Our Team

Avi is President and CEO of SmartZip Analytics, Inc.; he brings more than 16 years of experience driving strategy and adoption of innovative, user-friendly products.

Prior to SmartZip, Avi served as global marketing director at Mentor Graphics, where he built a multi-million dollar business offering electronic design automation products used by leading chip manufacturers worldwide. He also served as Vice President of Business Development at arcadiaOne, and built the consulting business at Cadence Design Systems. Before Cadence, Avi managed development of automation tools for microprocessor design at Intel Corporation.

Avi holds a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, a Master’s from U.C. Berkeley, and a Bachelor’s from I.I.T. India where he was awarded the President of India Gold Medal. Avi is also a seasoned real estate investor.

Ashutosh is responsible for SmartZip’s research and development of predictive marketing products. He brings over 15 years of leading-edge technology research and development experience in data mining, artificial intelligence, fuzzy logic, pattern recognition, and web technologies. He has led global software development teams from Germany, Japan, Ireland, India, Ukraine and Egypt.

Prior to SmartZip, Ashutosh was Chief Technology Officer at Novaguru where he led the development of a collaborative learning social network. Previously, he consulted on web development for eBay, InsideMethods and Saora (Japan), and developed content management systems for Brainflick Presentation software. He is also a seasoned entrepreneur, having co-founded Novaguru, Detigo systems and Yatra Corporation. At Detigo, he developed patented computer vision software which helped clients avoid industrial accidents. As chief scientist at venture-backed Yatra, later acquired by Datalex of Ireland (DLE.I), he developed corporate travel cost optimization software. Before Yatra, Ashutosh worked as a scientist for 8 years at the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany.

Ashutosh holds a Masters and PhD from the Technical University of Berlin, and a Bachelors from Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee. He has authored 2 technical books, 4 patents and 25 research papers.

Peter is responsible for all sales activities at SmartZip analytics and brings over 15 years of sales and sales management experience. Most recently, Peter was the Vice-President of Sales at Advanced Data Exchange where he spent five years prior to the sale of the company to Liaison Technologies. At this SaaS based company Peter recruited the entire team, trained & deployed sales processes, compensation plans as well as tracking all the relevant metrics in Salesforce.com. Prior to that, Peter was with Commerce One for over five years in a variety of sales positions both geographic and industry vertical based. During his tenure at Commerce One the company grew from less than 100 employees to over 4,000.

Peter holds a BA in Economics degree from the University of Calgary, in Calgary Alberta, Canada.

Rajeev is responsible for product marketing, demand generation, channel development and branding of SmartZip’s products. He brings over 14 years of experience innovating in enterprise software and consumer focused Internet applications. Prior to this role, Rajeev was also vice-president of engineering at SmartZip, where he was responsible for software development of its flagship predictive marketing platform, engineering operations and client services.

More recently, Rajeev was director of product development at The Real-estate Exchange. As a founding team member, he established engineering operations spanning US, Romania and India, and was responsible for building and scaling their property management and rent payment solutions. Prior to this, Rajeev also held various software leadership roles at Avaya Communications Inc., responsible for  the architecture, design and development of Avaya’s multi-media contact center.

Rajeev holds an M.B.A. from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. He also holds a Master’s degree in Computer Engineering from Texas A&M University, and a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering (Ind. Electronics, 1st rank holder) from the University of Pune. He has authored 2 patents with 3 pending, related to innovations in Contact Center technology.

John has spent the last 20 years managing, building and investing in technology and life science companies. John focuses on the intersection of information technology and life sciences markets, including bioinformatics, molecular diagnostics, genomics, proteomics, software and instrumentation for med-tech industries.

John serves on the board of directors of Arcxis, Tibion, Fluxion, Gene Security Network & Wired Benefits. He is an Industry Fellow at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology at the College of Engineering, as well as a member of the Advisory Council to the Lester Center’s Berkeley Entrepreneurs’ Forum at UC Berkeley.

Early in his career, he joined Alafi Capital, an Emeryville-based venture firm specializing in early-stage biomedical companies, where he served as an officer of the General Partner. At Alafi, John lead investments in more than a dozen successful start-ups, and served as the senior executive and board member of firms such as Tanox, Software Ventures, Lipomatrix, and Megan Health.

John helped start Cybergold, an Internet marketing and payments company, serving as COO and CFO through its IPO, merger with MyPoints, and sale to United Airlines. John continued with the MyPoints unit of United serving as the Senior Vice President of Strategic Partnerships.

Randy is a Managing Director at Claremont Creek Ventures, bringing more than 25 years of technology industry experience as a senior general manager and venture investor to the group. Randy invests in information technology and has a special interest in sensor networks and security. In the years prior to co-founding Claremont Creek Ventures, Randy was a General Partner at Novus Ventures and a Venture Partner at Horizon Ventures. Before his venture capital career, Randy had startup experience as CEO at Captiva Software and as COO at Identix (from its founding through IPO and life on NASDAQ). He served as Senior Vice President at AT&T Paradyne and as a Vice President of Marketing and Division General Manager at ITT Information Systems (Qume). Early in his career, Randy served in a variety of roles in the minicomputer business at Texas Instruments and began work as a computer research engineer at Cornell Aeronautical Lab. Prior investments include Inapac, Invivodata, Identix, Flytecomm, View Central and Be Here. Randy holds a BSEE from University of Arkansas and has completed the Stanford University Executive Management Program. He serves as a Committee Chair for Keiretsu Forum and is a member of the US Secret Service Electronics Crime Taskforce.

Christine Herron is a Silicon Valley investor and entrepreneur who is currently a Director with Intel Capital, and serves on the boards of SmartZip, Betaworks, and Yummly. Previously, Christine was a Principal with First Round Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm. As a technology professional, she has held key roles with a number of Silicon Valley firms. She was the Vice President of Marketing for Mission Research, where she led marketing from initial business plan authoring through paying customer and distribution partner acquisition, and was the founder and CEO of Mercury2, a software-as-a-service developer of international trade logistics systems. She also managed developer tools at NetObjects, and played for the Internet Server Team at Microsoft. Christine started as an investor with Geocapital Partners, where she focused on early Internet infrastructure and network management software. Her investments there included Netcom Online Communications, AXON Networks, D-Vision Systems, ViaGrafix, and FocusVision. In each case, Geocapital was the initial professional investor and helped to bring the company to a dominant market position. Christine earned her MBA at Stanford University, and her BA in English at Columbia University, Columbia College.

Steve has served as a leader in the homeownership industry for over 25 years. He is currently the Chief Real Estate officer at Carrington Capital and Chief Executive Officer of RealEstate.com, Inc. He has held a number of high level positions in the home ownership industry, including Senior Vice President at Chicago Title & Trust, Executive Vice President at Coldwell Banker, National Homeownership Executive of Bank of America, and Chairman of Global Mobility Solutions, Chairman and CEO of Realty Information Systems, Inc. As Chairman and CEO of Prudential Real Estate Services, he managed over 500 corporate service relationships and led the company to achieve over $200 billion in annual property sales volume with over 50,000 sales associates. As the CEO of RealSelect, Inc. (Realtor.com) Steve built one of the largest, most comprehensive consumer-facing web portals in the real estate segment, with leading content and a high volume of site visitors. Steve currently participates as a board member of SmartZip, Cyber Cities, BonzoBox, and Spinnaker Capital, and as an advisory board member of HomeGain.com, Trulia, Environmental Data Resources, and Metropix. Steve received an MBA in Finance from Loyola University of Chicago and graduated from Northeastern Illinois University.

One of the pioneers of Internet commerce, Jed has spent his 17-year career developing, advising and investing in early stage technology ventures. Recently, Jed also served on the Technology, Telecom & Media Advisory Group for President Barack Obama’s campaign.

Before joining Javelin Venture Partners, Jed was a Managing Director of DFJ Gotham Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm based in New York, where he was selected in the “Silicon Alley 100”, an annual list of the most influential people in New York digital business, by the website Silicon Alley Insider. Prior to DFJ Gotham, Jed was the COO of Yamcon, the developer of the highly acclaimed “SkyScout”, one of the best selling astronomy products of all time. Before Yamcon, Jed was the COO and Founder of Rent Net, the Internet’s first rental and relocation guide. Rent Net achieved 95% market penetration and became one of the first profitable Internet companies. After Rent Net was acquired by Cendant, Jed built on its successful infrastructure in the formation of Move.com, one of the Internet’s largest real estate sites. Move.com grew to 360 employees and was acquired by Homestore (Nasdaq: MOVE) for over $900 million.

Jed holds a B.A. in Business Economics from UCLA and an M.B.A. from The Haas School of Business at UC-Berkeley, where he was awarded the Price Fellowship from the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation; he is currently on the advisory board.