SOQUEL GROUP - Key Persons
Mr. Kalow is a Managing Director at Soquel Group, a consulting firm specializing in Intellectual Property and Business Development. He also serves on the board of directors and audit committees of: Andalay Solar, a provider of solar power systems (OTC: WEST); SmartCloud, a provider of real-time reasoning solutions for mission critical environments; Rope Partner, a wind energy service company; InspecTools, a developer of utility asset risk mitigation systems, using remote sensing and unmanned aerial systems; ACDgo, a digital media and storage software and services company; the Tannery Arts Center in Santa Cruz, CA ; American Opera Projects in Brooklyn, NY and the Mahler Foundation, an arts organization in Spoleto Italy.
From 1999 to 2003, Mr. Kalow served as a Managing Director for the Venture Capital Division of Trans Cosmos USA, a Japanese IT services company and strategic investor in U.S. rich media, CRM e-commerce and e-marketing companies.
From 1993 to 1998, Mr. Kalow was COO and CFO of Live Picture Inc. (LPI), a digital imaging software company that he co-founded. He was CEO of LPI from 1998 to 1999. Previously, Mr. Kalow held management positions at IBM and served as VP, Telecommunications Strategy at the Chase Manhattan Bank. Mr. Kalow holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an MBA with a concentration in financial management from the University of Chicago. He attended Director's College at Stanford Law School, June 2006. He has been a speaker at numerous industry events on digital imaging and venture capital.
As Managing Director of Soquel Group, Robert Blumberg specializes in patent prosecution, analysis, & brokering. He works with clients to create patent portfolios that have strategic value and that build company value. Mr. Blumberg has prepared and prosecuted patent applications for a wide range of companies. Topics covered by these patent applications include: digital imaging, gesture recognition, wind energy devices, batteries for electric vehicles, networking & consumer electronics devices, e-commerce, rights management, and social networks.
Formerly, Blumberg co-founded and served as executive vice president of Live Picture Inc., where he directed, variously, engineering, product management, and marketing for more than ten imaging and Internet products that won over 30 industry awards.
While at Live Picture, Blumberg co-founded and served as the Chairman of the Board of the International Industry Imaging Association (I3A), a consortium that develops new standards for digital imaging.
Mr. Blumberg's technical background includes a M.S. degree in engineering from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) and a B.A. degree in computer science from the University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC). While at UCLA, Mr. Blumberg worked under a Hughes Aircraft Fellowship, developing advanced radar systems. After receiving his M.S., Mr. Blumberg spent several years with Contel Information Systems building computer networks for aerospace, defense and intelligence applications.
Blumberg is a registered US patent agent. He has written numerous articles on data management and holds 4 US patents.