Philippe Bouissou, Ph.D.

With 29 years of experience in Silicon Valley, Philippe has held CEO and executive positions in several companies. As a Venture Capitalist, he successfully invested $43M and generated double-digit IRR. He led dozens of management-consulting projects and served on the board of 14 companies.

Prior to Blue Dots, Philippe co-founded and was Executive Chairman of evenVoice, a mobile real-time consumer empowerment company and Executive Board Member of Pave, a peer-to-peer funding platform for Millennials.

For over half a decade, Philippe co-managed the Milestone Group, a management consulting firm serving over 220 Clients. Before Milestone, Philippe was General Partner for seven years with two venture capital firms: Allegis Capital ($500M under management) and Ventech ($200M under management). Prior to being a Venture Capitalist, Philippe created and was Director of the Worldwide Internet Commerce group at Apple where he founded and managed the online Apple Store and grew its revenue from zero to $350M. Before joining Apple, Philippe was Senior VP at Matra Hachette Multimedia, where he led US business development for electronic publishing for the $12 billion, high-tech and diversified media company. He previously founded and was the CEO of G2i, Inc. a Unix software company that was later acquired by Matra.

Philippe graduated from Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris and holds a BS in Mathematics, a MS in Physics and a Ph.D. in chaos theory.

John Orcutt

John has led Silicon Valley technology start-ups and business units in major corporations for 30 years.

John has been CEO of three software start-ups including Actional (Progress Software) which grew to over 100 Global 2000 customers and became the market leader for Services Oriented Architecture management. He was also CEO at Consensys Software (Augeo) and established the Professional Services Automation market. Most recently, John was CEO of Pie Digital which developed connected home and Internet of Things solutions for service providers and consumers. Previously, at Hewlett-Packard, John was VP and General Manager of the Managed Home business unit. John’s team pioneered a range of leading edge consumer devices, including networked TVs and home media servers, as well as content and services for the digital home. Earlier John led marketing at Talking Blocks, which was acquired by Hewlett-Packard. He also spent several years as a Venture Partner with BlueStream Ventures, an infrastructure-focused Venture Capital firm. Prior to becoming an entrepreneur, John was President of three Convergent Technologies subsidiaries and later became VP/GM for the Distributed Systems division at Unisys following its acquisition of Convergent. John started his career as consumer products brand manager at the Clorox Company and General Mills.

John earned his MBA from Stanford University and his undergraduate degree in Stanford’s Economics Honors program.

Barbara Adey

Barbara has entered new markets and scaled three technology businesses from zero to hundreds of millions of dollars in revenues, and once to $3 billion.

As a vice president at Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and in several executive roles at Cisco Systems, Barbara has led global organizations in product management, operations, and sales. While at HPE, she kept a multi-billion dollar product line at #1 market share while preparing for the introduction of two new products. She has managed product lines in cybersecurity and in the Internet of Things (IoT). Barbara developed the strategic plan for Cisco’s entry into cloud, drove the creation of Cisco’s first vertical in healthcare, and led worldwide sales for the launch of Cisco TelePresence. She also ran operations for a $6 billion division in wireless, security, and routing. Barbara started her career as an engineer in the telecommunications industry. She has spoken at industry conferences on intelligent automation, analytics, security, and privacy issues.

Barbara holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Waterloo in Systems Design Engineering, and an MBA from York University.

Marie Alexander

Marie has over 30 years of operational experience building companies. Over her career she had held positions in Engineering, Product Management, Professional Services and Support, Marketing, and Corporate Development culminating in her more recent stints as CEO and Mentor. Her experience has spanned numerous industries and markets – Customer Relationship Management, Electronic Data Interchange, IP Intelligence, Indoor Location, Digital Health, Entertainment, Gaming, and Information Security.

The unifying theme in her path is a focus on the development of the corporate systems and behaviors required to ensure systemic and predictable growth. Her broad range of operational experience supports her intense focus on tactical and strategic alignment. The companies she has directly managed include Quova, Vantive and Harbinger each resulting in successful exits through acquisition and IPOs.

Marie has a Master of Business Information Systems from Georgia State University and a Bachelor of Music Therapy from Georgia College and State University.

Dave Azevedo

With over 25 years of Silicon Valley experience, Dave has held senior management positions within the media and high-tech industries. He spent 13 years between Knight-Ridder Corporation (San Jose Mercury News) and the Hearst Corporation (San Francisco Chronicle), where he led sales groups, directed sales training, business development and strategic planning, along with managing Image Magazine for the Chronicle / Examiner.

Dave’s high-tech career led him to management positions in several Silicon Valley companies. At Apple, he created and managed an internal internet advertising group that created high-level sponsorships between Apple and major brands in the marketplace, as well as driving business development deals in multiple divisions. He has held Senior VP positions at NetMind (acquired by Puma Technologies), Convergent Companies, Saratoga Technology Group and Asyncast Corporation, where he directed all sales and marketing efforts.

In addition to being involved with raising venture capital, from Seed through Series B rounds, Dave has consulted for multiple high-tech companies, Attorneys, and individual Silicon Valley executives. He has collaborated on consulting projects with Bain & Company and McKinsey & Company. Dave holds degrees in Sociology and Advertising, and served as an Associate Professor at San Jose State University.

Ames Cornish

Ames Cornish has provided business strategy and information security services to high-tech businesses since 1997. Clients include Fortune 500 companies, start-ups, and venture firms.

Ames was the founder, CTO, and President of Vividus Corporation, acquired by Sunburst Communications. Ames conceived, designed, and developed Vividus' award-winning multimedia and web authoring and children's products.

Prior to Vividus, Ames led the Desktop Presentations marketing group at Apple and managed product marketing for graphics software at Hewlett-Packard. Previously, Ames worked in corporate finance at Kidder, Peabody, where he assisted in technology IPOs, and invented a debt-for-debt swap in which over $100 million was invested.

Ames has presented at numerous industry conferences and appeared on national TV and radio broadcasts. He was elected to the board for the bay area chapter of Infragard, an FBI-sponsored cyber-security organization. He was a board member of the Software Development Forum and was a founder and co-chair of SVForum's Internet Security and Privacy SIG.

Ames has been awarded two US patents for his invention of a novel software language and platform for processing semi-structured data

Ames holds bachelor's and master's degrees in theoretical physics from Harvard University and an MBA from Stanford. His skills include security assessments, security architecture, secure software development, network security, web and cloud service, policy development, and data forensics. Ames is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional and has been certified by Visa for PCI assessments.

Patricia Damien

Patricia is Blue Dots’ Chief Financial Officer. She is charged of managing all aspects related to finance, tax and HR matters.

Prior to joining Blue Dots, Patricia was Finance Director at evenVoice, Inc., a startup dedicated to giving consumers simple, convenient ways to instantly voice their opinions about any brand, whenever they’re delighted or annoyed by the brand’s products or services. Prior to evenVoice, Patricia was Finance Director for the Milestone Group, a management consulting company firm serving over 220 Clients.

Patricia has over fifteen years of administrative and finance experience. She began her career as an executive assistant for various French and International companies including Lagardère Group and SECOFI. In 1990, Patricia ran key advertising accounts for Papaye, a fully owned subsidiary of BDDP Group, a large French advertising agency, which is now part of Omnicom Group.

Patricia studied accounting at McGill University and Foothill College. She is also a certified pediatric nurse.

Heath Ewer

Heath is a senior executive with over 18 years’ experience shaping, selling and delivering Business, Operations, IT and Digital Transformations for Fortune 500 global clients in the High-Tech, Financial Services and Health industries.

As a former Managing Director at Accenture, Heath led transformation programs across Technology, Marketing, Sales, Channels, Services, Software, Digital, Analytics and Commerce organizations. He is a data driven decision maker who quickly assesses the business environment across people, processes and technology delivering increased revenue, reduced operating cost, improved user and customer experience and adoption to sustain critical business outcomes.

Heath holds a BS from Brigham Young University’s Marriott School of Management with a focus on Information Systems Management, a Human-Centered Design Practitioner Certification from The Luma Institute and a Safe Agilist Certification from The Scaled Agile Academy.

Steve Glaiser

Over the past 25 years, Steve has held management positions at both software and hardware companies: Frame Technology, AirTouch Cellular, OmniSky, Palm, Entrust, and Ask.com. Steve’s product lifecycle management experience ranges from traditional to agile models across a myriad of product deliverables: shrink-wrap, SaaS, integrated systems, embedded software, mobile, cloud, and search.

Steve builds and augments teams and processes by utilizing innovative approaches to match the unique objectives and organizational structures of each company. His influence and expertise span product development disciplines and functional areas with an emphasis on product quality and the overall customer experience.

Steve began his career in the US Air Force studying electronics with a focus on Aircraft Navigation and Steering Command Systems. He supported various high-profile programs, missions, and aircraft, culminating in support of the premier national security assets the SR-71 Blackbird and U-2 Dragon Lady. Steve continues to support the US Air Force, the Air Force Association, and other veteran organizations.

Don Hogle

Don is an independent brand and communications strategist with broad experience in the positioning and management of brands as a consultant and from both the client and agency sides. He has worked with brands in all stages of development – from start-ups to well-established brands facing inflection points in their evolution.

Recent projects include brand equity assessment and storyline testing for Lending Club, as it evolved from a peer-to-peer platform to including institutional funding, and competitive analysis and positioning exploration for the U.S. subsidiary of a major international bank, exploring the feasibility of an exclusively online offering.

Formerly, Don was Managing Director of Strategy for the New York office of Havas Worldwide, where clients included JPMorgan, Evian, Intel, Glaxosmithkline, Home Shopping Network, the New York Stock Exchange, Silver Spring Networks and Charles Schwab. He was the strategy and messaging architect of Schwab’s breakthrough Talk to Chuck campaign.

Prior to Havas, Don was Global Strategy Director for Citibank at Young and Rubicam. Earlier, as Director of Retail Advertising and Interactive Communications for Chemical Bank and, subsequently, Chase Manhattan, he relaunched both banks’ retail brands following mergers.

His early marketing training was at Booz, Allen Hamilton. He has a BA in Spanish from Washington and Lee University and has done graduate work at NYU’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business.

Gerry King

Gerry has a track record of success in general management, sales and business development at Fortune 500 companies, venture backed and private equity funded startups.

Known as a respected change agent with exceptional leadership, communications and influence skills, Gerry has comprehensive international sales and business development expertise across a range of industries with direct and multi channel distribution models.

Over his thirty-year career in Silicon Valley he has sold a range of enterprise technology solutions and his specialty is opening new markets for innovative products.

Most recently, he joined Surveyor Health Corporation, a novel “quantum inspired” SaaS based solutions company as the fifth employee where he developed and executed their Go-To-Market strategy resulting in a Kaiser Permanente Innovation Fund Grant. Previously, at IMS Health, Gerry was General Manager of their Western region responsible for a $100 million business spanning data services, professional services, consulting, analytics and applications solutions. Before IMS, Gerry was General Manager of AOL Time Warner, VP Worldwide Sales at Volera (acquired by Novell), VP of Sales at Ejascent (acquired by Veritas) and BigFix (acquired by IBM).

During the dot com boom he led Netscape’s Western region and was General Manager of iPlanet with AOL and Sun Microsystems.

Gerry studied Business at the New South Wales Institute of Technology and is an avid open water swimmer.

Chris Kocher

With over 30 years in Silicon Valley, Chris has extensive strategic and hands-on operating experience helping high-tech companies increase their revenues and company valuations.

In addition to working with Blue Dots, Chris is a founder and managing director of Grey Heron, a venture acceleration consulting company. He has worked with investors, CEOs and executive teams on accelerating growth and revenues at over 100 innovative companies ranging from startups to mature Global 500 companies such as Apple, Cisco, HP, Oracle and Visa.

Prior to Grey Heron, Chris was a VP/GM at Symantec with complete P&L responsibility for a business unit where he doubled revenues. Earlier in his career, he spent 10 years at HP in management roles at several divisions where he helped pioneer HP’s first laser printer, its initial personal computers and early independent software vendor (ISV) programs.

Much of his work has focused on helping companies with breakthrough technologies and platforms translate them into compelling value propositions to achieve rapid adoption in evolving markets including: internet, SAAS, cloud, big data, analytics, on-line video, digital media, ecommerce and adtech.

Chris earned his MBA from Columbia University in marketing and international business and his undergraduate degree at Princeton.

Chris Neil-Jones

Christopher has over 30 years experience managing and advising some of the world’s largest and most innovative solution providers and service organizations. He is Managing Partner at Talent Capital Partners Ltd, a firm based in London and Milan focused on driving revenue growth through sales alignment. TCP’s renowned Value Creation methodology was developed in collaboration with McKinsey & Co and has added over $2 billion of incremental revenue for major account teams from Cisco, IBM, HP, Dell and others.

Christopher’s early career spans 14 years in the European IT Services industry, specializing in Services Marketing and New Business Development. He founded a network of IT service and internet consultancy companies in Italy and France after a career in Digital Equipment Corporation in Milan and Geneva, where he was the youngest Director in DEC Europe and co-authored the award-winning "Marketing For Results" methodology.

Christopher previously headed the European Venture Capital Practice at Spencer Stuart and led the London office of the Global Technology Practice. He continues to provide Executive Search services both through Talent Capital Partners and as the International Partner of Milan-based Villa & Partners Executive Search. His personal search assignments include Country Manager and CEO Europe roles for multinationals like Oracle, NEC, Bull, Pirelli and Gateway and CEO, CFO, CMO, COO, VP and Director roles for public and private companies across Europe.

Fluent in Italian, he has a master’s degree in engineering from the University of Cambridge.

Steve Plume

Steve has spent 30 years working with technology companies in Silicon Valley, evenly split between consulting on strategy and marketing, and executive operational roles. As an executive, he was on the founding teams of Offero (CEO), Accept Software (VP Marketing, CFO) and KACE Networks (VP Marketing). He then joined Dell’s Software Group as a result of Dell’s acquisition of KACE.

Steve consulted for large companies such as Apple, Oracle, Cisco, General Electric, Motorola, and SAP, and hundreds of start-up and growth-stage companies. From an industry perspective, Steve is well-versed enterprise/B2B software, financial technologies as well as medical technologies. His consulting work typically focuses on client-facing activities, including market assessment and segmentation, go-to-market strategies, competitive positioning, client success, and overall business models. Steve has a particular expertise in pricing, dating from working with some of the earliest enterprise vendors to help them convert to recurring revenue models during the dot-com era. He has conducted dozens of pricing projects since then for companies in technology infrastructure, applications, information services, and professional services, in both B2B and B2C industries.

In addition to his consulting practice, Steve is an Executive Fellow of the Center for Digital Strategies at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, and a Consulting Partner for The Entrepreneurs’ Funds, a seed-stage fund focused on applications of cognitive computing.

Steve graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude from Yale University.

Mike Sayer

Mike is a highly experienced global technology executive, having successfully grown businesses in every geographic region across the world. His expertise ranges from early to late stage startups, and public companies, and crosses a broad range of software categories.

Background highlights include running worldwide sales for SupportSoft, an enterprise software company based in the US with a global presence; senior sales leader for the Clarity division of CA, also based in the US with a global presence; and for Niku, an IT Governance software company, again with a global footprint.

Earlier in his career Mike founded the European sales organization for Remedy, building a highly successful pan-EMEA business from the ground up, creating sales teams in the UK, Germany, France, and the Benelux, and doubled Remedy’s EMEA business every year during his tenure.

Mike’s particular expertise is helping build both direct and channel led software and services sales teams, for both on-premise and SaaS business models. Drawing on his wealth of experience and proven results, Mike provides guidance on sales strategy, sales organizational design, sales process re-engineering, and compensation planning, while contributing interim leadership, management, and mentoring.

Les Schmidt

Les is a serial entrepreneur and leader with first-hand experience developing and growing enterprises. As a C-level executive he scaled several companies from early-stage through successful exits. He led two companies to their Initial Public Offering: The Learning Company as COO and Quokka Sports as CFO. During his career, Les has raised substantial capital (about $270Million in total) from Silicon Valley VCs, public markets and private funds. He was also the COO of the San Francisco 49ers, where he introduced digital technologies into the coaching process, which were licensed to six other NFL teams. Les’ expertise is leading business transformations to accelerate growth via new directions, products, capabilities, and business models. He specializes in strategy and execution to create product-market alignment and accurate financial planning and forecasting.

Les is the former Executive Director of the Institute of Entrepreneurial Leadership (IEL), a business accelerator affiliated with John F. Kennedy University. Participating companies collectively generated $1.7Billion in revenue in 2015 and employed over 4,000 people.

Les served as a member and Chair of the Board of Trustees of Golden Gate University, earning the “Most Admired” Chair award for his work. He has also participated as a mentor in the AT&T Operation Hand Salute program for Veterans, aiding service-disabled military veterans in the development of their enterprises.

Les earned his BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs Ohio and went on to earn an MS in Taxation from Golden Gate University, his CPA (California) and a Certificate of Accounting from UC Berkeley.

Ian Sugarbroad

Ian is an experienced Serial Entrepreneur as well as having been a Global Telecom Senior Executive earlier in his 40-year career.

Since 1998 Ian has managed three successful exits of venture backed start-ups as either CEO or COO, two in the Silicon Valley (interWave and LGC Wireless) and one in Cambridge, UK (ZinWave).

Prior to 1998 Ian was a senior executive at Nortel Networks where he was one of a small founder group of executives who built Nortel’s Wireless Group from scratch to a $4.5B business in 10 years. As part of his responsibilities there Ian ran global business planning, strategic investment in VC start-ups and long- term investment in emerging technologies.

Ian's strong strategic and technology skills coupled with his extensive international experience allow him to build an organization with tactical alignment to common objectives, enabling a rapid transition from a start-up's early revenue to strong revenue growth and profitability in multiple markets.

Ian has an MBA and an MS in Physics from Western University, Canada and a BS in Physics from the University of London, England.

Hus Tigli

Hus has 25 years of experience in top leadership of technology businesses, including 10 years in large international public company settings, and the last 15 years as the CEO and founder of several start-ups.

Hus’ professional strengths include strategy formulation, strategic shifts, new business and new product development, and re-organization for market responsiveness or profitability. He is adept in diagnosing strategic or operational challenges facing organizations, then partnering with top leadership to devise implementation plans. His industry experience includes: materials science, photonics, optical networking, and components for industrial and telecom markets.

Hus’ start-up career started in 2000 at OMM, a leading fiber optic switch company. He built OMM from an R&D organization to an IPO-ready company. He then co-founded Forza Silicon and Silicon Kinetics and led them and a third, CrossFiber from early stage to product commercialization.

Previously, Hus built a track record in both growth and turnaround environments for 18 years at Raychem, a supplier of innovative components for electronics and telecommunications markets, where he last led the Telecommunications, Energy & Industrial Group, a $900 million global business.

In San Diego for the last 15 years, Hus’ career included 11 years in Silicon Valley and 8 in France and Belgium.

Hus holds BS and MS degrees in engineering from Columbia and an MBA from Harvard.

Steve Tobak

Steve is a veteran of Silicon Valley, having spent more than 25 years as a strategy consultant and senior executive for several publicly traded companies and high-tech startups. He ran global marketing for Rambus, National Semiconductor and Cyrix, and led marketing and sales for two startups that achieved successful IPOs, Tessera and Stac.

As a strategic advisor, Steve’s expertize is in corporate positioning, marketing and product strategy, business growth, organizational performance and scalability. A born troubleshooter, he excels at helping CEOs and their leadership teams determine what’s limiting their success and develop innovative strategies to unlock sustainable growth.

In addition to his consulting practice, Steve spent 10 years as an opinion columnist with Fox Business, Fortune, Entrepreneur and CBS MoneyWatch. He is the author of Real Leaders Don’t Follow, published in 2015 by Entrepreneur Press, and a widely recognized authority on the intersection of leadership, technology and culture.

Steve started out as a semiconductor design engineer with Texas Instruments more than 35 years ago. He grew up in Brooklyn and holds an MS in electrical engineering and a BS in physics from Stony Brook University in New York.

Mike Ward

Mike is a deeply experienced strategic and operations executive who has played key leadership roles in the automotive, aerospace, and petroleum industries. His leadership has spanned venture-backed start-ups through multi-billion dollar enterprises.

Most recently, Mike was CEO of Infinia (acquired by Ricor), where he brought the company’s first power generation solutions to market and scaled the company into volume manufacturing. Previously, Mike was President of Autoliv Americas, the largest division of its $2.2 Billion, publicly traded parent company. His 25 year career at Autoliv included key roles, running organizations across the US, Canada, and Latin America.

In addition to leading companies as well as Engineering, Sales, and Operations, Mike is a globally recognized expert in lean manufacturing and has led dozens of successful lean initiatives that dramatically improved product cycles, costs, delivery, and profitability. Mike’s organizations won 8 Shingo awards and 2 Industry Week “Best Plant” awards. He was inducted into the prestigious Shingo Academy in 2010 for his longtime commitment to implementing lean principles and driving operational excellence.

Mike is advising various US and international enterprises in industries that include garments, construction, automotive, and more.

Mike holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering from Michigan State University and Louisiana State University, respectively.

Patty Watkins

Patty has a solid track record of over 20 years of experience as an SVP, VP of Sales regionally, nationally and globally as well as other Executive positions in Fortune companies including HP, Avaya, AT&T, Teradata and NCR and several startups in Silicon Valley.

She has extensive experience in Sales, Business Development, Alliances and Channels. She brings a wealth of experience in enterprise sales, as well as SMB, with a focus on software and services, including SaaS

Patty has built many sales organizations from scratch, significantly grown existing team’s sales results, and she has successfully turned around and transformed many teams, propelling them from “worst to first.” She has grown sales results from $0 to $25M, $0 to $50M, $0 to $100M, and taken an existing team to over $800M in one year. Large company or small, Patty leverages her experience building solid foundations, optimizing sales performance and accelerating sales results.

Patty has a Master of Business Administration from Santa Clara University and a Bachelor of Business Administration from The University of Texas / Austin, both with Honors.

Robert Williams

Robert is a senior level business professional who has a background that spans multiple disciplines with over 20 years of experience in key functional business areas including Sales, Business and Channel Development, Product Management, Marketing, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), B2B & B2C Sales, Mobility, and Payments Technology.

Robert’s experience includes several leadership roles at Communication Intelligence Corporation, a biometric eSignature software provider as well as a Co-Founder of two financial sector start-ups, focused on the gift card and online payments space. Robert’s leadership and management experience was derived from, early on in his career, working as a General Manger for Office Depot and one of the largest CompUSA stores in North America.

More recently, Robert has managed teams who have built, deployed and sold, three SaaS and on-premise product offerings with VeraFirma, Interlink Electronics and Communication Intelligence Corporation targeted at the consumer and Fortune 1000 enterprise markets.