GridApp Board Members
William Clifford
William Clifford is the CEO and Chairman of the Board of Aperture Technologies, Inc., a data center management software firm. He previously served as president and CEO of Gartner Group, Inc., a leading provider of research and analysis on the global IT industry, where he was responsible for growing annual revenues from $175 million in 1993 to $780 million in 1999. Under his leadership, Gartner's product line expanded from a single research-based service to include eCommerce research, consulting, events, benchmarking and market data products and services. Additionally, he was instrumental in globalizing Gartner's research impact by establishing technology research operations in Australia, Asia and South America.
Before joining Gartner, Clifford served as Corporate Vice President of information systems development at Automatic Data Processing (ADP). Prior to ADP, he was Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at Applied Data Research (ADR), Inc., the world's first independent software company and a leading systems software and relational database management organization. He also served as National Practice Director for Applied Technology Consulting at Arthur Young & Co. Mr. Clifford began his career at IBM Corp. in sales and marketing.
Charles Crockett
Charles Crockett is a founding Partner of Ascend Venture Partners, a private investment management firm based in New York City. Prior to the formation of Ascend, Mr. Crockett was a Director of The Beacon Group, a New York-based private investment and advisory firm that manages more than $2.0 billion in private equity capital. Mr. Crockett was the first Associate hired by The Beacon Group and spent six years evaluating, structuring and monitoring investments in a variety of industries.
Prior to the formation of The Beacon Group, Mr. Crockett spent approximately three years at Goldman Sachs in the Structured Finance Group with experience in independent power financings, leveraged lease financings, partnership financings, project financings and private placements. Mr. Crockett currently serves as a director of AEP Networks Inc. Mr. Crockett is also presently a member of the Stanford Law School Board of Visitors and the State Bar of California, and is a director of the New York Software Industry Association (NYSIA) and the LEAD Program in Business.
Mr. Crockett received a Juris Doctor degree from Stanford Law School and a Bachelor of Science from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Robert Gardos
Robert Gardos is the President and founder of GridApp Systems. Over the past nine years, Mr. Gardos has held numerous senior management positions in technology-driven organizations. He has a wealth of experience developing efficient and cost-effective technology solutions to meet the demands of customers.
Mr. Gardos was formerly the Chief Technology Officer and General Manager of Register.com (RCOM), an Internet organization specializing in domain name registration. Mr. Gardos joined RCOM as the ninth employee in June 1998 and helped grow the company to a publicly traded and profitable entity, increasing annual revenues from $1 million to $125 million. He maintained full control of all aspects of technology operations and was integrally involved with the overall strategic planning of the company. This was highlighted by a successful and relentless lobbying effort to shift the business' focus from Web hosting to domain name registration, a decision that was critical to Register.com's success. Mr. Gardos authored RCOM's response to the original request for proposal put out by The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers' (ICANN) , which served to deregulate the domain name industry. Based on this application, the company was selected out of more than 100 applicants to compete against Network Solutions, the existing domain name registration monopoly. Robert Gardos pioneered a new standard in the domain industry, shifting name management to the customer through an easy to use Web–based application. This served to improve consumer satisfaction and reduce maintenance costs, an approach that was subsequently adopted by the entire industry.
Reid Hutchins
Mr. Hutchins manages Advantage Capital's New York investment portfolio. His responsibilities include sourcing and structuring new investments, as well as working with current portfolio companies. Mr. Hutchins is a Director of GridApp Systems and a board observer of Mezmeriz, Monarch Machine Tool, Peco Pallet. In addition, he currently sits on the Board of the Upstate Venture Association of New York (UVANY).
Prior to joining Advantage Capital in 2006, Mr. Hutchins served as a product development engineer for Advanced Micro Devices and prior to that as an engineer and manager with IBM Microelectronics. Mr. Hutchins brings operational experience in semiconductor design, manufacturing, test and production to the firm.
Mr. Hutchins holds a bachelor's degree in physics from St. Lawrence University. He also holds a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and a master's in engineering management from Dartmouth College.
Mohamed Ousseimi
Mr. Ousseimi has over 24 years of investment banking, asset management, private equity and venture capital experience. He has also obtained operating experience through active board level involvement at portfolio companies, as well as directly as Chairman of two of these companies where he spearheaded their operational and financial turnaround. He started his professional career at State Street Research & Management Company in Boston, and subsequently joined Merrill Lynch's investment banking division in New York, where he primarily focused on leveraged buyouts and high yield financings. He then joined the Gefinor Group in New York and built the firm's private equity and venture capital business. Mr. Ousseimi acquired extensive investment banking experience while at Merrill Lynch advising Fortune 1000 industrial companies and private equity groups on multi-billion dollar leveraged merger and acquisition transactions and high yield financings.
While at Gefinor, he was responsible for originating, managing and raising a number of private equity and venture capital funds, and successfully establishing a licensed Small Business Investment Company (SBIC). He also originated, arranged financing, and structured several acquisition and divestiture transactions, as well as venture capital financings for early stage technology start-ups. Mr. Ousseimi received his MBA from the John E. Anderson School of Management at UCLA, and graduated from the University of California Berkeley with a BA in Political Economy.