The Team
MANAGEMENT
CK Singla, President and CEO
With a professional career spanning 30 years, CK has co-founded two business transformation, ERP and business analytics consultancies, one with revenues of $100MM. His experience spans a variety of verticals, including process and discrete manufacturing, Pharmaceuticals, Chemicals, Foods, Electronics and Aerospace & defense. His last venture delivers software for the gig economy and is helping revitalize the business models of several customers. He has built teams of over 500 from the ground up and been an investor and advisor in several companies, 2 with successful exits. He is passionate about helping start-ups build differentiated products, cross the chasm, and scale. He holds an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Rob Loughan, Chairman
Rob has been a pioneer in software, telecommunications and renewable energy leading six successful startups from inception to multi-million dollar enterprises, with one being acquired for $3.2B(US) – Octane Software. Most recently, Rob founded Incroud, a social commerce platform sold to Veriown. Rob knows how to execute by assembling world-class teams and leading them to solve challenging problems with the vision for the right product at the right time. Through the Loughan Group Inc, his capital-investment firm, he helps identify and nurture businesses with high growth potential.
Michael Vestel, Ph.D., Chief Technical Officer, Technical Lead
Michael has over 25 years of experience working in world-class academic, corporate and research environments. He is known for his extensive scientific knowledge and business acumen in developing and delivering innovative system solutions. Prior to joining Flawless Photonics, Michael was CTO at Novasentis and prior to that principal scientist at SRI International where he led programs for the U.S. Department of Defense, DARPA, Department of Energy, and commercial clients. His projects at SRI included developing wind-powered underwater drones, power-generation, and drug-delivery devices. He has also worked at Applied Materials and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Michael holds a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley and M.S. from UCLA, both in materials science and engineering.
Doug Klotz, VP Product Marketing
Doug is a 25 year veteran of the Silicon Valley software and high technology community. After completing US Naval Nuclear Power School and doing a tour as US Navy nuclear submariner, Doug studied Astrophysics at UC Berkeley and landed in the software startup community during the Dot Com boom. Since then Doug has built and managed Sales, Marketing, and Operations in the US, EMEA, and Asia Pacific for 4 successful startups from early stage to revenue and successful exit, with the largest being the $3.2B acquisition of Octane Software.
ADVISORY BOARD
Jeffrey Bleich
Jeff Bleich Chairs the Board of PG&E Co. and serves as a special master in the U.S. District Court. He was formerly a partner at Dentons, a global law firm, and led its global consulting group. He has over three decades experience in resolving complex domestic and international disputes. He served as the U.S. Ambassador to Australia, and as Special Counsel to President Obama in the White House. For his federal service, Ambassador Bleich received numerous awards, including the Sue Cobb Medal, the State Department's highest award for a non-career ambassador. Mr. Bleich has taught several courses at UC Berkeley School of Law, and publishes extensively. He holds a B.A. magna cum laude from Amherst College, an M.P.P from Harvard with highest honors, a J.D. from the Univ. of California, Berkeley with highest honors.
Steve Ganyard
Steve is the President of Avascent Global Advisors, an advisory firm providing strategic advisory and consulting services to senior leaders in corporations, financial institutions, and governments worldwide. He is also an Emmy nominated on-air contributor on ABC news and was previously Deputy Assistant Secretary in the US Department of State and a Colonel in the United States Marine Corps. He holds a graduate degree from The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and a Bachelor’s from Northwestern University.
Rajiv Khemani
Rajiv Khemani is CEO & founder of Innovium, which delivers the world’s highest performance ethernet switch optimized for next-gen data centers. He has over 20 years of business management and leadership experience in startup and public companies. Previously Rajiv was COO of Cavium (nasdaq: CAVM), a leading cloud and mobile infrastructure solutions company. At Cavium, he held executive roles over a 10-year period leading marketing, sales, engineering & operations, helping the company achieve a successful IPO and a multi-billion dollar valuation. Rajiv also spent 5 years at Intel (nasdaq: INTC), where he was GM of Intel’s network processor business. Rajiv is also an investor in several infrastructure software startups and has served on the Management Board of the Stanford Business School. He holds an MBA from Stanford University, an MS CS from NYU and a BS in Computer Science & Engineering from IIT Delhi.