TECHNOLOGY INNOVATORS
Tignis was founded by proven leaders of a $1.2B data center management software business
Tignis provides a physics-driven software solution for managing industrial assets, processes and operations. Using machine learning and digital twins, Tignis monitors mechanical systems, not just individual assets, so manufacturers can expand predictive maintenance coverage, detect and reduce risks to plant or line reliability, enhance O&M team productivity, and improve plant performance.
Jon Herlocker
President and CEO
Jon is a deep technologist and experienced executive in both on-premises enterprise software and consumer SaaS businesses. In his prior leadership roles, he was Vice President and CTO of VMware’s Cloud Management Business Unit, which generated $1.2B/year for VMware. Other positions include CTO of Mozy, and CTO of EMC’s Cloud Services division. As a co-founder of Tignis, Jon is an experienced entrepreneur, having founded two other startup companies. He sold his last startup, Smart Desktop, to Pi Corporation in 2006. Jon is a former tenured professor of Computer Science at Oregon State University, and his highly-cited academic research work was awarded the prestigious 2010 ACM Software System Award for contributions to the field of recommendation systems. Jon holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota, and a B.S. in Mathematics and Computer Science from Lewis and Clark College.
Matt McLaughlin
Chief Operating Officer, VP of Engineering
Matt is a seasoned execution-oriented leader with experience in SaaS and enterprise on-premises software. He has held substantial leadership roles in both large enterprises and startups. Before co-founding Tignis, Matt led global engineering teams for VMware as Director of Engineering. Matt brought VMware’s analytics product Log Insight from alpha stage to v4, and established the company’s Ops SaaS team. His earlier entrepreneurial roles include VP of Engineering at Digital Scirocco and CTO at Red Rover. He also founded Strands, a product recommendation technology company. Matt specializes in building strong company cultures and managing highly productive engineering teams that deliver high quality software products on time. Matt holds an M.S. and B.S. in Computer Science from Oregon State University, with a focus on Machine Learning.
DIRECTORS AND ADVISORS
Harel Kodesh
Operating Partner Silver Lake Partners
Harel joined Silver Lake, based in Menlo Park, as an Operating Partner in 2017. Previously, he was chief technology officer at GE Digital and vice president and General Manager of Predix, GE’s operating system for the Industrial Internet. Before joining GE, Harel co-founded and served as CEO at Nurego, a spinoff of EMC Corp. At EMC, he was executive vice president for cloud business systems and CEO of Mozy, EMC’s wholly-owned subsidiary dedicated to Backup as a Service. From 2003 to 2008, he served as chief product officer at Amdocs. He also served as CEO of Wingcast, the Ford Motor Company-Qualcomm joint venture. Until 2000, Harel held various executive positions at Microsoft, including vice president of the information appliances division, where he led development of the Microsoft Windows CE operating system and pioneered its mobility business. He also managed Microsoft’s Object Linking and Embedding team, and a Motorola team responsible for its early wireless data efforts. Harel holds a B.S. in computer engineering and a M.S. in electrical engineering from the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology. He has served on the boards of Mobilitec, DreamBox Learning, BSquare and Modern Systems.
Paul Maritz
Former CEO VM Ware
Paul has a long history of executive leadership in the tech industry. Prior roles include being a founder and Chief Executive Officer of Pivotal Software Inc. (PVTL) – a $600+M/year provider of digital transformation, and Chief Executive Officer of VMware (VMW) – $6+B/year provider of cloud computing and platform virtualization services. Prior to joining VMware, he co-founded Pi, an early cloud computing company which was acquired by Dell/EMC. Before founding Pi, Paul spent 14 years working at Microsoft Corporation (MSFT), where he served as a member of the five-person Executive Committee that managed the company.
Janis Machala
Executive Coach Paladin Partners
Janis is an experienced corporate director, CEO and senior business executive. Janis has deep experience in the technology, higher education, and B2B software and services sectors. Some of her prior board experience includes independent director roles with Captura (sold to Concur), Chili!Soft (sold to Cobalt Networks), Lizard Tech (sold to AT&T), Performant (sold to Mercury Systems), Reality Works, and Tidemark Computer Systems (sold to Accela). As CEO, Janis was on the Pinnacle Publishing and ChiliSoft! boards. She is currently Chairman of the Board for FIRST Washington. As a community and industry leader, Janis has volunteered tirelessly to help America live true to its values (Humane Society and Junior Achievement), establish Seattle as a high-tech leader (NWEN, Tech Alliance, WBBA, WTIA) and to help make the region’s higher education institutions the most entrepreneurially productive in the country (Bellevue College, Lake Washington Institute of Technology, Seattle University, and the University of Washington). Janis holds a Master of Business Administration degree with a concentration in marketing from the University of Iowa. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree with a double major in psychology and English from Augustana College (Rock Island, Illinois).
Russ Stockdale
Former VP & GM Data
Protection Cloud
Dell EMC
Russ brings an impressive track record of rapidly growing technology businesses, defining and operationalizing business strategy and integrating acquisitions. He is the former Vice President and General Manager of EMC & Dell EMC’s Cloud Data Protection unit, former Vice President and General Manager of SMB Solutions at VMware, and former Vice President of Microsoft’s Business Solutions and Knowledge Worker Solutions Groups, among other executive leadership positions. Russ holds a Master’s of Business Administration from the Wharton School and a Bachelor of Science with Distinction in Industrial Engineering from Stanford University. He currently serves on the Board of Directors for Point B, Overlake Hospital Medical Center, Eastside Health Alliance and the Stockdale Family Foundation. He is a former Advisory Board member for AllSeniorHomes.com, and a former Foundation Board member for the University of Washington Autism Center.
Ashmeet Sidana
Founder Engineering Capital
Ashmeet is the Founder and Managing Partner of Engineering Capital. His experience includes managing venture capital funds, serving on multiple boards of directors, and helping build the industry-leading products VMware ESX Server and Silicon Graphics WebFORCE. Before this last decade as a venture capitalist, Ashmeet was an operating executive with hands-on operating experience as a CEO and an entrepreneur. Previous investments/boards include Freewheel (acquired by Comcast), InQuira (acquired by Oracle), Altor (acquired by Juniper), Appurify (acquired by Google), and PrivateCore (acquired by Facebook). Previous investments/boards not yet realized include Zetta.net, SimplyHired, and Azure Power. Current investments are Baffle (stealth), Datos IO, Kentik, Menlo Security, Palerra,SignalFX, StackStorm, and Xockets. Ashmeet came to venture from VMware, where he ran product management for their flagship product, ESX Server. Before VMware, Ashmeet was the Founder and CEO of Sidana Systems, Inc. He started his career at Hewlett Packard and Silicon Graphics as an engineer. Ashmeet received an MBA from Wharton, an MS in Computer Science from Stanford University, and a BS in Computer Science from USC. In his spare time, he can be found planning his second trip to Mt. Everest.
Chris Rust
Co-Founder Clear Ventures
Chris Rust is a venture capital investor in Silicon Valley. He works with technology entrepreneurs from the earliest stages of company creation to help their startups become outstanding companies. Chris’s experiences include: 16 years of technology venture investing as Founder and Managing Partner of Clear Ventures, Partner at Sequoia Capital and USVP; 12 years of company building as co-founder (badge #2) and lead architect of broadband access pioneer Roadrunner/TWC Internet (Charter Communications); startup PLM at Carrier Access and Comcore; and technical staff at US West and MITRE. He is currently working on stealth projects while supporting his active portfolio. Since 1998 Chris has made early stage investments in 40 startups, starting 35x at seed/series A and 5x at series B. His first 24 exits have produced $32B+ of market cap from market-leading companies such as GoPro, Dune, Mellanox, Syndesis, LVL7, VxTel, Avanex, Telera, SwitchOn, and Abrizio. His active VC portfolio provides innovative IT products and technology-enabled services related to cloud computing, data center and enterprise IT infrastructure, data science, information security, machine intelligence, meta-search, and predictive commerce. It includes Arrcus, Atmosic, GoEuro, Reflektion, Robin, Vera, Wootcloud, and Zerto. Chris strives to help create opportunity in a supportive and respectful manner.
Ankush Oberai
Group Director R&D Synopsys