Partner, Venrock Associates
Brian Ascher joined Venrock in 1998 as a Kauffman Fellow and is currently a partner based in Venrock’s Palo Alto office. Brian focuses on a broad range of Internet (both consumer and B2B) and Healthcare IT investments and currently serves on the Board of Directors of Vocera (NYSE: VCRA), as well as several private companies, including Awarepoint, Retail Solutions, Inrix, and Billfloat. Past investments include ADiFY (acquired by Cox Enterprises), DATAllegro (acquired by Microsoft), Redbeacon (acquired by Home Depot), RelayHealth (acquired by McKesson), Tudou (NASDAQ: TUDO), and Unicru (acquired by Kronos). Prior to Venrock, Brian was a Senior Product Manager at Intuit responsible for Quicken and Quicken.com, and earlier in his career was a Strategy Consultant at the Monitor Group. Brian has been named to the Forbes’ Midas List, which ranks the top venture capitalists in technology and life sciences, multiple times including the current edition.
Brian received his B.A. from Princeton University and his M.B.A. from Stanford University Graduate School of Business.
Partner, Bessemer Venture Partners
Kristina Shen joined in 2013 and is a Vice President in the Menlo Park, CA office and focuses on investments cloud computing, mobile and consumer sectors. Kristina currently serves on the boards of Glint and SpeakEasy, and serves as a board observer on DoubleDutch, Gainsight, Instructure, RainforestQA, ServiceTitan and Vidyard. She is also involved with investments in Adaptive Insights, Clearcare and Twilio. With Byron Deeter, Kristina co-authors Bessemer’s State of the Cloud Report and Bessemer 10 Laws of Cloud, which captures the top trends among leading public and private cloud computing and enterprise mobile companies. The pair also produces Bessemer’s Cloud Index, which tracks the top public cloud computing companies, and is used by major media outlets, analysts and thought leaders to understand the health of the sector. An expert in the field, Kristina’s contributions to Bessemer and the startup ecosystem earned her a slot in Forbe’s 30 under 30: Venture Capital and Business Insider’s 2014 “30 and Under” list of Rising Stars who find Hot Startup Deals in Silicon Valley.
Before joining Bessemer, Kristina worked in the finance world as an investor at JMI Equity, and investment banker at both Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse. Her experience includes working on the IPOs of Palo Alto Networks, Zynga, Fusion-io and Infoblox, as well as the sale of Q1 Labs to IBM and Goldman Sachs’ investment in Kno, Inc. Kristina graduated with a B.A. in Operations Research and Management Science from UC Berkeley.
CEO
In his role as Chief Executive Officer, Bert leads RSi’s global vision, strategic direction and business operations as one of the world’s leading SaaS technology providers serving CPG manufacturers and retailers. With nearly 30 years of technology and financial experience, Bert has deep expertise in business strategy and operations, and a strong track record of delivering long-term revenue and profit growth in highly competitive domestic and international markets. During the past year, Bert has spearheaded RSi’s growing partnership with Microsoft, the pioneering technology and cloud computing company. RSi is the exclusive point of sale (POS) data provider for the Microsoft Connected Supplier program, managing one of the world’s largest implementations of retail POS data in the Microsoft Azure cloud. Prior to joining RSi, Bert was the CFO for Metric Stream, the market leader in enterprise-wide governance, risk, compliance, and quality management solutions. Prior to that, he was COO for Atrenta, one of the largest private companies in the electronic design automation industry, which was sold successfully to Synopsys in 2015. Earlier in his career, Bert worked at Verisign and the global accounting and consulting firm Price Waterhouse.
Bert holds a Bachelor’s degree in Accounting from George Washington University and is fluent in French and Italian.
Co-Founder and Board Member
Jonathan Golovin is a co-founder of Retail Solutions. Jon played a key role in the development and implementation of RSi’s strategy and was President and CEO of RSi from 1999 – 2016. Previous to RSi, Jon was the founder and chairman of Consilium Inc., (now Applied Materials), the world’s largest independent Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) company. He is also the founder and former CEO of Vigilance, a leading event management system. Considered “the father of MES,” Jon received the 2000 SEMI Award for his contributions. He holds a B.S. from Cornell University and a Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
In his spare time, Jon enjoys global travels with his wife and exploring various cultures.
Managing Director, Investor Growth Capital
Noah Walley serves as Managing Director for Investor Growth Capital. Since joining the team in 2003, Noah has led IGC’s information technology investing activities in North America. Noah focuses on software and technology-based services investments with distinctive expertise in SaaS delivery models, enterprise-grade functionality for SMBs and software solutions for specific vertical markets.
Noah has been an active, technology-focused venture capital investor since for over 15 years. Prior to joining IGC, Noah spent five years as a General Partner with Morgan Stanley Venture Partners and four years with McKinsey & Company where he worked with technology and healthcare clients. He began his career as an investment banker at N M Rothschild & Sons.
Noah received a B.A. in History and an M.A. First Class from Oxford University, as well as a J.D. (Order of the Coif) from Stanford University Law School.
Partner, Red Rock Ventures
Bob Todd is an entrepreneur with 20 years of experience with technology companies. He has founded or been a founding investor/director in several startups, two of which are now public companies with combined annual sales in excess of $6 billion. Bob’s operating experience includes 10 years as a founder and CEO of Flextronics, and five years as the CEO of CAS, Inc. Bob has an M.B.A. from Stanford University and an A.B. in statistics from Princeton University.
Board Observer - Managing Director, Sapphire Ventures
Andreas Weiskam joined the investment team at Sapphire Ventures in 2006 and since has led several investments. He serves as a board director/observer at iovation, Lavante, Retail Solutionsand Scytl. Other current investments includeDocuSign, iTAC and Onventis. Prior to Sapphire Ventures, Andreas held business development roles at SAP, co-developing the SAP enterprise services community and leading reseller partnerships with Virsa Systems and Mercury Interactive among others. Before SAP, he co-founded Zadu, a venture-backed instant messaging startup.
Andreas holds a Diplom-Kaufmann (graduate business degree) from the University of Hamburg, Germany and an MLitt with distinction in management, economics and politics from the University of St. Andrews, Scotland. Andreas is a Kauffman Fellow and has lived in Stockholm, Hamburg, Munich and San Francisco. He is based in London.