Michele Borovac
Vice President, Marketing
Michele Borovac
Vice President, Marketing
With over 20 years of experience in technology marketing, Michele is well versed in all aspects of branding, customer cultivation, and market development. At Velostrata, she drives all marketing strategy, including product positioning, PR, AR, online marketing, social media, content, and demand generation. She joined Velostrata from HyTrust, where she was responsible for global Marketing for the cloud security company, which she joined through the acquisition of her previous company HighCloud Security. She was the founding marketing executive at Wanova, a market-changing alternative to desktop virtualization (acquired by VMware), and Decru, which created the storage encryption market (acquired by NetApp). Previous roles included senior marketing positions at Electronics for Imaging (EFI) and Oracle Corporation.
Michele holds a B.A. in Mass Communications from the University of California at Berkeley, and a graduate certificate in Public Relations from the University of Washington.
John Donnelly
Vice President, Worldwide Sales
John Donnelly
Vice President, Worldwide Sales
John leads Velostrata’s worldwide direct and channel sales teams, leveraging more than 25 years of experience in a variety of sales leadership roles. Prior to joining Velostrata, John was Senior Vice President of Sales at MobileIron where he was responsible for driving the company’s global revenue growth from pre-revenue to a $150M annual run rate, culminating in a successful IPO in 2014. Prior to joining MobileIron, John was Vice President of Sales at Symantec. He joined Symantec as the result of the 2007 acquisition of Vontu, where he led worldwide sales and established the company as the top provider of enterprise data loss prevention (DLP) solutions, with more than a third of the Fortune 100 as customers. In his career, John has grown several start-up companies, including Talking Blocks, Kana Communications, Connectify, and NetGravity, from early-stage to public market or acquisition. He started his career in sales more than twenty-five years ago with Wang Laboratories and then Parametric Technology. John has a B.A. in History and Communications from Boston College.
Issy Ben-Shaul
CEO & Co-Founder
Issy Ben-Shaul
CEO & Co-Founder
Issy is the CEO and Co-Founder of Velostrata and a serial entrepreneur. Prior to co-founding Velostrata, Issy was the CTO for VMware’s Mirage desktop virtualization product. Issy joined VMware through the acquisition of Wanova, a desktop virtualization company founded by Issy and Ilan Kessler, and acquired by VMware in 2012. Prior to Wanova, Issy was CTO for the Application Delivery Business Unit at Cisco. Issy joined Cisco in 2004 via the acquisition of Actona Technologies, where he was Co-Founder, CTO and Vice President of Engineering. Before founding Actona, Issy was a tenured faculty member at the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, where he worked on design and implementation of wide-area distributed systems. Prior to the Technion, he was a staff member at the IBM Haifa Research Laboratory. Issy has published over 40 papers and holds 14 patents in the areas of WAN optimization and distributed systems. He holds a PhD and master’s degree in computer science from Columbia University and holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and computer science from Tel Aviv University.
Ady Degany
Chief Product Officer & Co-Founder
Ady Degany
Chief Product Officer & Co-Founder
Ady is the Chief Product Officer and Co-Founder of Velostrata. In his role as Chief Product Officer, Ady is responsible for all aspects of product strategy and roadmap for the company. Ady brings over 15 years of WAN optimization and storage experience to Velostrata, in the areas of product management, engineering, and technical marketing. Prior to joining Velostrata, Ady was the Principle Program Manager for the Server & Cloud Division at Microsoft. Ady joined Microsoft through the Storsimple acquisition where he led all product marketing efforts for the company. Prior to Storsimple, Ady was Vice President, Product Management for Wanova (acquired by VMware). Prior to Wanova, Ady was a manager in the product management group for Cisco’s Application Delivery Business Unit (ADBU). Ady joined Cisco in 2004 via the acquisition of Actona Technologies, which set the foundation for Cisco’s Wide-Area Application Services (WAAS) product line. He holds a BS in Information Systems Engineering from the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, and an MBA from the Santa Clara University Leavey School of Business.
Keren Cohen
CFO
Keren Cohen
CFO
Keren is part of the founding team at Velostrata and oversees all finance, accounting, legal, and operations activities for the company. Keren has nearly 20 years of industry experience, and previously was the Chief Financial Officer at Insightera (acquired by Marketo) and Wanova (acquired by VMware). Prior to that, Keren held the position of Finance Manager at Cisco, Israel which she joined through the Actona acquisition. Prior to joining Actona, Keren was Director of Finance and Human Resources for UltraGuide, an Israeli-based medical devices company. Before UltraGuide, she held auditor and accounting positions at Strauss and Ernst & Young, respectively. Keren holds a bachelor’s degree in accounting and an MBA from Haifa University.
Yaniv Ben-Ari
Vice President, Software Engineering
Yaniv Ben-Ari
Vice President, Software Engineering
Yaniv, part of the founding team at Velostrata, is responsible for all aspects of the software development process for the company, and he leads the software engineering and QA teams. His career spans more than 20 years in various software engineering and R&D leadership roles. Most recently, Yaniv was Director of R&D at VMware, which he joined through the Wanova acquisition in 2012. Prior to Wanova, Yaniv held R&D and software engineering leadership positions at SunGard, Zend, Cloverleaf, Monosphere, BIS Technologies, WanWay Technologies, and AGENTics. Yaniv holds a BS in Mathematics and Operations Research from Tel Aviv University.
Leonid Vasetsky
Chief Architect
Leonid Vasetsky
Chief Architect
Leonid is part of the founding team at Velostrata and drives all aspects of software and systems architecture at the company. He brings more than 15 years of deep software architecture and engineering expertise to the company. Leonid was most recently at VMware where he led server-side development for VMware’s desktop virtualization product, Mirage. Leonid joined VMware through the Wanova acquisition where he drove product architecture and server-side development. Prior to Wanova, Leonid led the CIFS acceleration module for Cisco’s Wide-Area Application Services (WAAS) product, which was part of the Cisco Application Delivery Business Unit. He joined Cisco in 2004 through the Actona acquisition. Leonid began his career in software engineering at Motorola as a critical part of the team that developed Motorola’s PC-based mobile workstation. Leonid holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from the Technion, Israeli Institute of Technology and an MBA from Haifa University.
Shahar Glixman
Performance Architect
Shahar Glixman
Performance Architect
Shahar is part of the founding team at Velostrata and is responsible for researching and directing performance analysis and optimization for the company. His career spans more than 20 years in various software engineering and R&D leadership roles, with primary emphasis on performance and optimization. Most recently, Shahar was a senior R&D engineer in the recommendation team at Outbrain, developing infrastructure and algorithms for Big Data analytics. Prior to Outbrain, Shahar was a systems architect at Wanova. Prior to Wanova, Shahar held R&D management and development positions at Cisco, Actona, VSoft and Medivision. Shahar holds a BsC in Computer Engineering from the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology.
Steve Fulton
Vice President, Business Development
Steve Fulton
Vice President, Business Development
Steve is responsible for strategic alliances at Velostrata. Steve has more than 16 years of high-tech marketing and business development experience. Prior to joining Velostrata, Steve was responsible for strategic alliances at EMC, which he joined through the ScaleIO acquisition. Steve has held a variety of executive positions at companies such as ServiceMesh (acquired by CSC), Wanova (acquired by VMware), and NetQoS (acquired by CA Technologies). In addition to his work at smaller technology companies, Steve has held leadership positions at Dell, where he led acquisition, investment, and partner strategy for the cloud computing business unit as well as EMC where he led strategic alliances for the ScaleIO business unit. Steve holds a PhD in Music from the University of North Texas and an MBA from the University of Texas, Austin. He also holds a master’s degree and bachelor’s degree from the University of Oklahoma.
Dror Nahumi
General Partner, Norwest Venture Partners
Dror Nahumi
General Partner, Norwest Venture Partners
Dror brings to Norwest more than 20 years of operational, technology and entrepreneurial experience, having worked extensively in both the U.S. and in Israel in various senior positions at leading global organizations. Dror most recently invested in and serves on the boards of Velostrata, Pontis, Seculert, SundaySky, and a few stealth-stage companies. Dror has served as a board member of Veraz Networks since 2004. Dror was a previous board participant for ScaleIO (acquired by EMC), SolarEdge (Nasdaq: SEDG), and Unisfair (acquired by InterCall), and was a board observer for ConteXtream (acquired by HP). At Norwest, Dror focuses on multi-stage (seed to pre-IPO) and multi-domain (enterprise, cloud, consumer, semi) investments in Israel. Prior to joining Norwest, served as executive vice president and Chief Strategy Officer of ECI, which he joined in 2004. In this role, he was responsible for ECI’s strategy, mergers and acquisitions, business development, and strategic marketing. Before joining ECI, Dror was CEO of Axonlink, an optical components start-up company. Prior to Axonlink, he was President of I-Link, a US-based VoIP service provider which acquired MiBridge, the VoIP software company he founded. Dror was also a senior research engineer at AT&T Bell Labs where he developed voice and video compression technologies, including the speech coder that is now the standard for CDMA cellular in North America. Dror holds a BSc in electrical engineering from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa.
Yoram Snir
Partner, 83 North
Yoram Snir
Partner, 83 North
Yoram joined Greylock Partners in 2005 and in 2006 was a founding partner of Greylock IL, now 83North. He currently focuses on Enterprise IT infrastructure, cloud technologies, virtualization and communication. Yoram is a member of the boards of Velostrata, Celeno, MySupermarket, SupersonicAds, and Cooladata. Prior investments and board positions include ScaleIO (EMC) where Yoram was the chairman of the board, Aeroscout (SWK), Telit (LSE:TCM), Wanova (VMWR), Webcollage (answers.com), Fiberxon (MRV), Bitband (MOT), Topio (NTAP), Actona (CSCO) and Riverhead Networks (CSCO). Previously, Yoram held multiple positions with Cisco Systems and with ClassData (CSCO). Yoram holds an MBA from the Kellogg School at Northwestern University and B.Sc. Cum Laude in Computer Science from the Tel Aviv University.