Board of DirectorsAkros Silicon’s board of directors has extensive experience in building high-growth companies that deliver industry-leading products.
Sandesh is a Partner and CFO at Bay. Prior, Sandesh was with TeleSoft Partners, where he co-led investments in Aarohi Communications (acquired by Emulex), Amberwave Systems, Redclover Networks, Sierra Design Automation (acquired by Mentor Graphics), Validity Sensors, Xambala and Xpedion Design Systems (acquired by Agilent Technologies). He was also associated with Ikanos Communications (Nasdaq: IKAN), Lara Networks (acquired by Cypress Semiconductor), Catamaran (acquired by Infineon) and Empowertel (acquired by IP Unity). Before TeleSoft, Sandesh was at Malleable Technologies (acquired by PMC-Sierra), an early stage startup developing a VoIP chipset. There, he had a variety of roles from design engineering to product marketing. Prior, Sandesh was at MIPS/Silicon Graphics, where he was involved in developing next-generation computing architectures and microprocessors. He has also spent time at Integrated Device Technologies (IDT), Cirrus Logic and Tandem Computers (acquired by HP). Education back to top
Pascal Levensohn has been a finance professional since 1981 and a venture capitalist since 1996, when he founded Levensohn Venture Partners (“LVP”) in San Francisco. He focuses on investing in early stage software, semiconductor, and communications companies that are experiencing revenue acceleration. Mr. Levensohn founded and chairs the venture capital industry Working Group on Director Accountability and Board Effectiveness and has published numerous articles on venture capital trends with a particular emphasis on best corporate governance practices in the boardroom. He received a BA in Government from Harvard University, is a graduate of the Lawrenceville School, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Mr. Levensohn also serves on the boards of Consolidated IP Holdings, Reconnex, Ubicom, and Veraz Networks. back to top
Mr. Madavi has over 20 years of executive-level experience in analog, mixed-signal, and DSP Integrated circuit semiconductor products. Currently, Mr. Madavi is the President of SPM Capital, a private investment firm focusing on the semiconductor industry. Previously, he managed a number of high-technology companies including as Chairman, President and CEO of Burr-Brown Corporation, a provider of high-performance analog and mixed-signal ICs; as Director, President and Chief Operating Officer of JDS Uniphase: and as SBE Senior Vice President of the high-performance analog business sector of Texas Instruments. In addition, Mr. Madavi managed other businesses as President of Raytheon Semiconductor and Vice President and General Manager of Honeywell's Signal Processing Technologies. His other employment includes engineering and marketing positions with General Electric and Analog Devices. Mr. Madavi holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and a M.S in Computer Science, both from Stevens Institute of Technology, as well as an M.B.A. in Finance from UCLA. back to top
Christopher Rust joined USVP as a General Partner in November 2004. At USVP, Chris focuses on early-stage investments in component, software and systems for consumer and networking applications. He currently serves on the Board of Mahi Networks and the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA). Chris joined USVP from Mahi Networks, where he held the position of President and CEO since November of 2001. Chris co-founded Mahi in September of 1999 as an incubated seed investment, then joined the company on a full-time basis in November 2001 and successfully led the company through the networking equipment sector collapse. Prior to Mahi, Chris spent over four years at Sequoia Capital, with two years as an associate and two years as a partner. Chris was instrumental in funding 19 early-stage start-ups focused on components, software, and systems for enterprise and carrier networking applications. Chris served on the boards of Afara WebSystems, Mahi Networks, MEMX, Nexsi Systems, Santur, SwitchOn Networks, Turin Networks, and VxTel. He also sourced and led Sequoia's investments in Mellanox, Onetta, and Syndesis. Chris was an active Board Observer to Abrizio, Avanex, Nightfire, Santera, Springbank, and Telera/Callnet. Before entering the early-stage venture capital community, Chris spent 11 years in engineering, technical marketing, and product management positions at Carrier Access Corporation (NASDAQ CACS), Sourcecom (acquired by ACT Networks), US WEST Advanced Technologies, and MITRE Corporation. He holds a B.S. and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering with honors from the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, and an M.S. in Telecommunications Engineering, as well as an M.S. in Engineering Management, each with honors from the University of Colorado at Boulder. back to top Lee Stoian, Director A well-recognized executive and technologist, Lee Stoian has over 35 years of diversified business, management and engineering experience in high-tech start-up companies, as well as large corporations. Most recently, Mr. Stoian served as General Partner of Phoenix Business Partners, a transition management consulting service firm. He also served as Interim CEO of H-Stream Wireless, Inc., a fabless semiconductor start-up focused on wireless PAN market, and Interim CEO of Axiom Microdevices, Inc., a fabless semiconductor start-up focused on cellular telephony market. Prior to this, he served as President and CEO of BitBlitz Communications, Inc. From July 2000 to April 2003, he served as Vice President of Engineering for Intersil Corporation. From March 1997 to July 2000, Mr. Stoian served as President and CEO of SiPCore, Inc., a mixed-signal intellectual solutions provider. Prior to this, Mr. Stoian held various executive, senior technical management and senior technical positions at Arithmos Inc., National Semiconductor Corporation, and Motorola Inc. Mr. Stoian holds an M.S.E.E. degree from the Polytechnic Institute of Bucharest, Romania, and is a graduate of the Executive Marketing Program for Technology-Based Businesses from the University of Western Ontario, Canada. Mr. Stoian serves on the Board of Directors and/or Technical Advisory Board of several fabless semiconductor start-up companies. back to top
Mr. Crepin has also served as President, COO and Director of Metalink Ltd. since March 1999. Under his leadership, Metalink completed its IPO in 1999 and a Secondary Offering in March 2000. Prior to that, he held various Vice President positions at Level One Communications Inc., including VP Marketing and Sales, Business Development and M&A as well as Divisional GM. Before that, Mr. Crepin served as Director of Strategic Planning for Information Communications at LSI Logic, and Director of Telecom at National Semiconductor Corp. Mr. Crepin holds a B.Sc. in Mathematics from Grenoble University and an M.B.A. from the University of Paris. back to top
Mr. Ghoshal was previously Chief Operating Officer at Calpont Corp., a development-stage company specializing in hardware database systems, where he was responsible for engineering, operations, worldwide sales, product marketing and applications support. At Calpont, he engaged key alpha development partners such as FedEx, Acxiom, NCR/Teradata and Business Objects. Prior to Calpont, he was Vice President of Engineering of Agere Inc. in Austin, TX. Agere Inc. was acquired by Lucent in 2000. Mr. Ghoshal was instrumental in delivering the industry’s first 2.5/10Gigabit/s Network Processor on TSMC 0.13u process. Before Agere, he worked for 13 years at Level One Communications, where he served as Director of Engineering of the WAN Access Division. Mr. Ghoshal has 21 years of experience and holds an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of 7 patents. back to top
Irwin Federman, who joined USVP as a General Partner in April 1990, was President and CEO of Monolithic Memories, Inc. from 1978 to 1987. MMI was a startling turnaround. Under Irwin's leadership, the Company grew from virtual bankruptcy to $250 million in revenues during his nine-year tenure as CEO. After becoming a public company, MMI merged with AMD, of which Irwin became Vice Chairman. Irwin was also two-term Chairman of the Semiconductor Industry Association, has served on the Board of Directors of the National Venture Capital Association and served two terms on the Dean's Advisory Board of Santa Clara University. As CEO at Monolithic Memories, Irwin initiated MMI investments in such highly successful venture capital start-ups as Altera, Cypress Semiconductor and Xilinx. As a professional venture capitalist, Irwin was a founding or lead investor in Blue Martini, Check Point Software Technologies, Centillium Communications, Crescendo Communications, MMC Networks, NeoMagic, Netro, Nuance Communications, QuickLogic, SanDisk, and TelCom Semiconductor. Irwin has been the founding or lead investor in a number of high-potential, high-profile early-stage venture capital investments, including BeVocal, ON24, and Mellanox, among others. He has been the recipient of the Anti-Defamation League's Torch of Liberty Award and the Brotherhood Award from the National Conference of Community and Justice. In 2004, Irwin was inducted into Junior Achievement's Silicon Valley Hall of Fame. Irwin received a B.S. in Economics from Brooklyn College and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Engineering Science from Santa Clara University. back to top
Steve Reale joined LVP in October 2000 and is focused on enterprise software, communications and semiconductor technologies. He is also actively researching the clean-tech investment space. Steve joined LVP from ZuluSports.com, an Internet-based adventure sports portal, where he was an early employee and Director of Finance. Prior to ZuluSports, Steve held a variety of equity research positions at Robertson Stephens, Van Kasper & Company and JP Morgan, covering a broad range of industries including outsourced financial processors, business services, environmental technologies and services, and retailing. Since joining LVP, Steve has done significant project work for numerous LVP portfolio companies. He has often led or assisted projects in business development, product marketing, strategic direction and financial exercises. Steve currently serves as a board member at Consolidated IP Holdings (CIPH) and as an unofficial board observer at Akros Silicon, BigFix, BroadLogic, Capella, Levanta, and Ubicom. Steve is a graduate of Middlebury College, where he received a BA in International Politics/Economics and Japanese. He is a Chartered Financial Analyst. back to top |
