Gender

Male

Location

Los Angeles, CA

Intro

Grew up in Mendham, NJ. Went to school in Tucson, U of A. Went into the family business...telecommunications. My dad was an industrial psychologist at AT&T HQ and my mom sold yellow pages for NJ Bell. Now I am tasked with commercializing a family of protocols that will return telecommunications to the commons. I have two beautiful boys, Leo 4 and David 1, besides them, my wife Victoria is the best thing that ever happened to me.

Education

Played with the first video conferencing systems at AT&T at the age of ten. Summer internships at Bell Communications Research. BSBA, Marketing from the University of Arizona, Dec.'88. Backpacked through Europe for a year Doorman at the Limelight in NYC Managed the Metropolitan Cafe for Ark Restaurants, NYC Moved to LA in '94...bought a pristine '83 white Jaguar XJS with euro headlights. Sold phone and video conferencing systems for LA-TEL Moved over to Nextel and clocked 2500 minutes a month on the cell...I leave my phone at home a lot now which my wife hates. Major Accounts for Teligent after the local markets opened up for competition 98-2000. A short stint a Panda Software...great anti-virus engine, horribly run company. Joined my old Nextel team at Unfair Advantage, a consulting firm where we applied the selling system to professional services clients. Think sales 101 for lawyers. Ran a home improvement company with my brother while Ether2 built its prototype, and for the past 6 months I've been beating the drum full time for Ether2. We won a DEMOgod award last September, and now we have two alpha clients at UC, Irvine and DASH7.

Relationship Status

Married

What are your dreams? What are you here to create? How can the AWElife community help you realize your dreams?

I hope to share the vision and concrete plan to close the global digital divide by providing an end solution to the bandwidth crisis. What does that mean? Well, step back for a minute and think about networks. Traditional telephone and cable/satellite TV networks don't struggle to add customers and deliver content. Yet when it comes to TCP/IP we accept a network that requires us to buy hardware and replace it every 2 to 3 years. Why? Because the fundamental flaw of Ethernet is that it is asynchronous while the telephone and cable networks are synchronous. This fundamental misalignment requires us to superimpose switches and routers on top of an existing network. Why? Because once an Ethernet network gets more than an handful of users, it needs traffic cops to manage the network. Therefore my company, Ether2, fixes the problem with a broadcast protocol that was originally invented for cable TV at the Illinois Institute of Technology. We call it "The Q." and it requires no change to the upper layer protocols in WiFi, WiMAX/4G or Internet Protocol (TCP/IP). Of the utmost importance, we can even support Ethernet so that there is a migration path for legacy devices via backwards compatibility. We've made our simulation code available to the engineering community so that chip developers and network OEMs can run with it, but if we had a high-level developer kit for different chip platforms that would open up hundreds of apps. So the model is to build a global development community like Linux, but with profit sharing like Apple Apps. Our revenue will come from edge/end-user device OEMs at a fraction of a point like Dolby.

Activities, Interests, Hobbies

What are those? I think I used to enjoy stuff like concerts and clubs...oh, and I saw Black Swan in a real theater. But between Victoria running Verabella.com and the kids and everything else, we actually plan our date nights. If date night actually happened to be an Elvis Costello event, that would be neat. But it's usually a foodie joint like the London or something we can walk to on the strip.

Website

https://aonetwork.com

Everybody is Special - What is Special About You?

My maternal lineage goes back to a small group of Greek Jews (Romaniote) that somehow escaped a Roman slave ship and started a community in what is now Janina. My mom was the first to marry outside the clan to an Ashkenazi so that makes 50% of my genetic make up very similar to Jews that were in Palestine 2300 years ago. Besides tenacity, I have a talent at putting people together, so I guess I'm a master networker, but I've never been a hard closer...well, except for the home improvement company. Aside from that it was all relationship building, trusted adviser model stuff. I put together the executive team at Ether2, licensed the IP and created all of our partner relationships. After all, we were never going to let a thing like being severely underfunded get in the way.

Favorite Media - Authors, Musicians, Film, Artists

12" vinyl LPs. Too many to mention, but they generally fall into my demo, except for my jazz and classical collection which was mostly inherited and a little from Ebay. Let's say that it started with Earth Wind & Fire and the Atlanta Rhythm Section, then it moved to Duran Duran and Echo and the Bunnymen, Springsteen because I'm from NJ, Paul Weller (the Jam), Joe Jackson, Pretenders, Devo...guess I'm a product of the 80's Dudley Moore and Peter Cooke in Bedazzled, old Mel Brooks and Woody Allen, Alan Arkin and Peter Falk in the In-Laws. Picasso, Degas, Chagall Noah's Ark at the Getty

Most Inspiring People

Mom and Dad.

Who are interested in meeting here?

Business Relationships, Friends, Investors, Collaborators