Board of Directors

Bruce Armstrong
Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer

Bruce Armstrong is a database industry veteran who brings 25 years of technology-specific development, marketing and sales expertise to his position as Chairman  and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Kickfire.

Mr. Armstrong began his career at data warehousing giant Teradata Corporation where he spent 15 years as part of the team that established the company as the leader in the market.  After the company's successful initial public offering (IPO) and acquisition by AT&T/NCR, he was named Vice President and General Manager of the $500M Enterprise Solutions Division, President of the Teradata subsidiary, and a company officer of AT&T. Following Teradata, Mr. Armstrong held the position of Vice President and General Manager of the Server Products Group at Sybase, where he ran the company's $700M enterprise database management business.

Previously Mr. Armstrong served as President and CEO of publicly-traded KNOVA Software, a leading provider of customer service, self-service and intelligent search applications that he grew from a private venture with innovative technology to a public company serving some of the world's largest call centers.

He also held posts as partner at Internet Capital Group (ICGE), where he helped lead the strategy and management of software infrastructure investments; President and CEO of CMPnet, where he led CMP Media's web-based applications and services subsidiary; and Executive Vice President of Sales & Marketing at Broadbase Software (now KANA), where he helped create the analytic application category for CRM.

Mr. Armstrong has a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley.

Raj Cherabuddi
President and Founder

Raj Cherabuddi is President and Founder of Kickfire. A seasoned executive, he is experienced in both the startup and corporate worlds. Cherabuddi co-founded Kickfire in 2006 and served as its CEO and President for over two years. Under his leadership the company raised Series A and B financing from top tier investors and successfully brought its first product to market.

Prior to Kickfire, Cherabuddi was the founding CEO of Sanera Systems, a startup that focused on mission-critical, high-performance SAN switches. Sanera was successfully acquired by McDATA Corporation, an $800M public company now part of Brocade. At McDATA, Cherabuddi served as the corporate CTO for nearly two years, where he advised on strategy and was responsible for future technologies.

Before co-founding Sanera Systems, he served as lead architect for Sun's UltraSPARC IIIi processor. He also worked for Intel Corporation as a micro-architect in the Processor Group. During his early career he developed and was issued patents for 23 inventions.

Cherabuddi earned a B.S degree in Electronics & Communication Engineering from Osmania University and an M.S. degree in Computer Science from Arizona State University.

Peter Wagner
Accel Partners

Peter Wagner has worked in technology since the mid-1980's, as a physicist, line manager and venture investor. He focuses primarily in Information Technology Infrastructure, including the networking, computing, storage, and wireless sectors. Some of his particular interests include web 2.0 scalability, data center virtualization, pervasive security, digital media, WAN/Internet performance optimization, and a broad array of mobile technologies/media/services.

Since joining Accel in 1996, Peter has led investments in dozens of early stage companies, many of which have gone on to complete IPO's or successful acquisitions. These include Acopia Networks (acquired by F5), Airgo Networks (acquired by Qualcomm), Amber Networks (acquired by Nokia), Arrowpoint Communications (IPO 3/00, subsequently acquired by Cisco), Broadjump (IPO 6/04 after merger with Motive), iBEAM Broadcasting (IPO 5/00, subsequently acquired by Williams), Infinera (IPO 6/07), New Edge Networks (acquired by Earthlink), Northpoint Communications (IPO 5/99, subsequently acquired by ATT), Peribit Networks (acquired by Juniper), Tellium (IPO 5/01), TiMetra Networks (acquired by Alcatel) and Topspin Communications (acquired by Cisco). Peter was also part of the team responsible for Accel's investments in Redback Networks (IPO 5/99, acquired by Ericsson) and Motive (IPO 6/04).

Peter currently serves on the Board of Directors at Azul Systems, C2 Appliance, Consentry Networks, Omneon Video Networks (currently in registration for its IPO), ON Networks, Trapeze Networks and Wichorus. He also led Accel's investments in and works closely with Mu Security, Netxen, Sylantro Systems, and Transitive Technologies.

In addition to his work in IT, Peter also leads Accel's investment activity in the Energy sector. Areas of interest here include alternative and renewable energy (including nuclear power), energy storage, intelligent energy distribution and management, energy efficiency in IT and elsewhere, electric vehicles and portable power.

Prior to joining Accel, Peter was a line manager at Silicon Graphics, responsible for several generations of digital media, networking and graphics workstation products. Before Silicon Graphics, Peter worked with McKinsey and Company, consulting to market leaders in technology, energy, aerospace and financial services. Peter began his career as a physicist working in nuclear fusion research and aerospace.

Peter is a Director and past President of the Western Association of Venture Capitalists. He holds an A.B. in Physics from Harvard College, summa cum laude, and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School, where he was a Baker Scholar.

Charles Chi
Greylock Partners

Charles joined Greylock in 2000. His area of focus is systems, semi-conductors and related software for communications, computing and storage for the enterprise, service provider and consumer markets.

Prior to Greylock Charles held executive positions in the communications sector that spanned both service providers and equipment suppliers. He joined Greylock from CIENA Corporation where he was vice president of marketing. Previously Charles had co-founded and led marketing at Lightera Networks, Inc., a market defining optical core switching company acquired by CIENA. Before Lightera he held marketing, sales engineering and engineering roles at Cisco, StrataCom, AT&T Canada and Bell Canada. During his tenure he developed and launched a number of new products and services based on new technologies.

Charles represents Greylock on the boards of Aquantia, C2 Appliance, ReFocus Imaging, SiTime and ZeroG Wireless. Charles' previous investments include Calista Technologies (acquired by Microsoft), Quorum Systems (acquired by Spreadtrum), Espial (TSX: ESP.TO), Sanera Systems (acquired by McDATA) and Siliquent (acquired by Broadcom).

He earned his Bachelor of Engineering in Systems and Computer Engineering in 1988 from Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada.

Ken Pelowski                                                                                                                                                              
Pinnacle Ventures

Ken founded Pinnacle while working at Redpoint Ventures. Prior to Redpoint, Ken founded and was Chairman of the Board of Currenex, which was acquired by State Street for $560 million. Prior to Currenex, Ken was Chief Operating Officer, Chief Financial Officer and a Board Director of GetThere (a Brentwood Venture Capital/USVP portfolio company), where he led its IPO as well as its $750 million acquisition by Sabre. Prior to joining GetThere, Ken was Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Preview Travel (a Kleiner Perkins portfolio company) which acquired and changed its name to Travelocity. Ken led Preview’s IPO.

Before joining Preview Travel, Ken was a Corporate Vice President and Executive Committee Member at General Instruments and at Quantum Corporation where he was responsible for corporate strategy and business development. Previously, he held senior management positions in sales and marketing at Sun Microsystems and Intel.

He currently is a board member on several privately held companies and nonprofit organizations.

Ken received a BSE in electrical engineering and an MBA from the University of Michigan.

Robin Vasan
Mayfield Fund -- Board Observer

Robin Vasan's clear understanding of software technology served him well in his early career as an entrepreneur. He has since built a solid reputation as a leader through his successful investments in enterprise software, particularly in applications and infrastructure. Most recently he has been focusing on virtualization, security and open source technologies.

Robin currently sits on the boards of Alfresco, Centrify, GroundWork, Informance, TrueDemand and Webroot.

Robin's notable past investments include Akimbi (acquired by VMware), Determina, webMethods, Riverbed Systems (acquired by Aether Systems), Global Logistics (acquired by Oracle) and Trigo Technologies (acquired by IBM).

Prior to joining Mayfield in 1999, Robin was a founder and/or key member of several successful software startups including CATS Software, Infinity Financial Technology, acquired by SunGard (SDS) and Risk Management Solutions.

Robin earned an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and a B.A.S. dual degree in Industrial Engineering and Economics from Stanford University.