METALSOFT - Key Persons
Alex Bordei has been developing hosting & cloud products and services for over twelve years. He was a key member in the development of MetalSoft platform, which was first deployed at Bigstep Cloud in 2014.
He is passionate about HPC & computing performance in general having executed many studies and benchmarks on networking latency performance, NoSQL scaling, Hadoop and Spark scaling and more.
He also has experience building AI & Big Data processing solutions such as Lentiq and the Bigstep Data Platform. He holds a master's degree in computer science & industrial automation from the Polytechnic University of Bucharest.
Brian has worked in the securities / investment management industry for over twenty years and is currently the chief investment officer of LAMB Partners, a family investment office based in Chicago. He is also one of the founders of Half Acre Beer Company, one of Chicago's premier craft brewers.
He graduated with a bachelor's degree in commerce from the University of Virginia and a master's degree from Kellogg Graduate School of Management is a CFA charterholder.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board
- Managing Partner of CJM Ventures
Chris is the managing partner of CJM Ventures, a growth equity and private equity investment firm founded in 2011 focused on companies located near Chicago and London. He also serves as an adjunct professor at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business where he teaches the Private Equity / Venture Capital Lab. Previously, Chris served as a managing director at Madison Dearborn Partners and co-headed their basic industries practice. McGowan is an active angel investor and currently serves as Chairman of the Limited Partner Advisory Committee for Hyde Park Venture Partners Fund I (and a member of
Fund II and Fund III's Boards), on the Board of Directors of Hyde Park Angels, and as Chairman of the Advisory Board for Valley Growth Ventures. He is also a board member of 8th Light, Boise Cascade (Chairman of Audit Committee, NYSE: BCC), Cedar Capital, CompanyFirst, Ingenica Solutions, Innovare, Just Hot Tubs, Kinzie Capital, Leadership Lyceum, OPTO International, and Psycle London (observer). He also serves as President of the Friends of Walter Payton College Prep and the SHSAA board of trustees for Stuyvesant High School.
Job Titles:
- Chief Revenue Officer
- Sales Leader
- Senior Executive
Dave McCrossen is an accomplished sales leader and senior executive with over 25 years of building, transforming, and leading sales teams for fast-growth XaaS businesses. He has implemented, grown, and led sales organizations for three of the largest global IaaS providers: Rackspace, PEER 1, and Hostway. A serial turnaround strategist and tactician, he has consistently implemented successful go-to-market strategies, strategic partnerships, and
Jay is a SaaS and telecommunications veteran with executive and financial experience at both public and private companies. He is currently the Chief Financial Officer of The Jellyvision Lab, a benefits guidance SaaS company. Previously, he served as Chief Financial Officer of DialogTech, a marketing analytics company that enables companies to optimize their inbound phone calls. Jay served as Chief Financial Officer and subsequently as Chief Executive Officer at ForeSee Results until its acquisition.
Prior to ForeSee, Jay worked in physical / logical data hosting at ByteGrid Holdings, LLC, CoreLink Data Centers and Hostway. Previously he served as a consultant to various start-up and venture capital-backed software companies and in executive and financial positions for various companies.
Jay serves on the Board of Directors of PCTel (nasdaq: PCTI) and Contec Ltd. Mr. Sinder holds a BS degree from the University of Michigan and a MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
John is a seasoned executive with over 25 years of hands-on experience operating global Internet technology companies. It all started in 1995 when he founded one of the nation's first ISP's and immediately recognized how the Internet was going to transform the business world.
Since then he has spent his career driving innovation within the data center at leading companies like Aplus, Hostway, Codero, and Bigstep.
Job Titles:
- Advisor
- CEO of OVERWATCH Mission Critical
Kirk is the CEO of OVERWATCH Mission Critical, a strategic consultancy comprised of military veterans with deep expertise in mission-critical operations and management. He is also a Co-Founder of DCAC (Data Center / Anti Conference). With more than two decades of proven Mission Critical expertise in developing and leading data center and infrastructure companies across the US, Offel's industry career began in 1995 when he volunteered for the US Navy Nuclear Fast Attack Submarine service (USS Memphis, SSN-691).
His professional experience includes time at Medtronic, Active Power, Eaton, Hewlett-Packard's Technology Services Consulting practice (EYP), CyrusOne Data Centers, NOVA Mission Critical and Aligned Energy.
Lucas is the Founder and CEO of MetalSoft. He is a serial entrepreneur who has previously founded Hostway Corporation, Affinity Global, and Bigstep Cloud. He currently also serves as the chairmen of Affinity and Bigstep. He has led Hostway to a successful exit in 2013. Prior to founding Hostway, Lucas was a computer scientist at Argonne National Laboratory where he conducted pioneering research in the emerging field of automatic differentiation.
He has authored or co-authored more than a dozen published academic papers and has received several patents. Lucas holds a PhD in computer science from Colorado State University and a BA in physics from the University of Chicago.
Job Titles:
- VP of Solution Engineering
Mike Robski has more than 25 years of experience in software design and development. During his career, Mike has led the design, development and implementation of end-to-end OSS/BSS software including CRM, order handling, billing, subscription lifecycle management and business intelligence. Mike has extensive experience in business process analysis and mapping using the best standards. Prior to joining MetalSoft, Mike was VP of Research and Development at Codero where he led the
development and implementation of the OSS/BSS software used to run the company's operations. He also held the positions of VP of Research and Development at Hostway, Software Development Manager at Fidelity Information Services and Director of Engineering at Rodopi Software. Mike has a master's degree from Tula State University in Russia. He is also a Certified Salesforce Application Architect, Certified Scrum Master and is a member of MENSA.
Job Titles:
- Advisor
- CEO of Supernova Companies
Tao is CEO of Supernova Companies, LLC, which provides the industry leading automated securities-based lending software and services. Tao was formerly Chief Operating Officer and Chief Technology Officer of Morningstar, Inc., and was one of the company's first 20 employees. While Tao was COO, Morningstar's revenue grew from $70 million in 2000 to $550 million in 2010.
Before he was COO, Tao spent three years as president of Morningstar's International Division; he and his team launched operations in 18 different countries through startups, joint ventures, and acquisitions. Tao holds an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, a master's degree in computer science from Marquette University, and a B.S. in computer science from Hunan University (China).
Job Titles:
- Advisor
- CEO of Verus Advisory
Toby is a multilingual, multicultural, transformational global technology innovator, business executive, board member, and board advisor. He delivered company-firsts, industry-firsts, and world-firsts as he worked in the U.S., Latin America, Europe, and Asia. His impact and influence spans Silicon Valley; incubators; next-gen startups; Fortune 20 enterprises; the first 5G labs on earth; public and private entities; and military/government. Toby builds, scales, transforms, modernizes, expands the competitive edge, and future-proofs organizations. One of only a handful of leaders who has led digital transformations at scale at four global high-growth, high-service enterprises.
The CEO of Verus Advisory, Toby held executive roles at Verizon, Kevington Advisors, American Express, Aviva, Motorola, Zoho, and FedEx. He was recognized as Top CTO 25 Most Influential IT Leaders, InfoWorld, and Top 50 Global CIOs, Information Week. For 30+ years, Toby has been a valued strategic advisor to C-Suite executives and boards and a member of 35+ advisory, private, and public boards. He is currently an active advisor/investor to 8 early stage firms. He is active with 7 pro bono/501.3c entities. He has lectured at HBS, Booth, ASU, Kellogg, Air University, Georgetown and the Naval Post Graduate School.