George Lauro — extended biography

In his 25 years as a Venture Capitalist, Investment Banker and Board Executive George was responsible or involved in funding & building technology companies. He has been a Partner at 3 Silicon Valley VC/Private Equity Funds and Board Director at 7 public and 26 private companies. He built several tech companies to high-value M&A or IPO exit. George is a former Managing Director at Wasserstein Perella, a leading Wall Street Private Equity & Leveraged Buyout firm. He launched and ran Wasserstein's Silicon Valley VC/LBO office in Palo Alto as the Head of Tech VC investing. He was a member of Wasserstein Investment Committee. He led and syndicated 34 VC equity financings and PE control deals and completed 19 M&A transactions, several at over $500M valuation. George was Managing Director of Technology Commercialization at IBM World HQ and managed a team that launched multiple IBM spinouts from Watson Research Lab, including wireless Silicon Germanium, that ramped to over $1B revenue.

George founded Acquicor SPAC with Steve Wozniak and Gil Amelio of Apple Computer ($180M buyout platform) which created Tower/Jazz.

He began career as an MIT engineer developing inertial guidance systems for spacecraft and ICBM nuclear missiles at MIT Aero/astro dept and Draper Lab. He attended Brown (BSEE), The Wharton School (MBA) and MIT (MIT/Draper Fellow-aeronautical engineering). George is a prolific inventor with 23 patents awarded in nuclear ICBM guidance, wearable electronics and GPS.

Since 2000, George has served as a Director on the Board of 7 public and 26 private companies, among them HotRail (Nasdaq:MSPD), Peregrine Semiconductor (Nasdaq:PSMI), Lightwave Logic (Nasdaq:LWLG), World Energy (OTC:WEGY), Westinghouse Solar (Nasdaq WES), Triscend (ACQ: Xilinx), SMaL Camera (ACQ:Cypress Semi), HOMEE, Qusion (ACQ: Emcore), Sensera (ASX:SE1), and 25 others.

George's positions in detail:

• Alteon Capital Partners: CEO & Managing Partner: Founded Alteon Capital in 2007 with Gil Amelio, former CEO Apple Computer. Alteon is an international technology venture development firm that builds companies commercializing differentiated products and innovative business models. Our team has built over a dozen tech companies on 3 continents from prototype stage to high-value exit, creating billions of dollars of shareholder value.
• Wasserstein Perella: Managing Director and Partner of this technology venture capital and leveraged buyout fund having over $1B under management. Opened, build and managed Wasserstein Perella' Silicon Valley tech investing office. Led over a dozen Venture financing rounds in IT, advanced materials, avionics, communications and wireless companies. Worked on several Leveraged Buyout control investments. Acquicor/Jazz: Co Founder with Steve Wozniak and Gil AMelio of Apple Computer.  $180M SPAC (AMEX:ACQ). Led Corp development and M&A deal sourcing. Central role in Acquicor's acquisition and operation of Jazz Semiconductor which Acquicor acquired and subsequently sold to Tower Semiconductor to create Tower/Jazz.
• Techfarm Ventures: Managing Director and Partner in this $260M silicon valley venture capital fund that invested in early stage startup companies in adaptive processors, enterprise SW, electronics and other Information Technology sectors. Board of Directors: Since 1997, served on the Board of Directors of 5 public and over 20 private companies. Led M&A, Compensation Committees and Audit Committees.
• Investment Banking: Sourced and executed buyside and sellside M&A projects and placements. Silicon Valley Tech Investment Banks CE Unterberg Towbin and Collins Stewart.
• Band of Angels: Since 2005, Palo Alto, CA: Member of the Deal Screening Committee. The Band of Angels is Silicon Valley's oldest seed funding organization, comprised of over 130 high tech executives. The Band has seeded over 225 companies and achieved 50 profitable M&A exits and 9 Nasdaq IPOs, including Symantec, Logitech, and National Semiconductor.
• Sensors In Motion:Board member of this Caltech/Jet Propulsion Lab spinout company that has developed high accuracy MEMS gyros and inertial instruments
• IBM: Managing Director of Technology Commercialization: IBM's senior executive responsible for bringing technologies from research labs to market. Managed a team at IBM HQ that launched new businesses in wireless, GPS, speech recognition and pervasive computing. Developed IBM's Silicon Germanium (SiGe) business, brought it from the Watson Research Lab to a $1B revenue business. Central role in large M&A projects.
• IBM Director of Wireless Products: Senior operating executive in IBM's wireless businesses. Products included communications devices, GPS, SiGe IC's, wireless semiconductors, RFID, WiFi.
• Motorola: Director of New Business Development. Launched Motorola's entry into Radio Frequency identification/RFID, GPS and automobile navigation. Led a number of M&A and corporate investment projects. Conceived Motorola Traxar- the world's first handheld GPS consumer navigation product.
• Astronautics/Kearfott Corporation: Program Manager. P&L manager of a business that designed and manufactured satellite and spacecraft navigation systems.
• MIT/ Draper Lab: Developed guidance systems for spacecraft and strategic nuclear missiles. Member of the Trident D5 missile guidance design team. Invented the world's first ICBM guidance 4-axis IMU gyro-stabilization system using Digital Optimal Feedback Control. Led a team of MIT and Draper Lab technologists that implemented the system on flight hardware. Awarded US patent 4,811,233 for the invention. Worked with a team at GE Aerospace to invent novel stellar aided strapped-down inertial guidance mechanizations.

Patents and education:

• Patents: Awarded 23 patents in RFID, RFIC/Semiconductor, GPS and Inertial Guidance
• Education: Attended Brown (BSEE), the Wharton School (MBA) and MIT (graduate studies aeronautical engineering)

George Lauro's seats on select Board of Directors included:

• Publicly Traded Peregrine Semiconductor (Nasdaq:PSMI,silicon on sapphire mixed-signal ICs)
• Publicly traded Software Publishing Corp (Harvard Graphics/NASDAQ:SPC)
• Publicly traded Akeena/Westinghouse Solar (Nasdaq:WES, solar power systems)
• Publicly traded World Energy (OTC:WEGY, hydrogen power systems)
• Publicly traded Lightwave Logic (LWLG- polymer based high speed photonic devices)
• Persomics (Reverse Transfection high speed CRISPR/RNAi screening platform)
• OIDx (Point-of-care Rapid Diagnostic Test Platform)
• Inno360 (Open Innovation acceleration platform)
• Euclid Discoveries (object based video compression solution)
• Corista (digital pathology image analytics/collaboration platform)
• ChipX (structured ASICs acquired by GiGoptix)
• Illuminex (Silicon nanomaterials for thermal, battery and PV apps)
• Visual Composites (3D printing of complex high temp ceramic components)
• Triscend (configurable embedded processors acquired by Xilinx)
• Blaze Networks (10Gbs WDM transceiver modules sold to Omron)
• Qusion (40G Indium Phosphide modulators sold to Emcore)
• SandCraft (MIPS-based superscalar control plane processors acquired by Raza Micro)
• Adant (Low-cost phased-array/smart-antenna solutions)
• SmaL Camera (CMOS imagers acquired by Cypress Semiconductor)
• HotRail (terabit switch fabric silicon acquired by Conexant)
• TEAC Aerospace (LBO-digital image recorders acquired by Goodrich)