2007 Purdue–Silicon Valley Symposia
Everything You Wanted to Know About Venture Capital
Rich Redelfs (Foundation Capital), David Liddle (USVP), Luis Arzubi (Tallwood Venture Capital), Eric Zimits (Granite Ventures)
Rich Redelfs
General Partner
Foundation Capital
(Panel Moderator)
Rich Redelfs joined Foundation Capital after 20-plus years in networking and communications, bringing a combination of startup entrepreneurial as well as large-company intrapreneurial experience. Most recently he was president and CEO of Atheros Communications. He built the company into the leading provider of Wi-Fi wireless semiconductors and “Silicon Valley's Fastest Growing Private Company” as determined by the Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal and PricewaterhouseCoopers for the 2001 to 2003 period. In 2003 Redelfs received Frost & Sullivan’s prestigious “Wireless LAN CEO of the Year” award. He is a graduate of Purdue University and Harvard Business School.
David Liddle
General Partner
USVP
David Liddle joined U.S. Venture Partners in January 2000 after retiring as president and CEO of business incubator Interval Research Corporation. Prior to co-founding Interval with Paul Allen, Liddle founded and served as CEO of Metaphor, which was acquired by IBM in 1991, where he became vice president of business development for IBM Personal Systems. Liddle’s extensive experience in research and development includes 10 years at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). He has been a director of Sybase, Broderbund Software, Borland International, and Ticketmaster, and is currently on the board of the New York Times Company. Liddle graduated from the University of Michigan and the University of Toledo.
Luis Arzubi
General Partner
Tallwood Venture Capital
Luis Arzubi’s vast past experience—more than 30 years in various engineering, management, and executive roles with IBM—brings a distinctive and valuable technologist and customer point of view to Tallwood Venture Capital’s practice. Before joining Tallwood, Arzubi was a member of the executive team for IBM’s Microelectronics Division. Most recently he served as vice president and general manager for the division, where he was responsible for all of the semiconductor business segments. During the 1990s he played the key role in moving IBM Microelectronics into the OEM business and making it succeed. Arzubi is a graduate of the National University of Littoral in Argentina.
Eric Zimits
Managing Director
Granite Ventures
After spending a long career in finance and investments with a focus on the communications sector, Eric Zimits joined Granite Ventures in 2000 to focus on investing in early-stage communications and components companies. Prior to Granite, he was managing director and head of the Communications Research Group at Hambrecht & Quist (later Chase H&Q), where he sponsored several venture capital investments, including: Amber Networks, acquired by Nokia; InterNAP; Paragon Software, acquired by Openwave; WavTrace, acquired by Harris Corporation; and VocalData, acquired by Tekelec. He is a graduate of Purdue University and Tulane University’s A.B. Freeman School of Business.