The painting behind me...

As I look forward to the next 10 years, here are my thoughts:

• I have domain expertise on both the business and technology fronts. In my opinion, technology is just an "implementation detail" of a great business plan. When you lose sight of that, the company is in trouble.
• I have the unique ability to leverage the knowledge capital of great people. In particular, I excel at tranforming loosely-formed ideas into winning strategies and products.
• I only want to work with people who embrace the benefits of a knowledge management infrastructure where strategic information is visible and persistent.
• I like small companies because the principals have to get their hands dirty and perform some heavy lifting. The only thing you can hide behind are your results.
• I live in Carlsbad, CA and I think I'm going to stay there.

After trying my hand at venture capital and consulting, I realized that my first love is product development. When Chuck Knuff, Mark Sidell and I re-acquired Agent from Alcatel, it was a dream come true and a chance to persue a business that was more about lifestyle and intellectual challenge than money and greed. Furthermore, Forté is a virtual company that could be operated anywhere in the world.

Providing business strategy, software architecture, and knowledge management to start-ups:

Intelli-Flex  ·  Transformed the company from a telecommunications reseller into a managed services provider. Intelli-Flex provides IP telephony solutions based on the Cisco and Nortel Networks platforms. Wrote the business plan and created their knowledge management infrastructure. Remained on Board of Directors.

Crosspoint Venture Partners  ·  Incubated an Event Management System as part of Crosspoint's eBusiness Services initiative. The idea was to provide trading partners with a universal platform for notification, resolution, and analysis of exceptions. Unfortunately, Q4 2000 was not conducive to funding B2B startups.

ASC Group  ·  Transformed the company from a consulting practice into a life cycle service provider. Living Contracts designs and manages complex umbrella service contracts that range in value from $10M to $100M. Co-authored the business plan and designed the platform architecture.

Cymbal  ·  Refined the business strategy from a technical manpower firm into a professional services firm that specializes in B2B and wireless. Developed an extranet application for managing the recruiting, H1 visa approval and staffing process. Remained on Board of Directors.

Every entrepreneur should take a month of sabbatical for each year in startup mode. I spent quality time with my wife, Ana, and my son, Justin. Ana and I taught mathematics to Justin's kindergarten class. We created HighSlot.com to further our enjoyment of ice hockey. I even shaved about 5 strokes off my golf handicap thanks to Ted Norby at Aviara Golf Academy. Alas, the strokes sometimes re-surface.

For 13 years, I oversaw a brilliant and loyal team of core developers with a passion for collaboration.

1987  ·  Developer and principal architect for Meridian Manager, a network management suite for Nortel and Lucent switching equipment.

1991  ·  Implemented a collaborative infrastructure in Lotus Notes for developing new products. Initially used by development, the infrastructure quickly spread to sales and marketing.

1993  ·  Designed and developed a corporate extranet for the marketing, commerce, distribution and support of the Internet newsreader, Agent. By 1995, Agent had over 2 million registered users. This extranet became the working prototype of our next product, Adanté.

1995  ·  Chief architect of Adanté, a thin client Email Response Management (ERM) system for the enterprise call center. Adanté was first to market with innovators such as Dell Computers, the Los Angeles Times, and General Motors. Adanté is a multi-tiered application based on Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS).

1997  ·  Genesys acquires Forté based on the commercial success of the Adanté product. Oversaw the integration of Adanté with the Genesys Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) suite. Primary inventor on 14 patents in the area of Customer Interaction Networks.

1999  ·  Formulated the business development and technology strategy to transform Genesys from a telephony-centric middleware company into a solutions-oriented Internet company.

Southwestern Books  ·  Sold educational books door-to-door for two summers while working my way through college. Received a Top 50 Salesperson award (from a field of 2000) each year. Member of the 80 hour work week club.

United States Navy  ·  Air Intercept Controller (AIC) aboard the USS Bainbridge. An AIC controls carrier-based fighters (F-14s & F-4s) while they are on an intercept mission. Operated and maintained the Naval Tactical Data System (NTDS), an information and weapons network that provides an electronic map of the battlefield. Received the Navy Achievement award for successfully completing 1000 air intercepts during the Iran hostage crisis.

Disney  ·  IS Project Manager - programmed, integrated and managed the front office and payroll systems while I was a full-time student at Cal State, Fullerton.

Remanco (now Geac)  ·  Designed and co-developed a restaurant food and beverage inventory system that integrated with the Remanco point-of-sale platform.

California State University at Fullerton  ·  Graduated with a B.S. in Information Systems. Received one of three TRW scholarships awarded annually to the school's top IS students.

University of California at San Diego  ·  Additional computer science classes in C and C++.