Board of Directors & Key Investors

Sendio is venture backed, and its board leadership has both pragmatic management experience from large organizations and start-up "need it right now" aggressiveness.

Klaus Koch - Managing Partner, Vicente Capital Partners

Klaus Koch is a Managing Partner of Vicente Capital Partners. He has been a senior investment professional in three such partnerships over the past decade.

Klaus began his career with the LEK Partnership where he focused on strategic M&A projects and privatization support for the German government. Klaus later went on to work with Goldman Sachs in Mergers and Acquisitions. He has worked on numerous M&A transactions in areas such as medical devices, satellite equipment and services, paper products and car rental services.

In 1996, Klaus joined Bain & Co. in their LBO, Technology and Healthcare practices. During this time, Klaus advised such firms as Apollo Advisors, McCown De Leeuw, TRW and SGI.

Klaus has led several successful investments to exit including Rent.com (acquired by eBay), O2 Science (acquired by Pacific Pulmonary Services), Sensor Systems, Alta Healthcare System, Newbridge College and Transoft Networks (acquired by Hewlett-Packard). Currently, Klaus sits on the board of Sendio and LivHOME.

Klaus Koch is an active participant in the Southern California venture community. He is on the board of the Los Angeles Venture Association (LAVA) and a frequent speaker on the subject of private equity. He received his Master’s degree from Harvard Business School with distinction and a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics from the Wharton School summa cum laude.

Francois Helou – Senior Partner, Athenian Venture Partners

Mr. Helou, 51 yrs, joined Athenian in 1999 as a partner of the firm, following having served it as a senior advisor/consultant for two years (1998-1999). He has ten years of information technology venture capital investing experience and an additional 17 years of industry experience in information technology and communications companies, including operating experience in the computer industry in engineering, marketing, management and strategy development. He met Mr. Elderkin in 1992 and began working professionally with him in 1994, when Mr. Helou was a business and technology consultant to Generics Asset Management, advising on some of its portfolio companies.

During 1996-1999 Mr. Helou was a strategic consultant to technology firms, serving such fields as electronics banking and wireless telephony.

From 1987-1996, he worked for International Computers Limited (ICL, now Fujitsu), at the time the UK's largest information technology company. Mr. Helou joined ICL following graduation from INSEAD in 1986. He held international business development and general management positions, including running ICL's financial services software business unit. From 1983-1985, he was an engineer with Compugraphic Corp. in the field of microprocessor technology for phototypesetting systems.

Mr. Helou began his career in 1981 through 1982 as an electrical engineer with Brown Boveri (now ABB) in Switzerland.

He holds an MS degree in Electrical Engineering from the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland and an MBA from INSEAD.

Allan Hunter – Former President & Founder, Rent.com

Allan Hunter is co-founder, past President and board member of Rent.com, the nation’s largest Internet Listing Site (ILS) serving the apartment industry. Rent.com sold to Ebay in February 2005 for $433 million. Rent.com continues to be the preeminent online method in the U.S. for renters to find rental housing.

Prior to co-founding Rent.com, Mr. Hunter co-founded and took public in October 1993 Oasis Residential, Inc., an apartment focused REIT that build, acquired, refurbished and operated 16,000 apartment units in three states—Nevada, Colorado and California. Oasis was sold to Camden Property Trust (NYSE symbol: CPT) in April 1998 at a valuation of $1 billion. Mr. Hunter served as Chief Operating Officer of Oasis and was a member of the company’s board of directors.

Today, Mr. Hunter is a private investor and serves as a board member (and advisory board member) on a number of venture backed early-stage mature companies, in industries ranging from anti-spam products, wine supply-chain software, Internet college search, and traditional apartment ownership/operations. He is also actively involved in various nonprofit activities locally, such as serving as a trustee of the Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA); and he is involved in charitable activities internationally in Uganda, Kenya and Peru.

Mr. Hunter is a graduate of UC Davis (B.A. Economics) and University of Pennsylvania (Wharton—MBA Finance and Accounting).

Tal Golan – Founder, Sendio

Tal founded Sendio in 2003 in response to the escalating attacks that were occurring on the email systems of a number of other companies he created. After looking at the then current products that alleged to solve the problems, he was convinced that their approaches were misguided and that there was an opportunity to better address the underlying issues.

A technology innovator since 1994, Tal is the email security expert and technology visionary that drove the direction of Sendio’s product offerings and technical development. Tal entered the high-tech industry working for the Multimedia and Digital Video Laboratory at Pixel Multimedia in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Prior to founding Sendio, Tal founded OpticNerve, Inc., a software development and consulting firm developing enterprise-level Internet applications. At OpticNerve, he worked with many Internet industry pioneers, including Exodus Communications (now Cable & Wireless) and Netcom (now Earthlink). Tal is an expert in SMTP, Java, Linux, SQL, Cryptography and PHP, and has extensive experience as both an architect and implementer of Web-based applications. Tal holds a bachelor's degree in philosophy from Brandeis University.

Adam Meislik – Principal, XRoads

Adam Meislik has an accomplished career spanning more than 15 years in restructuring and corporate finance. Mr. Meislik leads the Media, Energy and Technology practices of XRoads. Mr. Meislik provides companies with expert advice and execution on financial restructurings, turnarounds, capital markets, M&A, governance and overall business strategy. He combines lateral thinking and a proactive approach with his careful understanding of businesses beyond the financials - evaluating and identifying advantage, assessing competitive environments and industry trends. Having a holistic view of a company and its market enables Mr. Meislik to derive non-obvious and effective solutions. Mr. Meislik has a proven record of peak performance in advising, structuring and executing transactions for underperforming public and private corporate clients. He has managed over 100 mergers, acquisitions, capital transactions and restructurings.

At CIBC World Markets and its predecessor, Oppenheimer & Company, Mr. Meislik led numerous multi-disciplinary teams on large capital markets, M&A and restructuring assignments. He also co-established CIBC's Houston-based energy practice and helped establish CIBC's technology practice. Prior to CIBC, Mr. Meislik worked in the energy groups at Jefferies and Howard Weil. Mr. Meislik’s energy-related restructuring engagements include Global Marine, Eagle Geophysical, Altra Energy’s sale to Caminus, Gothic Energy, TransTexas Gas, TransAmerican Refining, Queen Sands Resources and Alexander Energy’s sale to National Energy Group.

Mr. Meislik’s technology and entertainment engagements include strategic alternatives advisory and related transactions for Corel, CyberSafe, Novistar, ABC Technologies, a large EDI vendor and Accenture’s venture portfolio. Mr. Meislik has raised capital for numerous technology companies including Gravity, The9 (World of Warcraft China), 3Tera, Kintera, Caminus, Peregrine Systems and Aladdin Knowledge Systems.

George Kenney – Managing Director, Shepherd Ventures

George Kenney, a Managing Director and co-founder of Shepherd Ventures, has a strong technical background combined with extensive Wall Street and financial industry experience. George has been a successful manager in rapid growth environments, turning around struggling operations and developing and mentoring high technology companies. He specializes in information systems, semiconductors, components and networking, and pioneered optical recording technology.

Before forming Shepherd Ventures, George was CTO and Partner at Nicholas-Applegate, a money management firm in San Diego, where he directed the technology infrastructure expansion necessary to grow the company from a local presence to a network of international locations. Prior to Nicholas-Applegate, George was CTO and Managing Director at Kidder Peabody in New York City. Previously he held top information technology positions at Swiss Bank, Salomon Brothers and the American Stock Exchange. As Director of Research for North American Philips and co-founder of Digital Measurements Corp., George obtained numerous US and foreign patents.

George holds an MBA in Finance from Columbia University, an MSEE from Stanford University and a BS in Electrical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Additionally, he attended the Optic’s Program at London’s Imperial College and is a graduate of Harvard University’s Industrial Management Program. A noted technology futurist, George has been a keynote speaker at financial conferences on The Future of Technology. He has served as a Trustee for the San Diego Museum of Art and as pro-bono Chairman of the museum's Investment Committee. He has also served on the Board of Governors of the National Association of Small Business Investment Companies and is currently a board member of several technology companies.

Matt Ridenour - Managing Director, Momentum Venture Management

Prior to founding Momentum Venture Management, Matt spent more than 10 years working in private equity, venture capital and as a CEO in successful early-stage companies. He has been a principal in more than 25 private market transactions with an aggregate value of more than $200 million. Prior to founding Momentum Venture Management, Matt served as CEO of UNX, the world's largest independent institutional equity trading platform, where he secured $20 million in venture funding. He also founded Gazelle TechVentures, a $60 million VC firm where he continues to serve on the executive committee. Previously he was a principal in Blue Capital, a private equity firm spun out of McKinsey & Company, and also spent two years focusing on private equity advisory at Bain & Company. Matt holds a BA in Economics from Dartmouth College and graduated with High Honors as a Baker Scholar (top 5% in his MBA class) from Harvard Business School.