Board of Directors
- Larry Barels, Chairman Catalyst Mobile
- Peter Meechan, Chief Executive Officer
- Eric Buatois, Sofinnova Ventures
- Gen Isayama, DCM
- David A. Hytha, Independent
Larry Barels, Chairman
Prior to co-founding Catalyst Mobile, Larry Barels was the Chairman, CEO and co-founder of Wavefront Technologies and the Chairman of the Board and original lead investor at Software.com. 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 taken public in 1999 in a $1B Initial Public Offering, which was followed by a merger in 2000 with Phone.com to create Openwave Systems, a deal valued at over $8B.
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, Chief Executive Officer
Prior to co-founding Catalyst Mobile, 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.
Eric Buatois, Sofinnova Ventures
Eric Buatois, General Partner. Entrepreneurs value their working relationship with Buatois because he is a "big picture" strategic thinker who takes the time to provide coaching on the science—and the art—of growing a business. He is a supportive, positive team-player who likes to have fun.
Prior to joining Sofinnova Ventures in 2001 to focus on the telecommunications sector, Eric had 18 years of experience in the communications industry.
He had a 14-year tenure with Hewlett-Packard, where he had business management, profit and loss, and global strategic responsibilities through leadership roles based in Europe and the United States. He joined H-P's French operations in 1987 to lead product strategy for the company's Telecom Systems business unit, which encompassed global divisions. In 1994, Eric relocated to Sweden, where he served as Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Ericsson Hewlett-Packard Telecommunication AB, a $200 million global joint venture specializing in network management systems and billing systems for service providers. He also served on the Board of EHPT. In 1998, Eric moved to H-P's U.S. headquarters, where he became General Manager of H-P's $340 million Communication Solution business unit.
He began his career with Texas Instruments in 1983, rising to European Product Manager for the Digital Signal Processor line. Concentrating on DSP applied to wireless, Eric defined and guided the product line's introduction into the European market, and negotiated key OEM agreements with top European telecom equipment vendors. His efforts led to the successful Europe-wide deployment of TI's DSP line.
Buatois received his M.S. in Computer Science and Communications Engineering from Ecole Nationale Superieure des Telecommunications (France).
Gen Isayama, DCM
As a Principal, Isayama brings years of startup and banking experience to his role in identifying new investment opportunities for DCM both in the U.S. and Asia. He is directly involved with DCM portfolio companies including Sling Media, fastmobile, Bittorrent, Oak Pacific Interactive (mop.com), Oriental Standard, Picsel, Pandora TV, SkyWave, and Star Flyer. Gen also leads DCM’s Asia practice, primarily in Japan, helping DCM’s business development and investment capabilities in Asia.
Prior to joining DCM, Isayama worked at Mizuho Financial Group, formerly the Industrial Bank of Japan, and has extensive experience in a wide variety of areas including corporate finance, structured finance, derivative trading, and market risk management using intensive quantitative methods.
An entrepreneur by nature, Isayama co-founded Arch Pacific, a web design consultancy, while he was a student at Tokyo University. In addition, he served as an advisor for San Francisco based start-up, Amikai, an ASP of real-time language translation solutions, helping them complete a Series B financing and to establish a business base in Japan. He currently serves as a judge for the Stanford Business Plan competition -E-Challenge, organized by the Business Association of Stanford Engineering Students (BASES) and continues to be active in the entrepreneurial community.
Isayama holds an M.B.A. from Stanford University and a B.A. in Law from Tokyo University.
Born in Tokyo, Japan, Isayama grew up in both Tokyo and New York. He currently lives in Palo Alto, California, with his wife and three children.
David A. Hytha
David A. Hytha is a wireless executive and entrepreneur advising leading- edge firms in wireless communications as a General Partner at New Wave Partners. He serves as Executive-in-Residence at two major venture capital firms and as a member of the Board of Directors of several private and public companies including Option, Ltd. of Belgium (EuroNext: OPTI).
Previously he served as Executive Vice President, Terminals for T-Mobile responsible for the selection, marketing and development of all handsets for T-Mobile in Europe (over €2B per year). His career includes leadership roles in mobile communications handsets and software, infrastructure, services and systems-on-chip solutions in industry-leading firms and successful new ventures including: Silicon Wave (now part of Qualcomm), LGC Wireless (now part of ADC), Motorola, McCaw Cellular (now at&t Wireless), AT&T Network Systems (now Alcatel-Lucent) and AT&T Microelectronics (now LSI Logic/Infineon), including founding the first overseas department of Bell Laboratories.
His industry innovations include the rollout of the first open internet mobile service offering (T-Mobile’s ‘Internet in Your Pocket’), building T-Mobile into a handset leader including a top five PDA brand, building the world’s first standard Bluetooth chipset, shipping the world’s first distributed in-building antenna system, initiating the program to form a major new mobile carrier (FarEasTone in Taiwan), winning the world’s first 3G handset contract (one of five suppliers to NTT DoCoMo in 1996) and successful development, branding and marketing of new mobile services and products in Europe, the United States, Japan and Asia.
He holds a MBA from Columbia University in New York and a BA from the College of the Holy Cross. He is active in supporting community development and education projects in the San Francisco Bay Area and in Asia. A Californian, he is married, has two children and currently lives in the San Francisco Bay area.