Phil Garfinkle

Venture Advisor

Phil Garfinkle is a Venture Advisor with Gabriel assisting with deal sourcing, due diligence and value-add particularly for the Mid-Atlantic region. Phil is a highly successful technology visionary, bringing a wealth of experience as an entrepreneur, CEO, and investor, with a focus on emerging applications for disruptive technologies. He has been a three-time successful entrepreneur, held a number of management and engineering positions, is an active angel investor, and holds many patents. In addition to joining Gabriel, Phil is an active angel investor in a number of technology companies. Prior to Gabriel, he was a founder of Yazam, a global VC firm, which was sold to US Technologies. Phil founded PhotoNet Japan, which went public in 2002. Phil also founded PictureVision (Chairman & CEO), which was sold to Kodak, where he also served as a General Manager and in the CTO's office. In addition he has helped several startups raise capital, often as an angel investor and acting CEO. His operating experience also includes CTO/VP Engineering at Network Imaging, VP Information Technologies at ASG, and several positions at Teledyne and Comsat. Phil currently serves on four boards: A21, and Planet Cotton, and has previously served on the boards of KMSI, Toymax (sold to JAKK), Selis Networks, and EPAC. He is also active in several charities, including the Boys & Girls Club and a local charity thrift shop, The Closet.

 

B.V. Jagadeesh

Venture Advisor

B.V. Jagadeesh is a Venture Advisor with Gabriel assisting with deal sourcing, due diligence and value-add. He is currently the Group Vice President and General Manager of Citrix Systems' Application Networking Group. He joined Netscaler as CEO in 2000 while serving as a Venture Partner for Gabriel, in order to take a more active role in managing the investment. Netscaler grew to become the market leader in Application Delivery Systems and was acquired by Citrix for $325M in 2005. Prior to Netscaler, Jagadeesh co-founded Exodus Communications in 1994, which achieved an IPO and became the leader in the Internet Web co-location business for mission-critical Internet applications. He helped attract venture funding for NexPrise, which offers next-generation Extranet solutions for businesses, and co-founded VPNET Technologies in 1995, a pioneer in virtual private networking technologies acquired by Avaya. Jagadeesh led strategic product design for 3Com and Novell, and was the chairman of Networld + Interop's 1994 and 1995 Engineer's Conference held in Las Vegas. He served as a director of Arula Systems (merged with Raritan, expected to IPO in 2006), Instantis, and on the advisory boards of Tellngo, Tiara Networks (acquired by Nortel) and Mayan Networks.

Mr. Jagadeesh received his Master's degree in Computer Science Engineering from the University of Bombay, India and his Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from the Bangalore University, India.

 

ZQ Shr

Venture Advisor

ZQ Shr is the Managing Director of Go To Market Partners, a sales consulting firm that specializes in helping international companies expand into China. Prior to co-founding GTM Partners, ZQ was General Manager and Chief Representative of Phone.com China and then Openwave China. Before Openwave, ZQ was Sales Manager, Director of Alliances, and then General Manager of Motorola's North Asian Personal Networking Group. ZQ also held leading positions at Volt Information Sciences and Ones & Zeros Software after his academic career as Professor of Linguistics at both Swarthmore and Smith Colleges. ZQ graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a Ph. D in linguistics.