126 Lowell Avenue
Palo Alto, CA 94301
(650) 323-0645 (H)
(650) 796-0645 (C)
rfall@witsend.com
PROFESSIONAL More than twenty five years of
experience in engineering and engineering
PROFILE management
in both mid-size and small companies, including publicly held
corporations
and high-risk startups. Areas of
expertise include building engineering
organizations,
defining and developing evolutionary and revolutionary products,
and
participating in all aspects of business management. Excellent experience in:
¥ Project Team Management ¥ Product Definition and
Development
¥ Hands-on Design Management ¥ Customer Management
¥ Contract Negotiation ¥ Engineering Process
Development
¥ Staffing and Expense
Management ¥ Contract/Patent Legal
Work
¥ Vendor Relations ¥ Leadership By Example
SELECTED
ACCOMPLISHMENTS
¥ Represented engineering organizations of five startups to existing investors, board members and executives. Developed organizationÕs ability to meet defined objectives, increasing companyÕs confidence in engineeringÕs performance quality.
¥ Adobe Systems: crafted a licensing strategy that Òshared the riskÓ of new ASIC development with interested OEMs. In return for early delivery and help crafting technology feature sets, the third-generation ASIC technology development was zero-cost proposition for company.
Product Definition and
Development
¥ Zing Network: selecting appropriate technologies and suitable vendors, led engineering effort to redesign infrastructure of an existing website while minimizing impact to existing users.
¥ Desana Systems: led crash effort to architect new product and re-purpose existing software to run on standard platform, resulting in detailed project development schedule and resource allocation chart that formed core of new business strategy.
Customer Management
¥ At Adobe
Systems, I presented new technology concepts to potential customers and OEMs,
resulting in the purchase and licensing of these technologies while they were
still under development.
¥ As a provider of web services to OEMs, Zing Network had several customers who were not Òtechnology savvyÓ and required delicate negotiations to provide the services they requested in a manner consistent with our overall infrastructure and resources. In many cases, I took successfully charge of discussions with customerÕs IT groups and CTOs, to Òbring them aroundÓ to the Zing technology while keeping them satisfied that their needs were being met.
¥ Adobe Systems: generated significant interest in signing licenses deals for new technology presented at national and international road shows, asking current and future customers to invest directly in development process.
¥ G2 Networks: presented technical pitches to investors in a new round of funding, including corporate investors (e.g., Intel) and individual investors (e.g., Andy Bechtolsheim). Created and presented pitches with significantly different focuses. G2 closed a new round of funding shortly afterwards.
Engineering Process
Development
¥ All companies: instituted standard project management processes, established MRD/PRD/ERD development and handoff process and restored executive confidence in engineering performance.
¥ Desana Systems: created team-building processes, and restructured engineering organization to remove dysfunctional relationships, and significantly cut time required to diagnose and fix problems during bring-up. This resulted in Òon timeÓ delivery of combined software/hardware technologies.
¥ All companies: established face-to-face meetings and mutually agreeable objectives, rebuilt cross-departmental relationships between Engineering, Sales, Marketing and Product Management, meeting customer requirements with on-time delivery of complex products.
Expense Management
¥ All companies: undertook budgeting exercises, tracked expenditures and took cost-cutting steps, meeting agreed-upon schedule and product delivery objectives with budgets ranging in size from $100K to $25M.
¥ Zing Network: renegotiated existing contracts, providing significant savings for company at time when cash was critically short. Negotiated a deal with Oracle to keep preferred licensing rates while large increases were being forced on other customers.
Legal Work
¥ Adobe Systems: crafted a standard contract for royalty-based licensing of technologies to OEMs, protecting AdobeÕs Òcrown jewelsÓ (the Postscript interpreter) while permitting the OEM access technology information.
¥ G2 Networks: worked with outside counsel to counter a threatened legal action by supplier, resulting in negotiated settlement that removed legal restrictions on proposed merger effort.
¥ Ultra
Network Technologies, Adobe Systems: successfully directed two patent applications in
compression technology [5,638,498/5,991,515] and one patent in high-speed
network protocol processing [5,058,110].
Leadership By Example
¥ All: in each case where I have managed an engineering organization, I have lived by an important credo: I ask no more of my engineering team than I would be willing to ask of myself, I follow through on the commitments I make, I try to be honest in my dealings with others and I always expect the best of people. I have seldom been disappointed, and many times I have been surprised at what my teams have accomplished under difficult circumstances.
PROFESSIONAL
HISTORY
2008- X-Ringer,
Inc.
Xingtone is a publisher and OEM provider of ringtones and
ringtone delivery systems. As an
engineering consultant, responsible for taking over the infrastructure from the
previous team,, undertaking software forensics, and redeploying services to
new, co-located servers with a more robust and scalable infrastructure.
2006-2008 LimeLife,
Inc.
LimeLife is a publisher of applications and games for the
mobile market, targeted at the female demographic. As VP of Engineering, in charge of applications and server
RD engineering, Porting, QA, Operations and IT, I was responsible for building
the team which has delivered four mobile games and two client/server lifestyle
applications (InStyle Mobile and People Mobile), wallpaper and SMS alert
services to the cellular market across five major carriers.
2004-2006 StarVox
Communications, Inc.
StarVox provided enterprise-level IP voice services to
small and medium sized business through IP centrex, ,IP trunking and Unified
Communications technologies. As VP
of engineering and services, I selected the network service providers,
established the infrastructure for service delivery and managed all aspects of
the development and deployment of new VoIP technologies.
2003-2004 Ridge,
LLC
A consulting firm that provides business expertise to
selected clients in the SAN storage, networking, telecommunications and ASIC
spaces, helping clients with marketing, sales, engineering, finance and general
management services. Provided
technical and engineering management consulting for SAN and ASIC companies, including
technical due diligence services for clients which were merging with or
acquiring other companies.
2001-2002 Desana
Systems, Inc.
Managed 80-member engineering and QA team with poor
morale and ineffectual leadership. Establishing standard engineering processes,
team building and hands-on management, created world-class engineering team and
regained confidence of executives and investors.
2000-2001 Zing
Network, Inc.
Vice President, Engineering
Built solid and experienced
multi-national group, responsible for developing and maintaining technology for
its branded website and the co-branded websites of several partners (e.g., Sony,
Nikon and Casio).
1999-2000 PacketStream,
Inc.
Vice President, Engineering
Built solid engineering and QA organization that
developed technologies and products to implement QoS for IP networks. Technology was successfully licensed to
major network product vendors (e.g., Larscom).
1998 G2
Networks, Inc.
Vice President, Engineering
Directed development of all technologies, including
digital and mixed-signal ASICs, opto-electronics, drivers, firmware,
diagnostics and simulation software for a line of Fibre Channel products.
1991-1997 Adobe
Systems Incorporated
Manager, ASIC Development
Successfully managed line of ASIC developments for
PostScript printer products, including hardware and software development. Provided technical leadership in areas
of compression technology and COT ASIC development, resulting in successful
licensing of technologies to major OEMs.
EDUCATION B.S.E.E., Stanford University
M.S.E.E.
(Computer Engineering), Stanford University