Board of Directors

Elie Simon, Chairman of the Board
Elie Simon has held numerous leadership positions in computer systems, software, storage and RFID companies over the last 25 years. He is currently Chairman of the Board of TheBigSpace, a revolutionary branding experience company for the retail industry, and Chairman and co-founder of Digiprice, an early stage company designing Social-Net-Shopping solutions for the retail industry.  Mr. Simon was previously the President  & C.E.O. of TAGSYS, the global leader in the design and development of RFID infrastructure for item-level asset tracking. During his tenure, TAGSYS grew more than 200% in sales and achieved some of the industry’s largest item-level RFID deployments in the pharmaceutical, luxury goods, library and textile services industries.  With Mr. Simon’s leadership TAGSYS introduced several new, innovative products and services including the Six Sigma Performance program – the first service level guarantee in the RFID industry.  

Mr. Simon also held a number of executive leadership positions at Sun Microsystems, including President of Sun Microsystems' EMEA (Europe Middle East and Africa) region where he was responsible for more than $5 billion of Sun's annual revenue.

Mr Simon was runner-up for The Tech-Tour European Entrepreneur of the year and won the Ernst &Young European Entrepreneur of the Year in 2007 while at Tagsys. Mr. Simon currently serves on several academic, community and industry boards. He holds a Master degree in Electrical Engineering from ESIEE, Paris, and an MBA in Business Administration from IAE Bordeaux and graduated from Colchester University. Mr. Simon is fluent in French and English, is married with three children, and in his spare time, rides horses competitively

Mr. Simon has extensive experience in establishing and operating business on an international level; he has established corporate offices and distribution networks across the United States, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Central Asian region.   

Dr. Naren Gupta
Dr. Gupta is the vice chairman of Wind River Systems (NASD: WIND). He also serves on the board of Tibco Software (NASD: TIBX) and other privately held companies. Prior to becoming Vice Chairman for Wind River, Dr. Gupta co-founded and was Chairman of Integrated Systems, Inc. (ISI). He was also Chief Executive Officer and President of ISI from its formation in 1980 to 1994. Dr. Gupta was elected a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers in November 1991. He holds a B.S. from IIT Delhi, an M.S. in Engineering from the California Institute of Technology, and a Ph.D. in Engineering from Stanford University.

Ashish Chona, CEO and Co-founder
Ashish Chona is the CEO and co-founder of InSync Software. Prior to co-founding InSync, Ashish was a member of the senior management team at Asyst Technologies (NASDAQ: ASYT), a leading provider of automated material handling systems and Auto-ID systems (RFID, IR & barcode) for the semiconductor and electronics industries. He was responsible for global software marketing and sales at Asyst. Prior to Asyst, he was the co-founder and Vice-President of Sales & Marketing at Radiance Systems, a provider of factory automation software products and services. Radiance was acquired by Asyst Technologies in 1996. Prior to Radiance, Ashish held senior technical positions at Honeywell and Ultratech Stepper.

Ashish has an M.S. in Robotics & Control Systems from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a B. Tech in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay.

Ravi Panja, CTO and Co-founder
Prior to co-founding InSync Software, Ravi was part of the senior management for Asyst Technologies, a company that specializes in automated material handling systems and a leader in Auto-ID systems using RFID, IR, and barcode-based technologies driving product development and worldwide systems integration. Prior to Asyst, Ravi was one of the founding members of Radiance Systems and was responsible for product development and worldwide software integration solutions. Ravi has experience in product strategy and management, Auto-ID technologies, developing web-enabled software architectures, mission-critical enterprise software systems utilizing object-oriented technologies, workflow systems, and business process modeling. Ravi also had several positions at National Semiconductor in their Santa Clara, CA and Scotland manufacturing facilities.

Ravi has an M.S in Engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a B.S. from Osmania University in India.

Michael Kim
Michael Kim is a Northern California partner of Rustic Canyon Partners, a $900 million private equity and venture capital firm based in Santa Monica. Michael joined Rustic Canyon Partners from Accelerator Venture Partners, a San Francisco-based partnership that invests in early stage technology companies. Formerly an investment banker, Michael was with Morgan Stanley's Technology Mergers and Acquisitions Group in Menlo Park. Michael was directly involved with 27 announced transactions worth over $77 billion for such clients as Hewlett-Packard, Ciena, Seagate, Bay Networks, Netscape and Texas Instruments. Prior to Morgan Stanley, Michael was an associate at The Chase Manhattan Bank in NYC and also worked at IBM.
 
He is an honors graduate of Cornell University, has an MS from the School of Foreign Service of Georgetown University, and an MBA from the Wharton School of Business. Michael is on the board of directors for the following Rustic Canyon portfolio companies: Archcom, Auxora, Capella, Dipity, EM4, Insync, NanoNexus and TwoFish.

Michael serves on the board of Lead21, an organization that enables entrepreneurs to advocate free market public policy, and was formerly on the board of the Pacific Research Institute, a San Francisco-based think tank that champions freedom, opportunity, and personal responsibility for all individuals by advancing free market policy solutions. He is a Trustee of the Asian Art Museum Foundation, and the former Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Symphonix League of the San Francisco Symphony. In March 2004, Michael was appointed by the Mayor of San Francisco as a Trustee of the San Francisco Employee Retirement System, a $17 billion pension fund, and served as the President of the board for fiscal year 2007.

Neal Hansch
Neal Hansch brings over a decade of experience in venture capital, technology operations and investment banking. Before joining Rustic Canyon, Neal worked in the Corporate Development group at Macromedia, where he was responsible for executing worldwide M&A transactions and strategic equity investments. Prior to Macromedia, Neal was at Technology Crossover Ventures, where he focused on investments in the software, networking infrastructure and e-commerce industries. He has also worked in Product Marketing at webMethods (Nasdaq: WEBM), a leading enterprise application integration company, and co-founded a start-up that provides popular software extensions for Web development tools. Neal began his career as a financial analyst in the Software Group at Robertson Stephens, where he worked with clients such as BEA, BroadVision, HNC, Hyperion, Informatica and Intuit. Neal received his M.B.A. with distinction from the UCLA Anderson School of Management, where he was a Deutschman Venture Fellow. He also received bachelor degrees in Economics and Psychology from Duke University.

Rob Rueckert (Board Observer)
Rob Rueckert is a director at Intel Capital and a Kauffman Fellow.  He joined Intel Capital in 2002.  Prior to Intel, Rob spent 10 years in the software industry. He spent 5 years as a senior engineer / CTO with a few start up companies and an additional 5 years as a senior software consultant with Arthur Andersen. Rob invests in enterprise software and internet and has managed over 8 IPOs and 30 exits during his time with Intel Capital. Rob has a MBA from the University of Chicago and a BS in Information Systems from Brigham Young University.