well as sales management at customer relationship management software company, Clarify.


    Jim received a B.S. from the University of California at Berkeley and his M.B.A. from Stanford University.

    Ezequiel Steiner

    CEO, Acumatica

    Ezequiel is CEO of Acumatica, a provider of an integrated set of web-based accounting, customer relationship management, content management, and business management software designed to improve the productivity of medium sized organizations. Prior to joining Acumatica, Ezequiel was the Senior VP of the corporate and business development team at Parallels, where he helped the company grow from a start-up phase to a leader in the virtualization and automation software market. Prior to Parallels, he spent several years in sales and marketing management positions at IBM, where he was awarded the IBM Role Model Award and was instrumental in the successful displacement of IBM competitors from major accounts. Previously, he was a consultant for General Electric, and worked for Xerox and Direct S.A.

     

    Ezequiel holds a B.Sc in Computer Science from the University of Buenos Aires and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

     

    Kurt Daniel

    Senior VP of Marketing and Online, Parallels (former)

    Kurt has significant experience in managing high growth technology companies, most recently serving as senior vice president of virtualization, automation and web hosting software provider Parallels (www.parallels.com). During his five years with Parallels, Kurt held many managerial positions, leading the company's online business unit, worldwide marketing, business development, and platform integration. Before Parallels, Kurt was a senior manager at Microsoft, where he oversaw a business and marketing team for the SQL Server product unit. He began his career as a general management consultant at A.T. Kearney, , working with clients in the high tech, telecom, and manufacturing sectors.

     

    Kurt holds a BS in economics from the University of Virginia and an MBA from Harvard University.

     

    Neil Hirshman

    Partner, Kirkland & Ellis, LLP

    Neil is a Partner at this global 1,500 partner law firm. Neil’s practice is focused on intellectual property and technology-related transactions, including outsourcing (business process and information technology), software development, software, data, trademark, patent and technology licensing, telecommunications, international franchising, commercial agreements (supply, distribution, development) and strategic alliances. Neil was named a leading lawyer in Business Process Outsourcing and Technology & IT Outsourcing in Chambers USA, America’s Leading Lawyers for Business in 2007-2009. The International Association of Outsourcing Professionals named Neil its Member of the Year at the 2008 Outsourcing World Summit. In addition to his work with clients, Neil frequently speaks at conferences and seminars on the subject of outsourcing and intellectual property and technology issues.


    Neil earned a B.S.E.E. from the University of Illinois and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.