GET TO KNOW US

Platfora brings together an industry-leading team, the best investors in the business, and partners with a unique perspective. Together we're going to build the next great data franchise.

Team

    • Ben Werther

      Ben Werther Founder & CEO TwitterLinkedIn

      Harnessing big data is as much about deep server technology as it is a battle to reign in complexity. The status quo is untenable -- brittle infrastructure, impenetrable tools, and lots of user pain. Ben founded Platfora to change this and unify disruptive server technology with superb user experience into a big data platform, for business users, that just works. He is an industry veteran and big data thought leader and was head of products at Greenplum through the EMC acquisition.

    • Ben Werther

      Peter Schlampp VP of Product & Business Development TwitterLinkedIn

      Peter is passionate about designing products that change the way users live, work, and interact with their world. He experienced first-hand the utility and complexity of big data while building products to secure enterprise networks. Peter has led Product and Marketing teams at Solera Networks, IronPort Systems, and Cisco Systems.

    • Ben Werther

      John Schuster VP of Engineering TwitterLinkedIn

      John believes that great products result from a perfect combination of art and science. He has led engineering teams who have built products that customers love to use in the storage, networking, security, data integration, mobile, SaaS and cloud technologies. John has held executive and senior management positions at SnapLogic, Cisco, IronPort and Network Appliance.

    • Ben Werther

      Mike Asher Chief Financial Officer TwitterLinkedIn

      Mike has the proven ability to shape the great intangibles of high-growth, product-driven, Silicon Valley companies into revenue-driving tangibles. He is constantly looking for the signal through the noise. Mike has honed his business and financial acumen over the past 20 years in executive roles at Appcelerator, EMC, Greenplum, Cisco, and Epiphany.

    • Ben Werther

      John Eshleman Founding VP of Technology TwitterLinkedIn

      John has been outrunning Moore's law for the past 13 years building large-scale compute and data processing platforms and systems. He is driven to apply his craft to the next frontier in big data platforms - to make them simple and easy to use. In his work at Greenplum he worked on the core of their massively parallel database engine and subsequently led the company's engineering efforts.

Board

  • Scott Weiss General Partner - Andreessen Horowitz

    Scott has served as the Vice President and General Manager of the Security & Technology Business Unit at Cisco. Prior to Cisco, Scott co-founded IronPort Systems and established the company as the leader in email security, leading to its successful acquisition by Cisco. Scott has also held executive and management positions at Hotmail and IdeaLabs.

  • Roger Lee General Partner - Battery Ventures

    Roger joined Battery in 2001 and focuses on the software, consumer Internet and digital media markets. Roger spent 10 years as an entrepreneur and operator. Most recently, he was a co-founder of Corio, a leading managed service provider that was acquired by IBM. Prior to Corio, Roger was the Manager of Internet Products at Edify Corporation. Roger was also the co-founder and President of NetMarket, an online consumer Internet service that was acquired by Cendant Corporation.

  • Mike Speiser Managing Director - Sutter Hill Ventures

    Mike joined Sutter Hill Ventures in 2008 from Yahoo!, through the acquisition of Bix, where he served as CEO. Mike has also served as Vice President and Technical Advisor to Symantec's Chairman & CEO and served as Vice President of Product Marketing and Product Management at VERITAS Software.

  • Ben Werther Founder & CEO - Platfora

    Harnessing big data is as much about deep server technology as it is a battle to reign in complexity. The status quo is untenable -- brittle infrastructure, impenetrable tools, and lots of user pain. Ben founded Platfora to change this and unify disruptive server technology with superb user experience into a big data platform, for business users, that just works. He is an industry veteran and big data thought leader and was head of products at Greenplum through the EMC acquisition.

Investors

  • Andreessen Horowitz is a stage-agnostic venture capital firm that provides seed, venture and growth-stage funding to the best new technology companies. Founded by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, Andreessen Horowitz helps entrepreneurs become successful CEOs and build important and enduring companies. Its general partners are Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, John O'Farrell, Scott Weiss, Jeff Jordan and Peter Levine, all widely recognized experts in the creation, scaling and operation of high growth technology companies. The firm has $1.2 billion under management across two funds. Among its 60 investments are Facebook, Foursquare, Groupon, Skype, Twitter and Zynga. The firm was established in June 2009 and is located in Menlo Park, California.

    www.a16z.com

  • Since 1983, Battery has been investing in technology and innovation worldwide. The firm partners with entrepreneurs and management teams across technology sectors, geographies and stages of a company's life, from seed, start-up and expansion financing, to growth equity and buyouts. Battery has supported many breakthrough companies around the world, including seven companies who have IPO’d in the past fourteen months. Its current portfolio includes emerging and more established firms such as Bazaarvoice (IPO), Calxeda, Continuuity, Cumulus Networks, Delphix, ExactTarget (IPO), Guidewire (IPO), Kontangent, Marketo, Nutanix, Opscode, and Zerto. Battery has offices in Boston, Silicon Valley and Israel. It has raised nearly $4B since inception, and is currently investing a $750M fund.

    www.battery.com

  • Sutter Hill Ventures has financed technology-based start-ups and assisted entrepreneurs in building market-leading companies since 1962. Through our decades of experience, we have developed strong industry networks, considerable operating and venture capital experience, and an understanding of the challenges that early-stage and high-growth companies face. We offer expertise in developing business strategy and partnerships, building management teams, and financing companies in both public and private markets. Once we invest in a company, we bring to bear our time, expertise, and extensive industry networks to help these companies succeed. Building companies is our top priority and our favorite occupation.

    www.shv.com

  • In-Q-Tel is the not-for-profit, strategic investment firm that works to identify, adapt, and deliver innovative technology solutions to support the missions of the U.S. Intelligence Community. Launched in 1999 as a private, independent organization, IQT's mission is to identify and partner with companies developing cutting-edge technologies that serve the national security interests of the United States.

    www.iqt.org

Advisors

  • Prof. Joe HellersteinTechnical Advisory Board

    Joe Hellerstein is a Chancellor's Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley, whose work focuses on data-centric systems and the way they drive computing. He is an ACM Fellow, an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow and the recipient of two ACM-SIGMOD "Test of Time" awards for his research. In 2010, Fortune Magazine included him in their list of 50 smartest people in technology , and MIT's Technology Review magazine included his work on Distributed Programming on their 2010 TR10 list of the 10 technologies "most likely to change our world". Key ideas from his research have been incorporated into commercial and open-source software from IBM, Oracle, and PostgreSQL.

  • Luke WroblewskiDesign Advisory Board

    Luke is a digital product designer and author of several popular books on Web design including Mobile First and Web Form Design. He is Co-founder and former board member of the Interaction Design Association (IxDA). He was Co-founder and Chief Product Officer of Bagcheck (acquired by Twitter in 2011), and Chief Design Architect at Yahoo!, where he worked on product alignment and integrated customer experiences on the Web, mobile, TV, and beyond. Prior to this, he held positions as the Lead User Interface Designer of eBay Inc.'s platform team, and as Senior Interface Designer at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), the birthplace of the first popular graphical Web browser, NCSA Mosaic.

Contact

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