Dave Asprey

Internet industry

January 1999 – November 2010 (11 years 11 months)

For larger companies, I do strategy consulting, in industries where I have deep domain expertise. Typical projects involve implementing usage based pricing, virtual appliance strategy, cloud strategy, WAN optimization,or market messaging. Clients have included publicly traded software companies and telecoms.

For revenue-stage startups, I focus on target market, messaging, and business development strategy, and often write a white paper or two. I also conduct sales training or speak at lead generation events. I recently trained all the salespeople for a division of a large telecom - the topic was how to understand and sell cloud computing.

For pre-revenue startups, I help entrepreneurs translate what they do into venture-fundable presentations, then I help them connect with the right VC investors. There is usually also a good dose of strategy, marketing, and market segmentation in the mix. A recent client was a Kleiner Perkins backed startup, where I transformed the existing product into a cloud-connected service model.

Clients are in mostly in the cloud, SaaS, virtualization, VDI, WAN optimization, networking, and health/wellness industries. I am very well networked at senior levels in these industries, and I bring this network to my clients.

I am on the advisory boards of 3 prominent VCs and quite a few startups and I even sat on IBM's advisory board for a while.

I am a (currently not investing) angel investor in tech startups. One of my recent investments was followed by Battery, Sierra, and Canaan, and others have been acquired by IBM and Sun.

At this time, I am working with startups and VCs as a board member, advisor, or consultant. Open to equity-only arrangements for the right people.

Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Health, Wellness and Fitness industry

June 2010 – September 2010 (4 months)

I discovered this interesting company (originally called Pulsetracer, now called Basis) while I was an EIR at Trinity Ventures. As one of 3 co-founders, we absorbed a Canadian entity that had developed some IP around heart rate monitoring from the wrist.

The goal was to create a consumer-focused cloud-based health and wellness service with social gaming mechanics to motivate behavior change around heart rate, exercise levels, amount of stress, quality of sleep, etc.

I joined to focus on R&D, technology operations, and strategy, but spent most of my time on venture fundraising and product use cases. The company was eventually funded by Norwest and DCM after I left.

Partnership; 11-50 employees; Venture Capital & Private Equity industry

January 2010 – April 2010 (4 months)

Completed Trinity's 3 month EIR program where I identified new areas of investment in cloud computing, virtualization, infrastructure, SaaS, etc. Met with early stage tech companies seeking venture funding, and networked with some of the best and brightest entrepreneurs and technologists with the potential to create the next big thing, now or later.

EIR programs are particularly powerful because they let you see the inner workings of venture capital, making you that much more effective in fundraising and managing your board later. My thanks to Trinity for a very impactful experience!

Public Company; 1001-5000 employees; bcsi; Computer Networking industry

November 2008 – January 2010 (1 year 3 months)

I had 3 primary responsibilities at Blue Coat.

I was Blue Coat's primary spokesperson and evangelist, working frequently with press and analysts, communicating and shaping technology strategy for Application Delivery Networking. Internally, I worked with product and engineering teams to take advantage of disruptive technologies like virtualization, cloud computing, and SaaS. I was one of the core team of 5 people who created Blue Coat's SaaS strategy.

I lead the team responsible for all business development activities, including relationships with Microsoft, VMware, Brocade, Symantec, HP, Dell, Tandberg, Polycom, Adobe, RSA, etc., along with the broader Technology Integration Partner program. I grew the team to focus on the Blue Coat relationships with Oracle and SAP. In a recent quarter, my team was responsible for $6 million in co-selling, $5 million in reselling, and renegotiating royalties to save ~$1.25m. We generated more than $11,000 net revenue per hour spent on Business Development!

I founded the Application Delivery Alliance to help F5, Cisco, Citrix, Brocade, Blue Coat and other companies reduce customer confusion around Application Delivery, expanding the market and reducing sales cycle time.

I was also responsible for corporate development (M&A) activities across the company, including creating and delivering M&A business cases, performing diligence, and evaluating deals, both inbound from bankers, and outbound strategic opportunities.

Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Computer Software industry

July 2007 – September 2008 (1 year 3 months)

Zeus is in the application delivery industry, aka load balancing. Competitors include F5 Networks, Cisco, Citrix, Foundry. Zeus sells software, virtualization-based appliances, and hardware. 50-100 employees, UK based, revenues <$50m, growth rate >50%.

I joined Zeus as VP Technology Strategy, a CTO-like role, but was promoted to VP Marketing. My UK/US team was responsible for strategy, product management, product marketing, pricing, channel marketing, and marketing communications

Key accomplishments:
•Positioned the company to take advantage of cloud computing, creating innovative utility-based pricing that differentiated Zeus from hardware players, resulted in several cloud service providers proactively contacting us, and more than 140 hardware appliances being replaced with Zeus software
•Positioned Zeus as the only privately held ADC company to make it in Gartner's prestigious Magic Quadrant
•Major new product release at Interop

Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Medical Devices industry

May 2007 – August 2008 (1 year 4 months)

Corventis was the first company I found that was bringing health monitoring to the cloud; I started consulting with them when they were still incubating in Kleiner's offices on Sand Hill. I architected the flow of data from the Corventis device through a gateway, to various wired and wireless networks, to the data center, through a multi-tenant SaaS front end, to back-end software for health analytics, reporting, and storage.

I also wrote the RFP for the first Corventis SaaS / cloud software development project, a project worth >$1m. I designed the deployment architecture for the data center components (apps, OS, servers, networking, storage, provisioning, monitoring, change management, etc.) and ran a selection process to choose an outsourced technical operations team and hosting platform, a contract worth >$500k. This was an advisory role, not a full time job.

Public Company; 1001-5000 employees; CTXS; Computer Software industry

December 2004 – May 2007 (2 years 6 months)

I owned the strategic planning function for Citrix's $700M Virtualization Systems Group, reporting directly to the CTO. I focused on desktop virtualization and SaaS business and technology models. I also ran early product marketing efforts for the launch of Citrix Desktop Server and the Citrix Dynamic Desktop Initiative, a cross-vendor desktop virtualization initiative to encourage interactivity between VMware, XenSource, Citrix, and ecosystem partners. I moved to this position at Citrix after leading technical due diligence for the Application Networking Group (NetScaler) to acquire and integrate Orbital Data, resulting in the creation of the WANScaler product line. Total time spent at Citrix/NetScaler was about 3 years, spanning product management and strategy across the networking and virtualization business units.

Public Company; 1001-5000 employees; CTXS; Computer Software industry

July 2005 – July 2006 (1 year 1 month)

Citrix acquired NetScaler, where I was Dir of Prod Mgt - described in that section.

Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Computer Networking industry

December 2004 – July 2006 (1 year 8 months)

I managed the product feature set for optimization functions including WAN optimization, caching, network compression, application acceleration, performance monitoring, and TCP optimization.

Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Internet industry

March 2003 – August 2004 (1 year 6 months)

Created FlexComputing, the first service in the CDN industry able to run any application on any OS, resulting in about $2.5 million in sales, arguably one of the first cloud computing services to be launched, combining virtualization and data center automation
2 patents filed
Created SpeedRank, a KeyNote-like index comparing performance of 100 public web sites across 5 verticals that generated hundreds of leads
Full web site redesign through outsourcing to India
Various other product management and product marketing duties including writing white papers, creating presentations, service pricing, cost modeling, financial modeling, etc.
Thought leadership through data center markup language (DCML) standards body work

Public Company; 5001-10,000 employees; CW.; Telecommunications industry

September 2001 – March 2003 (1 year 7 months)

Cable & Wireless acquired Exodus Communications; please see my description under Exodus Communications. My total time at the combined Exodus entities was slightly more than 6 years.

Public Company; 1001-5000 employees; EXDS; Information Technology and Services industry

October 1998 – March 2003 (4 years 6 months)

I developed technology strategy, identified opportunities, and worked cross-functionally to execute investment, partnering and acquisition transactions. I met with >100 early startups who would have an impact on the internet infrastructure space.

I created, funded, and helped launch the Performance on Demand service, one of the 1st working examples of utility computing and data center automation, a predecessor to modern cloud computing.

I was a founder of the Professional Services Group, which grew to 1200 people generating >$200m annually. This was a major intrapreneurial effort that was not tied into the hosting business until we had a $17m run rate. I personally architected approximately 100 large scale internet sites as a consultant.

I also served as Exodus' primary technology spokesperson for press and analysts, and conducted dozens of interviews with the media & spoke at conferences (including ISPCon, WebHeads, TIE, Giga Middleware Conferences, VC events, Comdex, etc.)

Educational Institution; 1001-5000 employees; Higher Education industry

October 1997 – March 2002 (4 years 6 months)

I managed the Web & Internet Systems Engineering Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz office in Silicon Valley. In addition to setting curriculum and hiring instructors, I created five different classes, including:
*Web Systems Architecture & Protocols
*E-business Product Technology Survey
*Hands on Web Site Systems Administration
*Business Class Internet
*ASP Architecture
Each class lasted 10 weeks with up to 30 hours of lecture, and I taught up to 16 classes per year on evenings and weekends. The classes were for working professionals; 90% of whom had advanced degrees already. I believe the total number of professionals who have attended one of my classes is about 1500 people.

Teaching is the best way I know of to really learn a new subject. I am grateful to have been able to spend so much time teaching so many smart people - I'm sure they taught me as much as I taught them.

I would love to teach again sometime.

Public Company; 5001-10,000 employees; COMS; Computer Networking industry

May 1997 – October 1998 (1 year 6 months)

I went to 3Com to architect a web interface for their SAP installation. I ended up working on high-end web search engines, log file analysis, web content management, document management, and intranets. Wrote code when needed. I spent a lot of time on EAI solutions, particularly with TIBCO before they went public. I brought CIOs from Fortune 500 companies into 3Com and demonstrated our TIBCO installation, increasing 3Com sales by $10 million, and adding many marquee customers for TIBCO. I was also part of a deal where 3Com embedded TIBCO's protocol into 3Com NICs.

1995 – 1997 (2 years)

Ran all network and Windows servers for a mid sized food brokerage. Built the first intranet in the industry and used it to integrate the 7 companies that we acquired in one year. Built a frame relay & ISDN network to connect a dozen locations. Ran all desktop support operations for 500+ users in 3 states. Implemented Citrix. Introduced email to the company and deployed Lotus Notes. Other normal IT duties including EAI, vendor negotiation, VAR management, light coding, license management, monitoring, etc.

1995 – 1997 (2 years)

See the Brandshaw North description - SalesMark bought Bradshaw North.

1995 – 1997 (2 years)

PC support manager for 500+ seats in about 10 buildings in a hospital and healthcare setting in one metro area. Responsible for all desktop installs, purchasing, and helpdesk support. Ran GroupWise servers and Novell servers.

January 1995 – December 1996 (2 years)

I wrote articles on early internet technologies for PC Novice, PC Today, Home Office Computing, and other magazines. I specialized in "how to use the Internet" articles, and I contributed to early books on Internet marketing. I wrote a review of Netscape 1.0 vs NCSA Mosiaic that was published nationally!

January 1992 – December 1995 (4 years)

I paid my way through my undergraduate studies in Computer Science by selling caffeine T-shirts over the Internet to more than a dozen countries. This was long before the Internet was commercialized, before spam, before Amazon, and even before AOL could spell "Internet." I was profiled in Entrepreneur Magazine, and about 40 or 50 other national publications, including Home Office Computing and The Miami Herald. I was probably one of the first 10 Internet entrepreneurs. Too bad I couldn't even spell "VC" back then...