Meet our Advisors
John Fraissinet
John Fraissinet and Associates Inc.
John Fraissinet is an independent technology executive and sales and marketing consultant. He was formerly Chief Executive Officer of GaleForce Solutions, a venture-backed software firm in Vancouver, Canada focused on providing customer management solutions to the financial services industry. He is a technology industry veteran with more than 27 years senior management experience in highly successful companies.
Prior to starting his own consulting organization, John was Crystal Decisions’ Vice President of Sales and Marketing. He was responsible for all channel partner relationships in the Americas, and helped drive the company’s license base from four million users to more than 12 million in his five years with the company. Before joining Crystal Decisions, Mr. Fraissinet was Vice President and General Manager of Network Computing Devices’ PC-X division in Portland, Oregon. He also held several key executive positions with Silicon Valley-based growth companies, including Borland International, Ashton-Tate, NEC Home Electronics and IBM.
John holds a marketing and business degree from the Robert O. Anderson School of Management at the University of New Mexico.
Sal Visca
Chief Technology Officer,
SAP’s Technology Development Group
As chief technology officer for SAP’s Technology Development group, Sal Visca manages the Central Architecture and Applied Innovation CTO Group for NetWeaver and the Business Objects product and technology portfolio. In this role, Visca is responsible for defining architecture guidelines and governance models, technology strategy and roadmaps as well as driving a process to bring new technologies and innovations to the product lines.
Prior to the acquisition by SAP, Visca was CTO of Business Objects from 2006. Roles prior to SAP Business Objects include CTO and EVP Engineering at Marqui, a SaaS provider of Content and Communications Management solutions, co-president and CTO at Infowave Software, a leading provider of wireless computing technology, and over 12 years with IBM in various senior management and lead architecture positions. Visca holds an honors B.Sc. degree from the University of Western Ontario in computer science.
Michael Blackstock: Vice President Research and Development
Michael Blackstock, PhD, is a veteran technology leader specializing in enterprise middleware for wireless and pervasive computing.
Previously, he was a co-founder and CTO of Colligo Networks, Inc., a leading provider of peer-to-peer wireless productivity software designed for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth (tm) enabled notebooks, Tablet PCs, and handhelds. Before founding Colligo, Michael was the Vice President of Research and Development for Infowave Software, Inc., a global provider of software that connects enterprise applications to wireless devices. In 1994, he was hailed as one of the top '40 under 40' young entrepreneurs in British Columbia.
Michael holds a Bachelors of Applied Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of British Columbia, a Masters Degree in Computer Science from Simon Fraser University and a PhD in Computer Science from UBC.
Faouzi Kossentini
Director of Compression Technology,
Digital Media Networks for Scientific Atlanta
Faouzi Kossentini is presently the Director of Compression Technology for Digital Media Networks, Scientific Atlanta, a Cisco company. Prior to SA, Dr. Kossentini served as the Founder, President and CEO of UB Video, and has made UB Video a worldwide leader in H.264 video encoding technology.
Dr. Kossentini also served as an assistant professor and associate professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of British Columbia, doing research in the areas of signal processing, communications and multimedia. Dr. Kossentini is a senior member of the IEEE and has co-authored more than 200 journal papers, conference papers, book chapters and popular technical whitepapers. He’s also led numerous international ISO and ITU-T activities involving the standardization of JBIG-2, JPEG-2000, H.263 and H.264. He holds B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta.
Andy Talbot
CEO, LightHaus Logic
Andy Talbot is a Technology Executive with an innovative leadership style and technical acumen. With public and private company experience, he has a proven track record and significant entrepreneurial success.
Andy is currently CEO of LightHaus Logic, a startup focused on advanced high performance video processing. As a Board Member and Business Advisor for UB Video, a High Definition Video Compression Software startup, Andy was instrumental in the strategy, financing, strategic alliances, customer sales and the resultant acquisition to Cisco/Scientific Atlanta in February 2006.
Previously, Andy was a member of the Executive team at Spectrum Signal Processing and the Vice President responsible for the Network Solutions Division, a startup business focused on the signal processing requirements for the convergence of Video, Voice and Data over broadband packet networks.
Mr. Talbot has significant experience with advanced technologies and was actively responsible for the success of a number of startup companies.
Touraj Parang
Touraj Parang is a Silicon Valley based technology entrepreneur with a decade of experience in building high tech ventures and launching products globally. Most recently, he was the Founder and COO of JAXTR, a consumer Internet and mobile service where he was the driving force behind the rapid viral growth of the service to over 10 million registered users worldwide. As a former corporate attorney and venture capitalist, Touraj has had Board-level involvement with over 50 technology and life science companies since 1999. He is an angel investor and advisor to several start-ups in US and Canada in the areas of fundraising, team building, product strategy and viral marketing. Touraj holds a J.D. from Yale Law School and degrees in Philosophy and Economics from Stanford University.