About Us : Board of Directors

David D. French - Board Director, Chairman

As President and CEO of Cirrus Logic, David French successfully repositioned the company as a premier supplier of high-performance analog and digital signal processing chip solutions to provide the Total-Entertainment solution for today's digital entertainment electronics. David's more than 20 years of semiconductor experience include serving as Vice President and General Manager of Analog Devices, where he was instrumental in driving the company's growth in markets served by advanced DSP and mixed-signal processing solutions. Prior to Analog Devices, David held key management positions at Texas Instruments and Fairchild Semiconductor. David received his BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Rochester and also serves on the Board of Directors of the Fabless Semiconductor Association.

Dave Furneaux, Board Director

Dave Furneaux has over 15 years of experience in founding and investing in some of the most highly successful technology and investment companies in the industry. Many of his early investments went on to be acquired by the country's leading technology firms including Cisco Systems, Lucent, and PMC-Sierra, among others. More recently, in July 2006, his Kodiak portfolio company, ALIS Corporation, was acquired by Carl Zeiss NTS Beteligungs GmbH.
As a founder and Managing General Partner of Kodiak, Dave sets the strategy and growth initiatives for the firm. He has spent his career investing across the information technology landscape. He is a member of the boards of directors of Kodiak portfolio companies including Cambridge Devices; BTI Photonic Systems; Enfora; Potentia Semiconductor; Simpler Networks, Inc.; Tropic Networks; Vette Corp.; and Vivace Semiconductor and is an investor in Cortina. Dave also is an observer on the Raza Microelectronics and Wireless China boards. Dave is a member of the advisory board for Dragonvest Partners, a seed stage technology venture partnership located in Shanghai, China.

Prior to founding Kodiak in 1999, he co-founded Furneaux & Company, LLC, a seed-stage, technology venture investment company. Previously, he was a founding investor in a number of very successful companies. He was the founding investor and active Chairman of the Board of Extreme Packet Devices, (acquired by PMC-Sierra), and Philsar, (acquired by Conexant). He also was a founding investor, Vice President of Business Development, and member of the board of Skystone Systems, (acquired by Cisco). In addition, he was an early investor in Solidum Systems, (acquired by IDT), and in Telica Systems, (acquired by Lucent). He also was an active early investor in AuroraNetics (acquired by Cisco) and Watchfire.

Earlier in his career, Dave was a member of the early team at Chrysalis Symbolic Design, a semiconductor design company, and was responsible for directing east coast and major account sales. The company was later acquired by Synopsys. Prior to that, he was a telecommunications anayst with the National Conference.

Dave holds a B.A. from Colorado College, Phi Beta Kappa

Cary Ussery - President & CEO, Founder

Cary has a strong, successful engineering and management background. He has worked in a government contractor (Intermetrics, Inc.), a startup company (Vantage Analysis Systems subsequently purchased by Viewlogic Systems), and an established EDA software company (Cadence Design Systems). He is a founder and President & CEO of Improv Systems, Inc., a startup company delivering configurable DSP processor IP for multimedia and communications chips.

Prior to Improv Systems, Cary was the Group Director of Core Technology for Cadence's Alta Business Unit, which includes system specification, language processing, system simulation and high-level synthesis. He has managed teams of up to 75 engineers and has broad experience in new product development and managing existing product lines with revenues of up to $80 million. He has written numerous papers and is co-author of the textbook "VHDL: Hardware Description and Design". He received a BA in Music and a BA in Math from Bard College.