Naeem Zafar, Partner

Naeem founded Concordia Ventures in early 2007. Naeem is also a part of the faculty of Haas Business School at the University of California, Berkeley, where he teaches Entrepreneurship and Innovation in the MBA program. Naeem focuses on educating and advising entrepreneurs in all aspects of starting and running a company. Naeem has been a team member in six startups and has extensive experience with mentoring and coaching founders and CEOs. Until 2007, he was the president and CEO of Pyxis Technology Inc., a company specializing in advanced chip design software for nanometer technology. Naeem has been president and CEO of two other high-tech startups (Silicon Design Systems and Veridicom, a Bell Labs spinoff that invented the silicon fingerprint sensors today found on many laptops). Naeem has held senior marketing and engineering positions at several companies, including Quickturn Design Systems, which had an IPO in 1993 and grew to $125M in revenues. 

Naeem holds a Bachelor of Science degree (magna cum laude) in electrical engineering from Brown University and a master’s degree in electrical engineering from University of Minnesota. Naeem was a Presidential Gold Medalist and a recipient of the National Talent Scholarship with first-class designation. 

Naeem is a charter member of TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs,www.TiE.org) and president of OPEN (www.OPENSiliconValley.com). Naeem is also the president of Bay Area Council for Brown University Entrepreneurship Program.  He also serves on the boards of Numetrics Ltd., Brainstorm Pvt. Ltd, and Auxo.net Inc., and is a member of the advisory boards of several other companies. 

Contact Naeem Zafar at

Naeem@ConcordiaVentures.com

Jack Fuchs, Advisor

As CFO and VP of Strategy, Jack currently provides global business, financial and strategic leadership for ForteBio, a Pharma and Biotech instrumentation company. Prior to ForteBio, Jack held business leadership roles with high tech private companies. At INKA Networks, he led the formation of global alliances to drive the adoption of a media file interoperability technology. At SOMA Networks he was VP of Sales and Business Development, where he handled global strategic accounts, marketing and partnerships. Prior to joining SOMA Networks, Jack was the Vice President for Business Development and Strategic Marketing at IPWireless, Inc, leading the commercial activities of that company. Previously in his career, Jack served seven years as a strategic management consultant at McKinsey & Company, where he served health care and wireless clients. He has also held sales, marketing and strategic leadership roles with Becton Dickinson, a $4 Billion medical technology equipment company. Jack has advised a plethora of private companies, helping entrepreneurs develop businesses, raise funding, and achieve successful exits. He currently is a faculty member at the University of California's Haas School of Business in Berkeley, where he has taught entrepreneurship for over 5 years. Jack graduated magna cum laude from Dartmouth College with a bachelor's degree in Engineering Sciences and received an M.B.A. from Stanford University's Graduate School of Business as an Arjay Miller Scholar.

Rafat Pirzada, Advisor

Mr. Pirzada is a 20+ year veteran of the telecom industry with the unique experience of having worked at a service provider, an equipment manufacturer for a service provider, and one of the largest customers for offerings from a service provider. He was a co-founder, Chief Strategy Officer, and a member of the Board of Directors of Cyras, which was acquired by Ciena for over $ 1B in 2001. After the acquisition he served as Vice President of Marketing and Business Development for the Metro Switching Division of Ciena. He authored the original business plan for Cyras and, as the lead presenter for the company, played a major role in enabling Cyras to secure $72M in VC funding from over a dozen top-tier VCs over three separate rounds. Moreover, he played an instrumental role in securing $150M for Cyras in an oversubscribed convertible debt offering from some of the leading institutional investors.

Prior to co-founding Cyras, Mr. Pirzada served as Director of Technical Marketing at Fiberlane Communications (Cerent, acquired by Cisco for over $6B in 1999), where he was responsible for developing their Data Over SONET strategy. At Fiberlane he actively participated in creating the vision for Siara (acquired by Redback for $4B in 1999). Previously, Mr. Pirzada served as Director of Carrier Marketing for Xylan Corporation. He also held various marketing management positions with Cisco Systems in their Service Provider Group.

Mr. Pirzada is also a Technology/Limited Partner at some of the leading VCs, including Artiman Ventures, Azure Capital, El Dorado Ventures, New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Menlo Ventures, Venture Lending and Leasing (WTI), Viventures, and Worldview Technology. He is a sought-after speaker on telecom and entrepreneurship topics, and has been a Keynote/Panel Chair/Featured Speaker at various important conferences such as National Communications Forum (NCF), Supercom, INTEROP, Next Generations Networks (NGN), IEEE, ICCI, and so on. In addition, he has spoken at a number of institutes of higher learning. Currently he spends much of his time fostering entrepreneurship by mentoring a variety of entrepreneurs and serving on the boards and advisory boards of private companies.

Mr. Pirzada holds an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Columbia University and a B.A. in Mathematics (summa cum laude) from Skidmore College. He also attended Dartmouth College (at the Thayer School of Engineering) as an exchange student and has been a member of IEEE since 1986. Mr. Pirzada also served for a number of years on the IEEE Technical Consulting Committee for Balloting of the various 802.x standards, and was Sprint's representative on the ANSI X3T9.5 (FDDI) Committee.

Nik Bahram, Advisor

At present, Nik is working with a number of IC, internet, and consumer product startups in interim C-level roles and in an M&A advisory capacity. Nik Bahram has extensive C-level and GM experience with four Fortune 500 companies and five startups. He has deep experience in marketing/sales, product management, and engineering, with responsibility for multiple product lines. Nik has direct experience with P&Ls of up to $800M in revenue and $50M in startup fundraising, as well as substantial M&A and exits on the buy-and-sell side totaling $3.4B. His contributions have been made in high-growth and turnaround settings. He has seven patents and numerous publications and industry and investor presentations to his credit. Nik holds a BSEE and MSEE from University of Pittsburgh, a Master of Science in Finance from Boston College, and a Certificate in Business Administration from Harvard University.

At Agere Systems, Nik was responsible for defining the strategic direction and business plan for the Storage Business Unit across all products, as well as for designing breakthrough products that redefined the landscape of the storage industry. Nik co-invented the Agere BluOnyx and was responsible for this product line. Prior to his time at Agere, Nik spent 25 years in a variety of roles focused on delivering IT and consumer systems, chipsets, and web software solutions.

During the first 15 years of his career, Nik served at Fortune 500 companies including Motorola and Digital Equipment Corporation (now HP). During the latter 10 years he served in multiple startups that developed SAN, WLAN, 3D graphics, and media player chipsets, as well as nanoelectronics storage and LED lighting materials.

Nik was vice president of marketing and sales at Intematix Corporation, where he led the 15-fold revenue growth of this nanomaterials company focused on green materials and targeting semiconductor storage, lighting, and energy sectors. As well, he was vice president of engineering at Trebia Corporation, a storage area network chipset company focused on switch- and server-side SAN chipsets and software; vice president of corporate ventures in charge of corporate strategy and M&A at Systemonic Corporation, a multiprotocol-software-defined WLAN chipset company; COO and general manager at Surfcontrol, an internet access management software company; vice president of product development at Creative Labs, a consumer electronics company; and vice president of engineering and subsequently president at Silicon Engineering, an IP development and design services company focused on storage, graphics, and communications IC level IP. Nik’s earlier career included management and engineering roles in design, applications, and device engineering at Digital Equipment Corporation, Sprague Semiconductor, Motorola Semiconductor, and Brown Boveri CSI.

Mike Tzamaloukas, Advisor

Mike founded Dash Navigation in 2002 in an effort to revolutionize the way that traditional navigation systems work. Funded by Sequoia, KPCB, and other top-tier venture capital firms, Dash Navigation introduced the first two-way connected personal navigation device, changing the landscape of a multi-billion market for many years to come. Prior to his time at Dash Navigation, Mike was the Chief Scientist at Ambicom Inc., another Silicon Valley startup that specialized in accessories for the mobile professional. Before joining Ambicom, Mike was a software engineer at SRI International. Mike holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Patras University in Greece and a master’s and doctoral degree in computer engineering from the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is also pursuing an MBA degree from the University of California, Berkeley. The inventor of more than a dozen patents, Mike has published several highly regarded scientific papers and is a frequent speaker at both academic and business events.

Shoieb Yunus, Advisor

Entertainment Media Initiatives

Shoieb Yunus founded Precept Global Access (a film and television entertainment media company) and EzValidation a software company. Shoieb has worked for a number of leading technology companies in Silicon Valley. He is an Active Member of Palo Alto-based Venture Capital-Private Equity Roundtable. Most recently, Shoieb has made his directorial debut with a feature film project titled, “Streets of Karachi”. The worldwide movie premiere was held August in Palo Alto, California. Shoieb is now producing an English feature film titled, “Two Mothers”.
In August 2005, Shoieb started Precept Global Access. Precept's focus is to produce high-quality entertainment content for the Southeast Asian and mainstream American markets. Precept Productions is a media division of Precept Global Access. Precept has its offices in Milpitas, California, and Karachi, Pakistan. Shoieb serves as CEO and Managing Director of the company.
Shoieb has executive produced hundreds of hours of television entertainment programming at Precept. His credits include Geo TV's "Gaoo Celebrity Bunjaoo" (in English "Sing and Be a Celebrity"). - a grand music talent grooming show where amateur singers competed for a grand cash prize. Some of the other production projects include three shorts titled, "The Shelter", "Hawk's Bay: a fisherman's story" and "From a Teenager's Diary", various 13-episode magazine shows titled, "Face Time", “Film Mag”, “Music Zone”, “Local Bands” and “Rockers Club”; a kids show titled, “Kids Planet”; a business-technology talk show titled, “Good Evening Silicon Valley”, and six tele-films (films made for television), and episodic drama.

In December 2001, Shoieb founded a software company, named DreamzNet, Inc., with a focus to provide fingerprint-based security software for the consumer market. A couple of years later, the company changed its name to EzValidation, Inc. Shoieb served as the CEO of the company for five years and worked with major technology companies, including Computer Associates, Fujitsu, AuthenTec and many others. In Aprill, 2008 AuthenTec (a publicly-traded Florida-based company) acquired EzValidation.

Shoieb attended University of California at Santa Cruz to learn about Hollywood scriptwriting techniques, and earned a diploma from Hollywood Film Institute in Feature Film Production and Cinema Direction.

Shoieb has a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from the University of Kentucky.