Involver - Social Marketing Software

Our Team

Don Beck

Don Beck, CEO

Don Beck knows how to motivate. He has a track record of success in executive roles with IBM, J. D. Edwards, Adobe, and Postini, meeting annual sales targets of over $700 million at traditional enterprise software and Software-as-a-Service organizations. With 30 years experience in turn-around, high-growth and market-leadership companies, Don specializes in operational management and re-structuring sales departments for effectiveness, efficiency, better industry alignment, and strict process discipline. At Postini, Don directed a worldwide sales expansion, growing the company into one of the largest SaaS-based vendors before its sale to Google. Don received his MBA from Miami University and has served as a board member for numerous business and educational institutions. In 1995, 1996 and 1997, “Denver Business Journal” recognized him as one of Colorado’s most influential business leaders.

Rahim Fazal

Rahim Fazal, Chief Strategist and Co-Founder

Rahim Fazal is Chief Strategist and Co-Founder at Involver where he focuses on business development, product strategy, recruiting and evangelism. He is a three-time company co-founder, including a web-hosting company he sold for $1.5 million dollars while taking his senior year final exams during high school. He then started a web services platform business and eventually took it public, becoming one of the youngest directors of a publicly traded company in the United States. Rahim completed his MBA at the Richard Ivey School of Business, the top ranked business school in Canada, and was the youngest student in the school’s 80-year history to be accepted without a prerequisite undergraduate degree. He is a frequent and popular speaker to high school and college students across the U.S. and Canada and also an advisor to the Extreme Entrepreneurship Education Corporation in New York City. Rahim currently sits on the Direct Marketing Association's Social Media Council. He has been named one of America’s "Top 30 Entrepreneurs Under 30" by Inc. Magazine, and one of the "Top 25 Digital Thought-Leaders" by iMedia.

Noah Horton

Noah Horton, CTO and Co-Founder

Noah Horton is responsible for Involver’s technology strategy, investments and operations. Prior to this, he was the software architect for NeoEdge Networks, an in-game advertising business where he was responsible for developing many of the company’s ad products. Noah has held positions at Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, and Sun Microsystems. He has filed more than 25 patents and published articles on development techniques in widely read publications, including the Java Developer’s Journal. In September 2008, Inc. Magazine named Noah one of America’s “Top 30 Entrepreneurs Under 30.”

Roland Smart

Roland Smart, Vice President, Marketing

Roland Smart oversees product marketing and strategy for Involver. Smart offers a broad range of experience with social technology and advertising, having led the marketing team at Sprout/AdVine, a leading social/mobile ad creation platform. In addition, he led the marketing team at Adaptive Path, where he pursued his passion for bringing great user experience to enterprise-level technology platforms.

Tanmoy Chowdhury

Tanmoy Chowdhury, Vice President, Finance

Tanmoy Chowdhury is responsible for all financial activities at Involver, including accounting, cash flow, contracts, compensation, and reporting. A CPA with over 19 years of global experience, education and deep financial expertise in the IT sector, Tanmoy was Senior Vice President, Head of Corporate Planning and Finance at Patni Computer Systems prior to Involver, and was instrumental in their acquisition and all of their M & A deals. As Head of Corporate Planning, his achievements include consistently meeting revenue targets and successfully stewarding companies through economic changes by forecasting early and making necessary changes.

Tyler Willis

Dominic Zuccarini, VP Channels; Head of Sales

Dominic Zuccarini runs Involver’s sales organization and oversees all sales, account management, and inside sales. He also initiated the strategy and launch of Involver’s agency channel. Prior to his work at Involver, he served as CEO of Paraprint, a provider of packaging to the pharmaceutical and medical device industries. Dominic brings over 14 years experience in SaaS marketing, including a key role in revenue generation for Doubleclick. He also spent six years in a senior revenue-generating role at RightNow Technologies, a leader in SaaS CRM, and was instrumental in their successful IPO in 2003. During his tenure at RightNow, Dominic worked with companies of all sizes to help them analyze and optimize their sales, support, and marketing organization structure and process.

Eran Cedar

Eran Cedar, Vice President, Engineering

Eran Cedar is the VP of Engineering responsible for product development, operations, and support at Involver. For the last 3 years, Eran has architected and developed many of the core components of the Involver platform upon which today’s applications are built. Apart from his strong technical background, he is an expert in agile development practices, managing cross-functional product teams that consistently deliver products of high quality and with high morale. Eran has over 11 years of industry experience and has held software engineer and management roles at Angie’s List, Amazon.com, and SanDisk. He founded a local review Facebook application company in 2007 which sold to Angie's List in 2008. Eran graduated from UC Berkeley with bachelors degrees in Computer Science and Economics.

Kevin Kunz

Kevin Kunz, Vice President, Solution Services

Kevin Kunz is a dynamic and charismatic professional with over 20 years in Software Development and IT industries. Kevin joined Involver, in its social journey, as Vice President of Solution Services after 13 amazing years directing an international solution engineering team at Adobe Corporation. Kevin is highly effective at driving operational discipline in order to achieve revenue goals. He understands the challenges of building large global technical teams that understand the balance between technology and selling. Trained in “Solution Selling”, “Territory Account Selling “, and “Value Selling beyond the product”, he is highly effective at coaching his team at eliciting a prospect’s critical business issues and matching these to a product’s capabilities. Kevin has a B.S. in Marketing, Magna Cum Laude, from Rider University.

Bessemer

About Bessemer

Bessemer Venture Partners is a global investment group with offices in Silicon Valley, Boston, New York, Mumbai and Tel Aviv. One of the oldest venture-capital practices in the United States, BVP has partnered as an active, hands-on investor in Ciena, LinkedIn, Postini, Skype, Staples, VeriSign, W.R. Grace and Yelp. More than 100 Bessemer-funded companies have gone public on exchanges in Canada, India, London and the United States. To learn more, visit http://bvp.com.

Cervin

About Cervin Ventures

Cervin Ventures offers a unique new value added approach to early stage technology investing. Cervin Ventures has been founded by a team of successful ex-entrepreneurs who are uniquely positioned to capitalize on existing trends in technology. http://cervinventures.com.

Western Technology Investment

About Western Technology Investment

Founded in 1980, WTI is exclusively focused on venture debt and has substantial follow-on capacity for portfolio companies at all stages of development. Transactions range from $500 thousand to $25 million for early to late stage companies. Previous portfolio companies include Juniper Networks, Brocade Communications Systems, Google, Cerent, Infoseek, IDEC Pharmaceuticals, Facebook, IronPort Systems, Volcano Corporation, and many others. WTI has completed over 800 financing commitments totaling over $2.4 billion since inception. Western Technology Investment is headquartered in San Jose, California. http://westerntech.com.

Byron Deeter

Byron Deeter

Partner, Bessemer Venture Partner

Byron Deeter, a partner in Bessemer’s Menlo Park, Calif. office, joined the firm in 2005. At Bessemer, he focuses on investments in the cloud-computing and Internet sectors.

His investments at Bessemer include leading companies in online B2B marketing (Bizo); social-marketing platforms (Involver); enterprise talent management (Cornerstone OnDemand, IPO); online personalized retargeting (Criteo); marketing automation (Eloqua); financial-management and accounting applications (Intacct Corp.); social gaming (Playdom, acquired by Disney); cloud communications (Twilio); and retail business intelligence (Retail Solutions).

Prior to joining Bessemer, Byron was a successful entrepreneur, investor and consultant. He most recently worked as an executive at IBM after the company’s 2004 acquisition of Trigo Technologies, the cloud-computing company he co-founded in 1999. At Trigo, Byron served as founding president & CEO,then became vice-president of business development as the company grew to profitability, amassed 150 employees and logged a $40+ million revenue run-rate. Bessemer worked closely with Byron and the executive team after Trigo's founding and invested in all institutional financing rounds.

Prior to Trigo, Byron worked in private equity with TA Associates, where he focused on the software sector and invested in companies such as Kintana (acquired by Mercury Interactive). He came to TA from McKinsey & Co., where he was involved with Fortune 500 clients in the media and technology industries, and was active in McKinsey's innovation and technology-management practice.

Byron holds a B.A. degree with honors from U.C. Berkeley in political economy. He was named a California Emerging Leader Scholar and an Alumni Scholar, and was avarsity member of Cal's national championship rugby team. Byron is the author of "Bessemer's 10 Laws of Cloud Computing and SaaS" and has been named one of the ten "Thought Leaders of the SaaS Revolution."

Preetish Nijhawan

Preetish Nijhawan

Managing Director, Cervin Ventures

Preetish Nijhawan is Managing Director of Cervin Ventures. Most recently, Preetish was Chief Financial Officer for Neon Enterprise Software. Before that, Preetish was Vice President of Strategic Alliances at NeoEdge Networks, a video game advertising company. Preetish was also Vice President, Portfolio and Program Management for BMC Software. Prior to BMC, he was Vice President, Operations of iVita Corporation, an asset management software startup he helped found.

Preetish has advised senior executives in hardware, software and telecom industries for McKinsey and Company. He co-founded Akamai Technologies (NASDAQ: AKAM) in 1998, He also worked for nearly six years in the Electronic Design Automation (EDA) division at Intel in various engineering and program management roles. Preetish earned a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, India, a Master’s degree in Computer Engineering from The University of Southern California, and an MBAfrom MIT Sloan School of Management.

Steve Walske

Steve Walske

Managing Director, Myriad Investments, LLC

Steve is a Managing Director of Myriad Investments, LLC, a private equity firm specializing in investments in software companies. From 2000 to 2005, he served as Chief Business Strategist of Parametric Technology Corporation, a supplier of mechanical design and manufacturing software, and served as Chief Executive Officer from 1986 to 2000 and as Chairman from 1994 to 2000. Steve also serves as a member of the board of directors of Endeca Technologies, Inc., firstRain, Inc., and Synopsys, Incorporated, and as a member of the advisory board at Ampersand Ventures and SpaceClaim Corp.. He holds Bachelor of Arts from Princeton University and a Master of Business Administration from Harvard Business School.

Alnoor Shivji

Alnoor Shivji

Chief Executive Officer and President, Chairman of the Board

Wafergen Biosystems, Inc.

Mr. Shivji is a co-founder of WaferGen and has served as its Chief Executive Officer since April 1, 2003, and as Chairman of the Board since October 2002. Between December 2003 and July 2006, he was the Investment Director at VPSA, Inc. in Paris, France, and between October 2001 and February 2002, he was the President and CEO of Redwave Networks, Inc. From April 2001 to August 2001, Mr. Shivji was President of Metro Switching Division of Ciena Corp. Between August 1998 and March 2001, he was the Founder, President and CEO of Cyras Systems. He co-founded Fiberlane Communications, Inc. and was President of Fiberlane Communications (Canada), Inc. from December 1996 to April 1998.

Mr. Shivji also co-founded Osiware, an enterprise software company sold to Infonet Services Corporation, which was later bought by BT Group plc. Currently, he is a General Partner with Global Asset Capital, a venture capital firm with which he has been associated since March 2002, and has a long history advising and investing in Silicon Valley startups. Mr. Shivji has a BS degree from University of British Columbia.

Don Beck

Don Beck, CEO

Don Beck knows how to motivate. He has a track record of success in executive roles with IBM, J. D. Edwards, Adobe, and Postini, meeting annual sales targets of over $700 million at traditional enterprise software and Software-as-a-Service organizations.

With 30 years experience in turn-around, high-growth and market-leadership companies, Don specializes in operational management and re-structuring sales departments for effectiveness, efficiency, better industry alignment, and strict process discipline. At Postini, Don directed a worldwide sales expansion, growing the company into one of the largest SaaS-based vendors before its sale to Google.

Don received his MBA from Miami University and has served as a board member for numerous business and educational institutions. In 1995, 1996 and 1997, “Denver Business Journal” recognized him as one of Colorado’s most influential business leaders.

He loves to paint the San Francisco fog.

Rahim Fazal

Rahim Fazal, Chief Strategist and Co-Founder

Rahim Fazal is Chief Strategist and Co-Founder at Involver where he focuses on business development, product strategy, recruiting and evangelism. He is a three-time company co-founder, including a web-hosting company he sold for $1.5 million dollars while taking his senior year final exams during high school. He then started a web services platform business and eventually took it public, becoming one of the youngest directors of a publicly traded company in the United States. Rahim completed his MBA at the Richard Ivey School of Business, the top ranked business school in Canada, and was the youngest student in the school’s 80-year history to be accepted without a prerequisite undergraduate degree. He is a frequent and popular speaker to high school and college students across the U.S. and Canada and also an advisor to the Extreme Entrepreneurship Education Corporation in New York City. Rahim currently sits on the Direct Marketing Association's Social Media Council. He has been named one of America’s "Top 30 Entrepreneurs Under 30" by Inc. Magazine, and one of the "Top 25 Digital Thought-Leaders" by iMedia.

Noah Horton

Noah Horton, CTO and Co-Founder

Noah Horton is responsible for Involver’s technology strategy, investments and operations. Prior to this, he was the software architect for NeoEdge Networks, an in-game advertising business where he was responsible for developing many of the company’s ad products. Noah has held positions at Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, and Sun Microsystems. He has filed more than 25 patents and published articles on development techniques in widely read publications, including the Java Developer’s Journal. In September 2008, Inc. Magazine named Noah one of America’s “Top 30 Entrepreneurs Under 30.”