ReachForce Board of Directors
Steve Brotman
Mr. Brotman is a Managing Director of Greenhill & Co, and co-founder and co-head of Greenhill SAVP. Prior to founding SAVP in 1998, Steve was the founder, CEO and Chairman of AdOne Classified Network, one of the nation's leading classified ad web sites which merged with Powerdz to become PowerOne Media.
While at SAVP, Steve was a finalist for the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2000 and was named in Crain's 2001 Tech 100. While at AdOne, Steve, in 1997, was selected for Crain's Top 25 Players Shaping Silicon Alley and the 1995 Top 40 under 40 among New York businessmen.
Steve currently serves on the boards of Managed Systems, Critical Mention, Cosential, Game Trust (Observer), and Knovel (Observer) and has previously served on the boards of Medidata (Observer), DataSynapse (Observer), 7thOnline and Bla-bla (acquired by UGO in 2001). In addition, Steve has served on the board of the MIT Enterprise Forum and as a mentor and judge for the Columbia Business School Lang and Greenhouse Funds.
Steve received his undergraduate degree in Economics from Duke University and a joint JD/MBA degree with honors from Washington University.
Theresa Garza
Ms. Garza is a Venture Fellow with G-51, providing operational, sales and business strategy support for G-51's portfolio companies.
Prior to joining G-51, Ms. Garza was the Vice President and General Manager of Large Corporate Accounts (fortune 400-2000), Dell Online and workstations. Ms. Garza had general management responsibility for all aspects of the $2 Billion business segment. Ms. Garza was also responsible for the strategy and execution of the Dell online initiative for the $7 billion corporate account segment (fortune 1-4000) and the $1 billion Workstation marketing and execution, which achieved #1 market share nine months after launch.
Ms. Garza graduated from Vanderbilt University with a B.A. in mathematics in 1983. Ms. Garza currently is a Board member for Safeplace and on the Advisory Board of Caritas of Austin.
Lauranne Jarrett
As a G-51 partner since 2000, Lauranne focuses on due diligence, defining deal structures and post-investment financial and operational controls. In addition to financial review and milestone management, she is actively involved in the process that ensures there is enough financial runway to achieve each portfolio company's corporate goals. Lauranne utilizes her expertise in all aspects of financial management to remove operational and economic barriers for successful exits.
Lauranne is currently on the Board of Directors for Pilot Software and ReachForce. She has served in strategic and financial roles for portfolio companies including Psionic, Fracta and is an active advisor for Memeo and iTaggit.
Prior to joining G-51, she was the Chief Financial Officer for NLynx Systems, Inc. ("NLynx"), where she oversaw their growth from $1M to $30M. Her responsibilities included Accounting and Finance, Human Resources and MIS for their global operation. She was involved in the successful acquisition and integration of multiple companies. Prior to NLynx, Lauranne worked as an auditor for Wheeler and Bull and Ernst and Young.
Lauranne is active in several organizations including Habitat for Humanity and the Humane Society. Lauranne has been a CPA since 1992 with an extensive knowledge in all areas of fiscal management. She received her MBA and BBA from the University of Texas at Austin.
Suaad H. Sait, President & CEO
As an entrepreneur and high tech industry executive, Suaad has played leadership roles at start-up companies as well as large publicly traded firms. Mr. Sait is the driving force positioning the company as a leader in the emerging marketing and sales force automation segments of the CRM OnDemand market.
Prior to ReachForce, Suaad was the vice president and general manager of Products & Markets at Pervasive Software (PVSW) with world-wide P&L responsibility of the entire product line. Suaad served as the Chief Marketing Officer and COO of Liaison Technology (acquired by Forest Express) repositioning the company into a software platform for supplier catalog content management. Before Liaison, Suaad served as vice president of product marketing at Motive Communications (MOTV). He was on the founding team for Ventix Systems and served as the vice president and general manager of the enterprise business and vice president of marketing. Suaad has also held leadership positions at DAZEL Corporation (acquired by Hewlett Packard), InConcert Software (acquired by TIBCO), CAP Ventures and Xerox Corporation.
Suaad earned his Master of Science in Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Rochester and a Bachelor of Science in electrical and computer engineering at the State University of New York at Buffalo.
Suaad has served as a Mentor for the New Venture Creation program at the McCombs School of Business - The University of Texas at Austin since the Fall of 2005. He also currently serves as an Executive Advisory Board Member of the Austin Chapter of the American Marketing Association. In, addition Suaad serves as a board member of the Austin Technology Entrepreneurs' eXchange ("Texchange").
ReachForce Company Advisors
Rudy Garza
Mr. Garza personally sponsored the creation of ReachForce in its inception and is known as the Godfather of ReachForce. Mr. Garza is the Founder and Managing General Partner of G-51 Capital. Mr. Garza identifies, structures, negotiates and closes lead and syndication investments. He actively participates with a number of portfolio and potential portfolio companies in various board member, board observer, and mentoring roles. He provides grounded strategic and operational support from a broad base of successful portfolio company experiences.
Prior to G51, he served as CEO and board member of a well-known regional engineering firm.
Mr. Garza is a native Austinite and received his MBA from The University of Texas at Austin and his BBA from St. Edwards University. He has been a board member and supporter of Brackenridge Hospital and The Children's Hospital of Austin since 1984. He is currently on the Endowment Investment Committee for the $40 Million Texas Exes Fund and the Junior Helping Hand Children's Shelter Finance Committee.
Lance Obermeyer, Ph.D., Technology Advisor
Dr. Obermeyer is currently the Chief Technology Officer for 30 Second Software, Inc., a developer of consumer focused software for mobile devices. Their flagship product, Digby, is the leading electronic commerce package for connected devices such as the BlackBerry. He led Pervasive Software's technology and product management efforts including defining go-to-market strategies, product launch activities and operational management of a Bangalore, India based development team.
Before Pervasive, Dr. Obermeyer was a co-founder and the Chief Technology Officer of Liaison Technology (acquired by Forest Express). At Liaison, an enterprise content management, he led the entire product life cycle, including development, product management, and customer deployment. Prior to Liaison, Dr. Obermeyer was a research scientist at the University of Texas at Austin. Many of the concepts of Liaison were formed from this work.
Dr. Obermeyer holds a Ph.D. in Computer Sciences from The University of Texas at Austin. His research focused on merging databases and artificial intelligence. He also holds a B.S. in Finance from Florida State University.
Ruby Sahiwal, Advisor
Founder & Chairman, Accelcia, CEO, Simpacta
Mr. Sahiwal is currently the Founder and Chairman of Accelcia Business Services, and Founder and CEO of Simpacta, a company focused on providing solutions for Value Based Selling.
Most recently Mr. Sahiwal was COO of Ketera Technologies - a spin off of American Express, and the first On-Demand Spend Management Solutions provider. There he achieved a dramatic turnaround - increasing bookings from 600K to 16M in one year and at the same time paring cost down by over 70%. Previously, as COO of VerticalNet Solutions, Ruby envisioned and created the 300+ person strong Enterprise Software arm of VerticalNet from its existing software assets and acquisitions of Isadra & Tradeum. Tradeum was acquired by VerticalNet for $500MM in March 2000. Before joining Tradeum, he was the Vice President of eBusiness Services for i2, and headed of the Strategic Opportunity Assessment group. Mr. Sahiwal joined i2 Technologies from McKinsey & Company, where he served Telecom and Semi-conductor clients in several strategy and operations engagements.
In addition to his current operating roles, Mr. Sahiwal serves on the Board of Directors of Serus, Inc. and Tumri, Inc.