Board of Directors

Joel Dedrick
President and CEO, W5 Networks

Joel Dedrick joined W5 Networks as CEO in July of 2008. He has served on the executive teams of several fabless semiconductor startups, most recently as CEO of Plato Networks where he raised their $20M B financing. Joel has helped lead two startup companies to successful exits and has held management roles in several leading public semiconductor companies. He also spent three years in residence at U.S. Venture Partners.

Joel began his career at Texas Instruments (TXN), where he was responsible for the development of advanced DSP IC’s and systems.

Joel's first startup was Logic Devices, Inc., where he held executive roles in marketing, operations, and engineering.  Founded in 1982, Logic was one of the first semiconductor companies to employ the fabless model and became a public company in 1990.

Joel joined Vitesse Semiconductor (VTSS) in 1993. There, he led R&D for all standard products. Joel's organization delivered the first gigabit Fibre Channel transceivers and played a key role in the emergence of Fibre Channel as the dominant high performance storage interface. His group also developed a broad line of SONET physical layer devices.

In 1997, Joel joined Integrated Device Technology (IDTI) as VP and General Manager of the Graphics Division.

Following his tenure at IDTI, Joel was part of the executive team at Aanetcom, a startup which pioneered multi-gigabit CMOS backplane transceivers for large packet switches. Aanetcom was acquired by PMC-Sierra (PMCS) and while at PMCS, Joel helped define the company’s 10Gbps Ethernet product strategy.

In 2002, Joel joined U.S. Venture Partners, a leading early stage technology investor as an Executive in Residence. While at USVP, Joel helped a number of companies refine their business plans and obtain funding, including W5 Networks. He currently serves on the board of Kleer Semiconductor and on the advisory boards of Veriwave and LV Sensors.

Joel has held interim and ongoing executive roles in a number of early stage technology companies. Most recently, as CEO of Plato Networks, Joel raised the company’s $20M Series B financing.

Joel holds Electrical Engineering degrees from the University of Nebraska and Southern Methodist University.

Chuck Neugebauer, PhD
Founder and Chief Technology Officer, W5 Networks

Chuck Neugebauer has over 12 years of experience as a technology entrepreneur. He founded W5 Networks in 2005.

Upon completing graduate school in 1993, Chuck founded a fabless semiconductor company, Arithmos, which targeted chips for the flat panel industry. As CEO, he raised over $12M in government and venture financing, recruited the initial team, architected the product and courted Asian partners culminating in a development deal with Sharp Electronics in 1995. Chuck later transitioned into the role of Vice President of Technology, and led the development team into the new area of LCD monitor scaler chips. Arithmos launched the first integrated scaler in 1997 and won a significant share of HP's flat panel monitor business. In 1999 he helped negotiate the sale of Arithmos to STMicro for $43M. Chuck continued at STMicro as Director of the LCD Business Unit P&L until 2003.

Chuck earned a double major BS in Electrical Engineering and Physics, and a PhD in Applied Physics from the California Institute of Technology. He was awarded an NSF Creativity in Engineering Fellowship and an AT&T Doctoral Fellowship. Chuck has 14 patents issued and five patents pending.

Paul Bialek
General Partner, Frazier Technology Ventures

Paul is a General Partner with Frazier Technology Partners. He has over 20 years experience in financial and operations management. From 1998 to 2001 he served as CFO and Senior Vice President, Finance and Operations at RealNetworks (NASDAQ: RNWK). Prior to joining RealNetworks, Paul served as CFO for Metapath Software Corporation, a venture-backed wireless communications software company. From 1993 to 1997, he served as CFO for Edmark Corporation, a Nasdaq listed multimedia software company, which was acquired by IBM in late 1996. Paul began his career at KPMG Peat Marwick, where he spent 11 years serving public and private technology companies.

Paul currently serves on the Washington Research Foundation and on the board at Smilebox and SNAPin. He also participates on the advisory board for Seattle University's accounting program and is a past director of the Washington Software Association.

Peter Magowan
President and Managing General Partner, San Francisco Giants

Peter Magowan is President and Managing General Partner of the San Francisco Giants. He is credited with playing a critical role in keeping the Giants in Northern California and building a new ballpark. Prior to the Giants, he spent 35 years with Safeway, Inc. Peter held the position of chairman and CEO for Safeway from 1980 until 1993. In 2005, he retired from Safeway's board. Peter currently sits on the Supervisory Board for DaimlerChrysler and on the Board of Directors for Caterpillar. He has earned several awards throughout his career: 1993 Bay Area Business Executive of the Year; 1993 Distinguished Citizens Award; 1999 Bay Area Business Leader of the Year; 2000 Sports Executive of the Year; and the 2004 Junior Achievement Award.

Paul Matteucci
General Partner, US Venture Partners

Paul Matteucci is a General Partner with US Venture Partners. He has over twenty years of experience as a chief executive, entrepreneur, technology investor and marketing professional. Paul focuses on investment opportunities in enterprise storage, business optimization software, high-performance computing and the consumer Internet. Before USVP, Paul served as CEO of HearMe, where he took the company public in 1998. Prior to HearMe, Paul worked for Adaptec as Vice-President and General Manager of the SCSI host adapter division. He also held positions with Texas Instruments, Tandem Computers and McGraw-Hill. Paul has served as a Resident Entrepreneur for Institutional Venture Partners and has been an advisor to Accel Partners, Redpoint Ventures and Sutter Hill Ventures.

Mangesh Pimpalkhare
Venture Partner, Thomas Weisel Venture Partners

Mangesh Pimpalkhare is a Venture Partner with Thomas Weisel Venture Partners. He joined the firm in 2001 and focuses on investments in component and systems companies. Prior to joining TWVP, Mangesh held senior engineering and marketing management positions at Neomagic Corporation, a leading multimedia chip company. Before Neomagic, Mangesh was a Senior Design Engineer at Intel where he was part of the core design team that designed several generations of cache and memory controller chipsets for the Pentium Processor. He holds five patents in the areas of graphics and display technologies.

Andy Sessions
General Partner, Thomas Weisel Venture Partners

Andy Sessions co-founded Thomas Weisel Venture Partners, an early stage information technology fund, in 2000. He has over 15 years of experience advising and investing in technology companies, working extensively with infrastructure and service companies in the communications, storage and wireless sectors. Prior to founding TWVP, Andy was a Partner focused on building the venture capital activity and technology investment banking practice at Thomas Weisel Partners. Prior to TWP, he was a Senior Managing Director of Private Equity at NationsBanc Montgomery Securities. Before NationsBanc, Andy was a General Partner with Technology Crossover Ventures. Andy began his career in investment banking at Goldman Sachs & Co.