Advisory Board

Our advisors provide valuable guidance and support to Folio3’s management team.

We can also provide our clients access to Advisory Board members for funding and advisory opportunities.

Aamir Sheikh

Aamir Sheikh is managing director and head of research of MSCIBarra. Prior to Morgan Stanley's acquisition of Barra in June 2004, Aamir was president of Barra and was at various times responsible for product development, sales and client service, and content development and delivery. Aamir was instrumental in the development and leadership of Barra's enterprise risk management efforts. Under Aamir's tutelage, Barra launched the first firm-wide risk management solution for the investment management community. In addition, Aamir has provided significant leadership to Barra's research practice since he joined the company in June 1994. His research initiatives include Barra's equity and derivatives risk models. Prior to joining Barra, Aamir taught finance at Indiana University and at Washington University in St. Louis. His work on options has been widely published in academic finance publications. Aamir has a Ph.D. in finance from the University of California, Berkeley. He received his A.B. summa cum laude from Columbia University in New York City, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

Alnoor Shivji

Alnoor is currently a General Partner with Global Asset Capital, a Silicon Valley based Venture Capital firm. He founded several successful companies in the communications and networking space including Cyras Systems (sold to Ciena for $1.5B), Fiberlane(Cerent sold to Cisco for $6.9 B; Siara Systems sold to Redback), and Osiware(sold to Infonet). Mr Shivji is an advisor and on the board of several startups in the valley. He is also a charter member of other entrepreneur organizations such as TiE and ASVC. Mr Shivji actively mentors entrepreneurs.

Amir Khan

Director, Product Marketing, Cisco Systems. Previously he was Directoring of Product Strategy & Management at Procket, a startup focusing on the Internet infrastructure products.

Ammar Hanafi

Ammar H. Hanafi joined Alloy Ventures as a General Partner in 2005 from Cisco Systems, Inc. Ammar received a B.S. in Applied and Engineering Physics from Cornell University (1988) and an MBA from Stanford University (1995). His last role at Cisco was Vice President of New Business Ventures where he led new product efforts in the enterprise datacenter market. From 2000 to 2002, he was Vice President of Corporate Business Development and in that capacity, he was responsible for Cisco's acquisitions, acquisition integration, investment, and joint venture activity on a global basis. He joined Cisco in 1997 as a member of the Corporate Business Development Group. During Ammar's tenure, Cisco's Business Development Group completed over 50 acquisitions, leading Cisco into a number of major new businesses, including optical networking and integrated voice and data infrastructure and applications. In addition, the Business Development Group made over $750 million in venture capital investments during the same timeframe.
Prior to Cisco, Ammar held positions at PanAmSat Corporation, a global satellite services provider, and the investment banking firms of Morgan Stanley and Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette. Ammar is a director of 3Leaf Networks.

Anthony Lapine

Anthony LaPine, an original founder of Semotus Solutions (formerly Datalink.net), manages the entire corporate vision and strategy of the Company. LaPine has a 30-year legacy as an icon of business and technology in the Silicon Valley, and continues to guide Semotus Solutions' progress, its development, as well as its current and future business plans.

Mr. LaPine has served as a member of 20 corporate Boards for companies across a broad spectrum of industries, and he has created a legendary career in the realm of computing technology. He served as a member of the engineering team that gave birth to the modern disk drive. Mr. LaPine was one of the founders of Memorex's Equipment Group where he was instrumental in developing the floppy disk drive, a cornerstone of today's personal computer revolution. In addition, he played a major role in Memorex's historic turnaround, re-listing Memorex on the New York Stock Exchange-the only company ever re-listed.

Mr. LaPine re-engineered the Irwin/Olivetti Company, orchestrating the invention of the first removable cartridge tape backup in personal computers. This development opened a new billion-dollar market, catapulting the company to profitability and a public offering (IPO).

At LaPine Technology he launched the first micro disk drives for notebook computers, creating a whole new industry standard. LaPine led his company's growth to a profitable $60 million in sales before selling the company in a transaction valued at $240 million.

Mr. LaPine possesses a BSEE Cum Laude, from California State University, an MSEE from Santa Clara University and an MBA from the University of San Francisco. He later became an alumnus of Stanford's Graduate School of Business through their Executive Program. In 1993, he received the San Jose State University "Alumni Award of Distinction" and is the recipient of the Santa Clara University 1994 "Distinguished Engineering Alumni" award.

Arif Janjua

Mr. Janjua has more than 20 years of professional experience both in senior positions at technology companies and as a consultant specializing in high tech. Prior to joining SDG, he was president and chief executive of Anuvio Technologies, formerly known as I-drive, a leading global provider of storage management and application software. Previously, Mr. Janjua was High Technology Practice Leader and vice president at A.T. Kearney. Areas of consulting specialty included business strategy, operations, and information technology.

Bari Abdul

Bari is the Senior Vice President for World Wide Consumer Marketing at McAfee. He has 18+ years of General Management and Marketing experience in Consumer Technology and Consumer Products. Bari successfully leveraged his marketing and management experience at Fortune 15 blue chip companies Procter and Gamble and PepsiCo into building an expertise in consumer technology. Bari also helped build businesses Internationally with P&G and PepsiCo. In consumer technology, Bari has worked on both software and hardware products as well as Internet services and eCommerce at high profile Silicon Valley companies. Prior to McAfee, Bari was the Chief Operating Officer at Capcom Entertainment, a leading Japanese Video games company. At Sonicblue, where Bari served as the Senior Vice President-Marketing & eCommerce he developed and implemented marketing strategies for the company’s audio and video products across the company’s four divisions. Bari also served as Senior Vice President Marketing at Egghead.com/Onsale building the brands and overseeing acquisitions and spin-offs of B2C and B2B concerns. Bari’s career achievements are complemented with business and engineering educations at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania where he earned an MBA and the University of California at Berkeley where he received a BS degree in Engineering.

Dr. Asif Godil

Founder, Chairman, and Chief Technology Officer of LIGHTCONNECT, a company focused on delivering advanced fiber-optic components and modules for next generation optical networking systems. Dr. Godil is a recognized entrepreneur and expert in optical technology, with extensive background in new technology and business development at Silicon Light Machines, New Focus and at the Sony Research Center in Tokyo where he received awards for his work on advanced optical data storage. He holds a PhD in electrical engineering from Stanford University.

Fawad Zakariya

Fawad is currently a Director in SAP’s Corporate Strategy Management group where he is part of the M&A strategy team. Prior to joining SAP, he was a Principal at Advent International, a global private equity and venture capital firm in Boston. At Advent he focused on transactions in the communications, software and electronics sectors. He led four of the six investments he participated in at Advent. Fawad was a director of West Ridge Networks, Seranoa Networks and Entigo Corp. and represented Advent on the board of Nauticus Networks (which was sold to Sun Microsystems). Before joining Advent, he was with Dillon Read Venture Capital in New York. While at Dillon Read he served on the board of two portfolio companies and participated in eight completed transactions. He has also worked as an investment banker at CS First Boston, where he executed debt and equity financings and M&A transactions for various clients. Fawad has also worked as a consultant at McKinsey & Company in their New York office. Fawad received a BA in economics from Haverford College and an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.

Imran Qidwai

Imran is a Director and founding member of OPEN. He has over 20 years of computer industry experience, including more than 15 years managing software projects at both private and public companies. Imran's expertise lies in the areas of wireless messaging, wireless entertainment, instant messaging, unified messaging, Internet-based fax messaging, PDA applications, hosted and rentable applications and platforms, and mission critical data networking systems.

Former employers include NMS Communications, Lotus/IBM, Digital Equipment (HP/Compaq), SoftLinx, International Computers, and Philips. In 1999, Imran co-founded and was Vice President of Engineering at MessageMachines, Inc, a Boston-based startup, which was acquired by NMS in April 2002.

Imran holds a Master's degree in Computer, Information and Control Engineering from the University of Michigan, a post-graduate diploma in digital electronics from Philips International Institute of Technological Studies, Eindhoven, the Netherlands, and a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Peshawar.

Imran Sayeed

As Founder & Chairman of NetNumina Solutions, Inc. ("NetNumina"), he led NetNumina from a 15-person startup to a leading technology strategy and consulting firm named one of Computerwold's Top 100 emerging companies of 2000.

Under his leadership, NetNumina has won more than 30 of the leading financial services & pharmaceutical institutions in the world as clients, raised more than $25 million from leading venture capitalists and strategic investors, and received more than 20 industry awards for its work. Most recently, NetNumina was named to the 2002 list of Inc 500's fastest growing private companies in the US. Further, Sayeed has over twelve years of experience in software and services.

Previously, as a founder of Open Environment, Sayeed helped pioneer multi-tier client server technology, and grew the company from a 10-person startup to $200 million IPO and leadership in the middleware market.

Jaffer Hussain

Jaffer Hussain is currently Vice President of Product Marketing at LogicVision, a leading Electronic Design Automation (EDA) company. Previously, he was a founder and President of eTrango, an E-business and Supply Chain software company. Jaffer also served as the Vice President of Marketing and International Sales at B-Tree Systems (now called TestQuest) a pioneer in the testing of embedded products.

Jaffer's almost 20 years of work experience includes stints at Synopsys and Cadence, and he has also used his marketing and business development skills as an adviser and consultant to help other Silicon Valley companies successfully launch new software businesses. Jaffer has a Master's degree in Computer Science & Engineering from the University of Michigan and an MBA from Stanford Business School.

Jeff Webber

Jeff Webber is Managing Director of The Entrepreneurs' Fund II and The Entrepreneurs' Growth Fund. A Silicon Valley Venture Investing veteran, Jeff was an early investor and formerly a board member at CommerceOne, Sagent Technology (IPO in 2000), Persistence Software (IPO in 2000), Avantgo (IPO in 2001) and EnCommerce (acquired by Entrust in 2001). Mr. Webber was also a board member of Sybase and an early stage strategic advisor to Inktomi's founding team. Mr. Webber is currently an investor in Attensity Corporation, Rapt, Inc., Bytemobile, Inc., Responsys, Inc., Company 51, and Bacchus Vascular, Inc.

Kamal Ahmed

Kamal is Executive Director in the technology practice of Morgan Stanley, based in Menlo Park. As an advisor to leading technology companies worldwide, he has led a wide variety of financing transactions and has executed numerous mergers & acquisitions. Prior to joining Morgan Stanley in 1999, Kamal was a Vice President in the investment banking group at Merrill Lynch. He began his banking career in New York at Credit Suisse First Boston. He received his B.A. in Economics from Yale University and his M.B.A. from Cornell University. He is married with two children and lives in Los Altos, California.

Mat Stover

Mat Stover, Chairman LKM Ventures, has over 20-years of experience as a senior executive with global corporations, early stage companies and the federal government in the fields of traditional and online publishing, information services and marketing and communications. Prior to LKM Ventures, Mr. Stover served as Chairman, President and CEO of AGS Computers, Inc., Vice President Public Affairs and Corporate Communications for NYNEX Corporation and Senior Vice President - Communications for American Express Company.

Mr. Stover is a graduate of Yale University and of the University of Virginia's Colgate Darden Graduate School of Business Administration's Executive Program.

Quinton Zondervan

Mr. Zondervan is currently at IBM corporation as a software architect working on the next generation client platform, IBM Workplace. Prior to that Quinton was the CTO at Clickmarks where he lead the development of Clickmarks' groundbreaking mobile and enterprise integration platform. In 1997 as part of Lotus (IBM), he co-founded the Mobile group at Lotus and architected the mobile and wireless extensions to the Notes product line. He is one of the inventors of SyncML and is highly regarded as a pioneer of the wireless Internet. Quinton received his Masters degree in Computer Science from MIT in 1995 and his Bachelors from Eckerd College. Quinton is currently on the Folio3 Advisory Board and a member of its Entrepreneurs Circle

Razi Mohiuddin

Razi is Co-Founder, President & CEO of Iron Speed. He co-founded numerous Internet and software companies, including Onsale, Inc. (later Egghead.com and now Amazon.com), Ambia Corporation, an electronic document publishing software company later acquired by Infodata Systems Inc., and Software Partners, Inc., a software consulting company that developed StreetSmart, e.Schwab, FundMap, SchwabLink and Retirement Planner software for Charles Schwab & Co. He earned his B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Illinois, Chicago.

Safi Qureshey

A co-founder and CEO Emeritus of AST Research, Safi Qureshey successfully grew AST, a manufacturer of personal computers, into a Fortune 500 company with operations in more than 100 countries and more than $2.5 billion in annual revenue. Qureshey was a seed investor in NextCard, the first online real-time credit card, which had a successful initial public offering in May 1999. A strong proponent of education and research, Qureshey currently serves as regent's professor at the University of California, Irvine's Graduate School of Management, and actively supports U.C. Irvine's Bonney Center for Neurobiology of Learning and Memory.

Shahid Khan

Shahid Khan is a Partner at Interactive Broadband Consulting Group, a boutique strategy consulting firm that focuses on clients in the broadband service and content space, namely Cable, Media, Telecoms and Wireless. In this role, Shahid is responsible for developing and leading major client engagements, and is also responsible for the leading the firm's growth in the Media Industry, as well as the firm's PR and Thought Leadership.

Prior to joining IBB Consulting, Shahid was a Managing Director at BearingPoint (formerly KPMG Consulting), responsible for leading BearingPoint's Entertainment and Information Services industry segments. Previously, Shahid was a Client Services Partner at IBM Global Services in the Communications sector. Shahid has also worked at ZEFER, Deloitte Consulting, JP Morgan and McGraw Hill, where he participated in and managed Business Strategy and IT projects.

Shahid is a seasoned Business and Operations Strategist with strong technology underpinnings and expertise in the Media & Entertainment, Telecommunications and Information Technology industries. He is an acclaimed thought leader, who has been focused on the Digital Media and eBusiness for the last decade, as well as on how disruptive technologies such as internet, broadband, IP and mobile are impacting the Media Industry. Over the course of his career, Shahid has served leading Media firms such as Bertelsmann, Sony BMG, Warner Music Group, Thomson, Viacom, Reuters, etc.

Shahid holds an MBA in Marketing and Finance from New York University's Stern School of Business and is a Fellow at University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business. He has published numerous white-papers and articles on topics pertinent to the Media & Telecoms Industry. He is a frequent speaker at leading industry conferences, often quoted in industry publications.

Shahid serves on the Board of China Mobility Solutions, a mobile services firm based in China and on the Advisory Board of Avanza Solutions, an IT Services firm with operations in Pakistan, Dubai, and Spain. He is also the President of the New York Chapter of the Organization of Pakistani Entrepreneurs (OPEN) and serves on the board of Developments in Literacy (DIL), a non-profit organization that focus on literacy in Pakistan.

Syed Aamer Azam

Aamer Azam has more than 11 years of experience in software technology development and management. He is currently Vice President of Engineering at Powerhouse Technology Group. Prior to Powerhouse, Aamer was the senior vice president of engineering at Clickmarks, Inc. where he headed and led the company's software development, quality assurance, project management, and customer service divisions. Preceding Clickmarks, he held the position of CTO and VP engineering at Wordwalla, Inc. where he headed the development of technologies that sped entrance to new markets, and led the technology sales effort for the company. Aamer holds a Masters degree from Princeton University in computational physics, and has a Bachelors degree from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Aamer also holds 5 patents related to software development.

Tomas Isaksson

Tomas is a 28-year veteran of the telecommunications industry, most recently serving as CEO of Vodafone Netherlands. During his 11 years at Vodafone, Tomas was also CEO of Vodafone Americas, and president of Vodafone Global Platform and Internet Services. Previously, he was CEO of Europolitan Holdings AB, a Swedish mobile operator whose major shareholders included Vodafone and AirTouch. Earlier in his career, he spent 16 years at Ericsson, most recently as president and CEO of Ericsson Radio Systems Inc.

Tomas is a graduate of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. He has served on the boards of a number of public and private mobile telecommunications companies, including Verizon Wireless, Vodafone Americas, Europolitan Holdings AB (Sweden), Iusacell (Mexico), and Telecel (Portugal).

Dr. Waheed Quershi

Dr. Waheed Qureshi is the Founder, Chairman and Chief Technical Officer of Zenprise Inc a technology company funded by premier Silicon Valley venture capital firms of Mayfield Fund and Bay partners. Prior to Zenprise, Waheed founded Zambeel, a venture funded company that was focused on delivering highly scalable network attached storage sub-systems for the distributed Internet. Waheed started his career at Excelon Corporation where he focused on ObjectStore, the industry-leading object-oriented database management system in several technology leadership positions. An avid researcher, his co-authored publications have been published in ACM SIGMOD and VLDB and he is the holder of several awarded and pending US patents.

His honorary and professional memberships include IEEE, ACM, Tau Beta Pai and Eta Kappa Nu. Dr. Qureshi's current technical expertise includes Autonomic computing, Information grids, File/data management and Storage sub-systems. A serial entrepreneur, Dr. Qureshi is a charter member of OPEN and TiE and is an advisor to several early stage companies. Waheed holds a Ph.D in computer sciences from University of Southern California (USC).

Zia Yusuf

Senior Vice President, Office of the CEO, SAP AG. Previously Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of SAPMarkets, Inc., the B2B exchange company of SAP AG, and Managing Director, SAPMarkets Asia Pacific. He was formerly with Goldman, Sachs & Co. and the World OPEN Executive Committee.