ADVISORS
Fraser Black Fraser Black is Managing Partner at Pioneer Square Investments, an investment company focused on early stage startups and real estate projects in the Pacific Northwest. He has over 20 years of financial and general management experience in high-growth businesses. Between 1995 and 1998, he served as CFO and Vice President Operations at ONYX Software (NASD, ONYX-merged), a CRM enterprise software firm. Prior to ONYX, he was a Partner of Black and Pollnow, a private equity investment company specializing in the security alarm and technology sectors. From 1988 to 1990, Mr. Black served as Assistant to the President at Ashton-Tate, a software publisher of dBase, where he also served as Group Manager of Customer Service and Sales Support. Mr. Black was a Financial Analyst at Salomon Brothers in the Investment Banking Division from 1983 to 1986. Fraser has an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business and an AB, Cum Laude from Harvard College.
Kevin Doren is an advisor to Divergent Ventures II and is a Managing Director of Divergent Ventures I. He has a technical background (BSE in Computer Science & Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, 1978) and has extensive experience starting and managing high-technology companies. In 1983 he co-founded Equinox Systems Inc., a manufacturer of data communications equipment, which went public and was later acquired, serving as VP Engineering and VP Advanced Technology. In 1987 he co-founded GO Corporation, a pioneer of pen computing which was chronicled in the book “Startup” , serving as VP Engineering and VP Advanced Technology. While with Paul Allen’s organization from 1993 to 1998, Mr. Doren started at Interval Research, Mr. Allen’s Palo Alto-based business incubator and research facility, and moved to the Paul Allen Group in 1995 to focus exclusively on venture capital investment and management of portfolio companies. He was a director of WebTV Networks Inc. (acquired by Microsoft) and Transmeta Corp. (now public). During 1997 and 1998, he also served as CEO of Cardinal Technologies, a company majority-owned by Mr. Allen, and its spin-off Red Wing Corporation.
Mr. Doren has been an active early-stage venture investor, and is typically one of a company’s first outside investors or directors. He was a director of 4thpass Inc., (a developer of software for wireless communications) until it was sold to Motorola, he was a director of Zetta Systems, Inc. (a developer of software for disaster recovery of storage servers) before it was sold to Overland Storage, and he is currently a director of Hyperquality, Inc. (a provider of quality management services and software for call centers).
Tom Evslin Tom Evslin is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for the State of Vermont. Tom is a member of the Board of Directors of the Vermont Telecommunications Authority and the Clean Energy Development Fund.
Immediately prior to becoming CTO, Evslin was Chief Recovery Officer for the State of Vermont responsible for the startup phase of the Office of Economic Stimulus and Recovery. In 1981 and 1982, he was Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Transportation. Tom’s civic career began as Town Moderator in Worcester, Vermont in the 1970s.
Tom ran a software business in Vermont for many years before going to work for Microsoft, where he was responsible for communication products. He went on to work at AT&T where he founded AT&T’s first Internet business, WorldNet. In 1997 Tom and his wife, Mary Evslin, founded ITXC, which was a pioneer in the use of the Internet for phone calls. The company grew to be one of the world’s largest wholesale carriers of international calls, went public in 1999, and is now part of Indian telecommunications giant Tata Communications.
Evslin is listed as an inventor on eight US patents and is the author of hackoff.com: an historical mystery set in the Internet bubble and rubble
Pradeep Singh founded Aditi Technologies in 1994 after nine years in various management positions at Microsoft, including General Manager of the Windows 95 mobile services group. He is also the founder of Talisma, a CRM software product company. Pradeep previously held engineering and marketing positions at Texas Instruments and McKinsey & Company.
Since founding Aditi, his focus has been on building world-class products and teams for software businesses worldwide. Among other honors, Pradeep has received IIT Delhi’s Distinguished Alumni Service Award (2006) and has been recognized as a Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum (Davos). He also serves as an Advisory Board Member of Grameen Technology Foundation.Corporation. 27+ yrs Engineering & Management. B.S. – IIT Delhi, MBA – Harvard
Chris Wheeler is an advisor and long time contributor to Divergent Ventures. Over a 20 year career in technology and communication services, Chris has served in various C-Level positions using his extensive experience to help build and manage both private and public companies through all stages of growth. He is one of the founders and original engineering and chief operating executive of Internap Network Services (NASDAQ:INAP), as well founding Network Clarity and InterGlobe Networks.
Most recently Chris was the COO of GridNetworks, an internet television infrastructure company (sold to Global Media Services in March 2009). As a veteran technology and business entrepreneur, Chris has extensive experience in technology, product and service commercialization in the areas of network and systems software, management, deployment and network applications stretching back to 1989 with the engineering and deployment of the Northwest’s original Internet service provider, NorthWestNet, sponsored by the National Science Foundation and co-managed with the University of Washington. Chris holds several patents and is a recipient of the 2001 ComputerWorld/Smithsonian award for networking technology advancement.