Management Team
Our management team has delivered pioneering products and services in the mobile content, software, and consumer electronics industries. Our entire staff is dedicated to Designing the Mobile Lifestyle™ for all of our customers and partners.
- Larry Barels, Executive Chairman
- Peter Meechan, Chief Executive Officer
- Toyoshi Takahashi, President, Catalyst Mobile Japan
- Gary Hooper, VP, Products and Services
- Carl Lakey, GC & VP, Business Development
- Peng Tu, VP and General Manager, China
- Richard Schank, Chief Financial Officer
Larry Barels – Executive Chairman and Co-Founder
Prior to co-founding Catalyst Mobile, Larry Barels was Chairman of Software.com, a leader in carrier-grade messaging products. Barels was the original lead investor and subsequently led the company through multiple rounds of financing, predominantly from various corporate partners including AT&T and Cisco. Software.com was valued at $3.9B six months after its 1999 Initial Public Offering and merged in 2003 with Phone.com to create Openwave Systems, a deal valued at $6.4B.
Larry Barels was Co-Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer of Wavefront Technologies, a pioneer in the computer graphics software industry for film, television, industrial design, and visualization markets. Wavefront was taken public in 1994, and became one of the ten best performing Initial Public Offerings of the year. Wavefront was subsequently acquired by Silicon Graphics in 1995.
Barels refers to himself as a serial entrepreneur. He is an active member of the National Association of Corporate Directors, has sat on various public and private boards of directors, and has been the subject of feature articles in publications including Forbes, Time, Venture, and Entrepreneur.
Peter Meechan, President & Chief Executive Officer
Prior to co-founding Catalyst Mobile, Peter Meechan was senior vice president, Mobile and Devices at Macromedia. He was one of the original members who started the company's business targeting the mobile and consumer electronics industries. Prior to Macromedia, Meechan was the general manager of the Platform Software Development Center at Sony, focusing on software products for home entertainment networking and interactive television. He was the founding marketing chairman for the consumer electronics industry's home networking consortium HAVi, and represented Sony in various standards initiatives.
Meechan spent thirteen years in the computer graphics and entertainment industry, including management positions in business development, international operations, and engineering at Silicon Graphics and Alias|WAvefront. As an animator at MetroLight Studios in Hollywood, his work included the 1992 Emmy Award-winning NBC Barcelona Olympics graphics package. Meechan was the ACM SIGGRAPH 95 conference co-chair, and served ACM SIGGRAPH for several years.
Meechan began his career as a software developer in Tokyo after attending Waseda University. He has degrees in visual design/computer graphics and Asian studies from the University of Oregon. Meechan is fluent in Japanese.
Toyoshi Takahashi, President, Catalyst Mobile Japan
Prior to co-founding Catalyst Mobile, Toyoshi Takahashi was the managing director of Bandai Networks, a subsidiary of NAMCO Bandai. Co-founding Bandai Networks in 2000, Takahashi secured investments from the Japanese mobile carriers NTT DoCoMo, KDDI, and Vodafone Japan, and from technology and content companies such as Qualcomm and Sanrio ('Hello Kitty'). Bandai Networks created what became the largest mobile entertainment subscriber base in Japan, approaching five million subscribers.
Takahashi is recognized as a worldwide mobile industry pioneer. He expanded Bandai's market dominance outside Japan to include over thirty mobile carriers worldwide, developing relationships with content companies such as Warner Brothers and Disney. Takahashi architected and deployed the service for LabelMobile, the Japanese music industry's consortium-backed mobile music service that provides services on behalf of all major music companies operating in Japan.
Prior to Bandai Networks, Takahashi worked at Bandai in various management roles.
Gary Hooper, VP, Products and Services
Prior to co-founding Catalyst Mobile, Gary Hooper was vice president of engineering for Macromedia's Mobile and Devices division, leading the engineering team since its inception in 2000. He created Flash Lite, the mobile version of the ubiquitous Flash Player, first delivered to consumers by NTT DoCoMo in 2003. He worked closely with KDDI, Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, and others. He delivered FlashCast, a client-server push-data services system, first deployed as the i-mode i-channel service by NTT DoCoMo in 2005.
Hooper also held various engineering management roles at Alias|Wavefront. He delivered several versions of Maya, the 3D animation product. Maya was awarded an Oscar for Technical Achievement by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2003.
Hooper has a master's degree in computer graphics from Cornell University, and a bachelor's degree in mathematics from the University of Waterloo.
Carl Lakey, General Counsel & VP, Business Development
Prior to co-founding Catalyst Mobile, Carl Lakey was vice president and division counsel for Macromedia's Mobile and Devices division. Lakey was responsible for worldwide licensing of the Flash family of products, and worked closely with all major partners, including NTT DoCoMo, Nokia, Sony, and Microsoft.
Prior to Macromedia, as counsel for Vodafone in the USA, Lakey was the chief licensing representative for the launch of the Mobile Web, one of the first mobile Internet services in the USA, later becoming a core component of Verizon Wireless' mobile offering. He negotiated key relationships with content, portal, and technology providers such as MSN Mobile, Qualcomm, and Openwave Systems. Prior to that, Lakey represented Internet, communications, and technology companies for the international law firm of Morrison & Foerster.
A former journalist, Lakey received a Juris Doctor degree from the University of California, Davis, and a bachelor's degree in journalism and political science from the University of Oregon.
Peng Tu, VP and General Manager, China
Prior to joining Catalyst Mobile, Peng Tu was vice president of product management at Hands-On Mobile, a leading global publisher of mobile content. He was responsible for overall product planning, covering games, lifestyle applications, and personalization product lines worldwide. He coordinated deployment of products across North American and Latin American carriers, including Verizon Wireless, Sprint/Nextel, Cingular, T-Mobile, and Vivo.
Before Hands-On Mobile, Tu was director of product management for Macromedia's Mobile and Devices division. Prior, Tu spent six years at Openwave Systems in professional services, sales, and product management. He was Openwave's first country manager in China, and gained 50% of China's WAP gateway market share with China Mobile and China Unicom in less than one year. Tu developed local Chinese partnerships with handset manufacturers, content developers, and service providers.
A native of Beijing, China, Tu started his career as a technology consultant with Accenture. He holds an MBA from University of California, Berkeley, and a bachelor's degree in management information systems from the University of British Columbia.
Richard Schank, Chief Financial Officer
Richard brings a tremendous wealth of experience to Catalyst Mobile as a finance and administration professional. Richard has been in the consumer products industry for the past nine years as VP, Planning at Nestle and Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream, both before and after Dreyer’s merger with Nestle´, the world’s largest food company. Richard played a key role in executing the acquisition of Dreyer’s by Nestle.