AlAsdAir GreiG
Investment Manager
NorthStar Equity Investors, Ltd.
Alasdair Greig joined NorthStar Equity as the investment manager for the Co-investment Fund. He is responsible
for originating and executing new transactions, and monitoring and developing the fund’s portfolio. Before joining
NorthStar Equity, Mr. Greig served four years with the Cambridge Gateway Fund, an early-stage technology and life
sciences fund, based in Cambridge, U.K. At Cambridge Gateway, Mr. Greig was responsible for the fund’s technology
investments, which focused primarily on the data storage, networking, and wireless infrastructure markets. Before
moving into the venture capital market, Mr. Greig served nine years in risk management, primarily in the investment
banking industry, culminating in a position managing the emerging markets credit risk function at CIBC World
Markets PLC.
Ben Grimes
Chief Technology Officer
Avocent Corp.
Ben Grimes is responsible for helping to establish Avocent’s technical direction by proactively evaluating technical
companies and technologies pertinent to the future of both Avocent and the industry. Before joining Avocent, Mr.
Grimes was with IBM for 17 years, most recently as distinguished engineer, an appointed position that he held from
2002 to 2007. In that role, he served as the lead architect for software development for IBM xSeries and blades. That
position overlapped with a two-year special assignment in which he worked directly with large financial institutions
to develop industry-specific customizations for software products. Earlier in his career with IBM, Mr. Grimes was the
lead designer and engineer for embedded systems management for xSeries for five years after serving as a programmer
in embedded firmware. He was awarded nine patents for his innovations in systems software. He holds a bachelor’s
degree in electrical engineering from Purdue University.
Bill Gross
Founder and CEO
Idealab
Bill Gross is the founder and CEO of Energy Innovations and of Idealab. He started Idealab in 1996, and in the last ten
years, Idealab has created and built more than 50 technology companies. Idealab created Energy Innovations five years
ago, with a mission to develop cost-effective solar electricity. Mr. Gross was also a serial entrepreneur before starting
Idealab, creating successful companies in high school, while in college pursuing an engineering degree at Caltech, and
after graduating in 1981. He sold his company, GNP Development, to Lotus Development Corp. in 1985. He started
educational software publisher Knowledge Adventure in 1991 and subsequently sold it to Vivendi. Mr. Gross currently
serves on the boards of ten companies in the areas of robotics, automation, software, and renewable energy. He is also
a trustee of the Art Center College of Design and Caltech, his alma mater.
Bill Gurley
General Partner
Benchmark Capital
Bill Gurley joined Benchmark Capital in 1999 after serving two years as a partner with Hummer Winblad Venture
Partners. His current investments include Linden Lab/SecondLife, LiveOps, Move Networks, Nanosolar, Open Table,
Red 5 Studios, Tropos Networks, VUDU, and Zillow.com. Before entering the venture capital business, Mr. Gurley
served four years on Wall Street as a top-ranked research analyst, including three years at CS First Boston, where
he focused on personal computer hardware and software. His research coverage included such companies as Dell,
Compaq, and Microsoft, and he was the lead analyst on the Amazon IPO. In both 1995 and 1996, Mr. Gurley was
a member of the Institutional Investor All-American Research Team. Before his investment career, he was a design
engineer at Compaq Computer, where he worked on products such as the 486/50 and Compaq’s first multiprocessor
server. Before Compaq, he served in the Technical Marketing Group of Advanced Micro Devices’ Embedded
Processor Division.
