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IdeaBlade Board of Directors
Albert Wang -- Albert is the CEO and co-founder of IdeaBlade. Prior
to IdeaBlade, Albert was Senior Architect at Rivio, where he led the development
of the n-tier Java framework supporting Rivio's browser-based applications.
Prior to Rivio, while pursuing doctoral studies at Stanford, Albert started VXtreme,
a streaming media software company. Albert was Principal Engineer when VXtreme was
acquired by Microsoft in August 1997. VXtreme technology became the Windows Media
Player used by several hundred million people today. At Microsoft, Albert continued
his work as Manager of the Advanced Video Compression R&D Group.
Albert has authored 5 papers, filed more than 14 patent applications, and has received
numerous awards from the IEEE and ACM.
Albert holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.
Eric Di Benedetto -- Eric has over 15 years of Silicon Valley experience
as a professional investor in software start-ups. Eric has invested in over 40 companies
as a venture capitalist or as an angel investor since 1991. His investments have
already led to 9 public offerings and 4 sales to public companies. Three of those
companies (Signio, AdForce and CBT Group - now SkillSoft) reached market capitalizations
in excess of $1 billion.
Eric is a general partner with Convergence Partners, a Silicon Valley based information
technology venture capital firm with $200 million under management. After a successful
career as a venture capitalist, Eric initiated a professional angel investment program
in 2003. The program led to the 2006 establishment of Active Starts as an angel
investment firm focused on the coaching and financing needs of entrepreneurs within
a year from launching their products or services. Active Starts leads or participates
in investment syndicates whose mission is to bridge start-up companies to market
validation. Once a market opportunity has been proven, more traditional venture
capital firms usually follow in subsequent rounds of financing.
Before co-founding Convergence Partners in 1997, Eric was the managing director
of US venture capital funds managed by BANEXI, the merchant banking arm of BNP (Banque
Nationale de Paris, now BNP Paribas), including a joint partnership with Robertson
Stephens & Co. Prior to his venture capital career, Eric was a workout and restructuring
specialist with the PARGESA/Lambert Brussels Group, and a mergers and acquisitions
associate covering defense electronics for Bankers Trust Company (now Deutsche Bank).
Eric holds an MBA degree from ESSEC, Paris, France, and a BA in mathematics and
physics.
Eric was profiled in Business Week ("Go West, Young Whiz") and in The
European ("Where the Brains Drain").
Antoine Blondeau -- Antoine has over 18 years of leadership and
operational experience in technology marketing worldwide, as CEO, senior officer
and director/advisor in listed companies, start-ups, turnarounds and medium-to-large
companies. He started his career with the Tokyo representation of the office of
the Prime Minister of France where he negotiated the setup of Mitsubishi Electric,
Canon, Toshiba and Sony's industrial facilities in France. Antoine then moved to
Nortel Networks where he managed the OEM and Asia/Pacific unit of the company's
digital wireless terminals business.
Then, as president and COO of Zi Corporation, a NASDAQ-listed developer of intelligent
user interface software, he engineered a turnaround and grew the company's market
valuation to a high of $1.4 billion. Antoine then became president and CEO of Dejima,
Inc., a developer of distributed artificial intelligence software, which he sold
to Sybase, Inc. in 2004. Antoine also worked at salesforce.com as vice president
in charge of the wireless and mobile business unit, and at Visto Corporation as
senior vice president worldwide business development and General Manager Asia/Pacific.
Antoine is a graduate of the Paris Graduate School of Management (ESCP) and has
studied at the faculties of Economics and Commerce of Chuo University in Tokyo,
Japan.
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