• As an EIR (Executive in Residence) – similar to a venture partner role – I attended hundreds of pitches by startups seeking funding, engaged in many “deep dive” due diligence tasks, and engaged in funding discussions with partners and other EIRs.
• Incubated multiple startups while an EIR, starting with Motegrity (Mobile Integrity) a startup focused on creating a trusted client/server computing model, and Wave Semiconductor, a startup addressing the high cost of ASIC (development) problem initially via the development of a Software Defined ASIC. I was to spin Wave out of Tallwood as founder & CEO.

I joined Tallwood in March of 2006 as an Executive-In-Residence (EIR) reporting to Dado Banatao, Tallwood’s managing partner. The Tallwood EIR is a Venture Partner type role where our responsibilities included attending company presentations, sourcing potential investments, performing due diligence, supporting portfolio companies, and engaging in lively investment discussions. The Tallwood EIR was not considered a “partner track” role, rather after 3 years or so the EIRs were expected to move on. Tallwood in turn, with the EIR turnover, received an influx of new perspective and executives that have been recently immersed in the current state of the industry.

Tallwood was an atypical VC in that they had one primary focus area – semiconductors and the associated ecosystem, with an emphasis on fabless semiconductor companies. The Tallwood partners, Dado, Luis Arzubi, George Pavlov, and Ron Yara all had extensive operational and/or startup experience. Dado had founded Chips and Technologies as well as S3, and Luis Arzubi had been VP and GM of IBM Microelectronics.

My time as a Tallwood EIR was a great experience – with exposure to a broad spectrum of technologies and business plans. I sat through hundreds of pitches by very bright motivated entrepreneurs over my 3.5 year tenure as an EIR . I, along with the other EIRs, performed “deep dive” due diligence on many startups. One thing the Tallwood partners stressed was respect for the entrepreneur, as it is easy to become a little condescending when one is privy to a flow of the best entrepreneurial ideas and implementation technologies day in and day out.

Since academia is a frequent source of great investable ideas, Tallwood took pains to keep abreast of the top engineering schools. In addition to Stanford and Berkeley, the team made trips to Carnegie Melon, MIT, Cal Tech and elsewhere for a “Tallwood Day” where we we received presentations on research by faculty and toured their labs. We also visited GE Research as I recall where Danielle Merfeld was our host.

I incubated a couple of startups while at Tallwood, which I think was somewhat unusual for a Tallwood EIR. Early on in 2006 Dado asked me to examine issues associated with client/server computing. After researching the topic I came back and said I didn’t see an investable fabless semiconductor thesis (my stance on that has since changed), but felt that the issue of security and trust was a huge barrier to widespread adoption of a client/server computing model. I suggested an approach to address the problem, and somewhat to my surprise Dado said to run with it. What grew out of this was a startup called Motegrity (Mobile Integrity) to build a trusted environment that encompassed both the client and the server. Motegrity relied on the best known method at the time, which was to utilize the then fairly new chip based security element called the Trusted Platform Module (TPM). Motegrity is presented on a separate page on this website with a link here: MOTEGRITY.

The other startup I incubated at Tallwood was Wave Semiconductor, whose goal was to deliver a “Software Defined ASIC” as an alternative implementation target for designers to address the “High cost of ASIC” problem. Wave is discussed in more detail elsewhere on this site as I was to spin Wave out of Tallwood as founder/CEO with a seed investment from both Tallwood and Southern Cross Venture Partners, with a link here: WAVE-COMPUTING

TAKEAWAYS:

1. I recommend a similar EIR experience for any entrepreneur wishing to better understand the perspective from both sides of the table. I learned a great deal from Dado and the other partners; Luis, Ron, and George, and I much enjoyed the camaraderie of the other EIRs (Debu Pal, Renu Raman, Syrus Ziai, Chris Adams, Paul Vroomen, and Guy Resheff), and our professor at large – Rajesh Gupta. My kids still fondly remember team family outings – catching crayfish off of Dado’s dock at Lake Tahoe.

MEMORIES:

Dado often told us regarding investment decisions that, “at some point you just have to go with your gut”. I clearly remember the entire team meeting on the back deck of Dado’s Tahoe place during my last family retreat there discussing whether or not to make an investment in an Israeli company called Wilocity – one of Tallwood’s more successful recent investments. Dado finally said essentially that “I think we should invest because I believe in the externalization of the PC’s internal PCI bus, that the connective functionality of PCI can be provided outside the PC using Wilocity’s 60Ghz wireless technology”. It was a gut call.