About 

The older I get, the more I forget, so I created this site to help me remember.

This is definitely going to be TL;DR for most so I recommend simply doing a Google search, follow me on social Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram or visit the Wikipedia page on me.  Otherwise, feel free to browse this not so regularly maintained site or visit my life in photos.

I have always been intrigued by business and specifically on taking a product, improving it, growing it, building bigger and bigger teams, the art of selling, marketing and generally scaling.

In my late teens

Myself and a group of friends brought the sport of Paintball to Hawaii.  To do so we purchased our paintball guns out of the back of magazine and figured out what was needed by trial, error and a lot of patience.   In our first outing, we had no paintball gear so I wore my father’s white construction helmet and a diving mask for face protection.  Not really knowing anything about anything, we shot at each other from positions well out of range, under foggy goggles and we ran out of paintballs and CO2 in minutes. Experiencing all this inefficiency led to my first business of procuring and providing gear, compressed air, paintballs and paintball guns to the growing sport. The idea was learned from the California gold rush – where the miners didn’t make the money, the tools providers did.  The business was great as it created a lot of extra money for Hawaiian plate lunches, spam musubis, gas and surfboards.  

Later, as I attended University, I worked in the Computer Science department as a Teaching Assistant and Lab Manager.  That led me to create an IT services company called Nalu Communications which was a early Hawaii ISP and Managed Services Provider.  I sold that business learning you could create a business with the intention of selling it (as opposed to just running it) which became a model for future businesses.

In my 20s

My next venture was an energy efficiency company which was initially called Energy Conservation Hawaii.  My father who was an electrical contractor saw that Hawaii was undergoing massive growth in tourism yet the energy systems were not matching that growth.  He understood that one day businesses would need to conserve energy and a company would be needed to provide that service.

Initially, it was a small idea to help any local business who would listen.  It began with cold calling and mailers.  Calling on family friends.  Going door to door and trying to get anyone to listen.  I funded the business with credit cards and our first few customers were small businesses like Doctors, Accountants, Architects, and Engineers.  We were fortunate to find a champion within the local utility which led to a partnership and gave a young, inexperienced business person credibility allowing us to move to building owners, companies with multiple locations, and bigger buildings like the Airports, the Universities and the public Schools.  With the highest energy rates in the entire US, Hawaii was ground zero for energy efficiency and our business helped define an industry.

Timing was excellent and the business grew rapidly to establish offices on all islands.  Word of mouth allowed for the business to expand to Portland, Oregon and Seattle Washington and to change the company name to Energy Industries Corporation.  More success gained further national attention as we were fortunate to become partnered with General Electric.  This allowed us to expand into Chicago, New York, Houston and California.  We expanded our services and eventually covered energy efficiency, energy generation, demand side management programs for utilities, and performance contracting.  Energy Industries became known as one of the the top Energy Services Companies (ESCOs) in the US and was eventually sold to VWI a holding company.

In my early 30s

I realized to go bigger, I needed to focus on developing a scalable approach around technology and I founded Solar Power Technology also known as SOPOGY.  Here, we invented a new kind of solar panel, one which used mirrors to focus light into a central receiver to create steam.  The journey with SOPOGY was amazing as it was at the very beginning of the solar revolution.  It’s important to understand this was a time before China had any solar manufacturing production and Photovoltaic panels which today are commoditized, were extremely expensive.  At SOPOGY I worked with an incredibly talented engineering team and had the opportunity to co-invent literally dozens of inventions (which should give you an idea of how early this was) and 13 of them became issued patents.  In addition we acquired over 65 different patents globally.  We developed projects in Hawaii, California, Spain, Portugal, Greece, UAE, Africa, Japan, Papua New Guinea, Singapore, Philippines, Thailand, India, Washington State, and Mexico.  SOPOGY’s project development division was acquired by MEMC and I was relocated to Belmont California to run global strategy from HQ and SOPOGY’s technology was acquired by Hitachi. 

Some time mid-30s and 40s

In building my previous companies I always thought the top of the hierarchy was to become an investor.  Venture Capitalists always seems to live a charmed life taking summers and winters off, enjoying second homes in luxurious places, dropping into various board meetings sharing their knowledge and moving to the next company.  So, I founded Enerdigm Ventures to invest in early clean energy innovations.  The name was a combination of Energy and Paradigm.  I quickly learned being a VC was not what I thought it would be.  After the Fukushima nuclear incident, the energy sector went on a long pause and we shifted our investment focus to IT investments including  Software Defined Networking, Cybersecurity, and Big Data.  Our limited partners were demanding and required a lot more attention than I expected and our CEOs were stubborn and never seemed to listen to my advice, always trying to reinvent the wheel.    

Around 2012, I became the first outside investor and led the creation of LiveAction, Inc., as we spun-out the technology from U.S. Department of Defense contractor Referentia Systems. There I served on the Board of Directors, initially as it’s operating Executive Chairman. In 2014 I led our Series A from Cisco and Sway Ventures and served as the company’s CEO and President. In 2016 Insight Venture Partners acquired LiveAction where I served as President, Chief Strategy Officer and Executive Chairman until Sept 2019 and on the Board of Directors until February 2020.  Over that time, I led the team which acquired and integrated Traverse from Kaseya, LivingObjects of Toulouse France and Savvius/Wild Packets from Walnut Creek California. 

Working for Insight Partners, I had the opportunity to serve as a subject matter expert to the Insight infrastructure investing team.  In this capacity, I worked on conducting due diligence on 24 IT companies including the acquisition of LogTrust which was later renamed to Devo.

Around the mid-40s

In the Series A of LiveAction, our first financial investor was a fund called Accelerate IT Ventures, later renamed to Sway Ventures.  Our relationship grew and blossomed over my time at LiveAction and at the end of my LiveAction tenure, the leadership at Sway asked me to consider helping them create a practice area that would be focused on Pre-Seed and Seed companies.  Together, we developed a structure where I could move my Enerdigm Ventures activities into Sway and I would join Sway as a Partner. 

I spend a lot of my time helping our portfolio companies and technology partners where I can.  Most of my focus is on go-to-market with sales, marketing, channels and technology alliances and I am still investing.  

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