Pradeep Rathinam
Chief Customer Officer at Freshworks(Jan 2020 - Till Now)
Chief Customer Officer at Freshworks post-acquisition (Jan 2020)of AnsweriQ by Freshworks.
Founder & CEO of AnswerIQ (2017) , a Seattle-based artificial intelligence company in the customer service automation space. Prior to AnswerIQ, I was the CEO of Aditi Technologies (2007-2016), a leading cloud services provider, led the company to a successful sale to Symphony Teleca, a PE firm. In short succession, I was part of another transaction of Symphony Teleca to Harman International in Jan 2015.
Previously, I was at Microsoft as the General Manager of the Independent Software Vendors (ISV) business and spent 12 years (1994-2006) in Microsoft in various leadership roles in sales, marketing, and program management.
I am actively involved with the software community and startups in Seattle, I was currently the President of Tie Seattle from 2015-2017 and then served on the board. I served on the board of the Washington Technology Association (WTIA) from 2004 to 2012 and on the advisory board of several startups in Seattle.
Sonu Aggarwal
Serial Entrepreneur, CEO/Leader & TechVisionary(April 1998 - Till Now)
Sonu Aggarwal is a technology visionary, leader, and serial entrepreneur.
He was the founding CEO of Unify Square, whose cloud software-enabled Fortune-500-scale enterprises to run robust modern communications using Skype, Teams, and Zoom. Unify Square was just sold in June 2021 to Unisys for $152.5M.
After his B.S. and M.S. in Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), he went on to found 3 enterprise software companies – Flash, Cordant, and Unify Square. At Flash, he invented enterprise Instant Messaging, and sold the company to Microsoft – Flash’s technology was version 1 of the messaging technology that has since evolved into Microsoft Teams. Sonu intends to someday start a 4th startup delivering novel applications of Artificial Intelligence.
Vetri Vellore
Corporate Vice President, Microsoft
Vetri Vellore is a mission-driven, serial entrepreneur with two successful exits (Ally.io acquired by Microsoft and Chronus acquired by private equity). Passionate about building world-class products and teams, to bring purpose, happiness and enable everyone to achieve more.
Launched Ally.io, an OKR-based, Business Execution Platform in 2018. In under 3 years, grew to 1,000 customers in over 80 countries and a team of 250+ amazing people. Raised $76m in funding including 3 rounds in just one year, from top-tier VCs including Accel, Addition, GreenOaks, Tiger Global, and Vulcan Capital.
Previous to Ally.io, bootstrapped Chronus and built a highly successful B2B SaaS Mentoring solution that is used enterprises including GE, Amazon and Coca Cola. Chronus was acquired by a private equity firm and continue to grow strongly.
Before Chronus and Ally.io, Vetri turned around $200M+ Systems Management enterprise software business at Microsoft. Lead the Visual Studio platform team and managed the partner ecosystem. Shipped several v1 and award-winning products over the 14-year tenure at Microsoft
Anoop Gupta
CEO and Co-Founder(August 2017 - Till Now)
Anoop Gupta is the CEO and Co-Founder of SeekOut which provides companies a competitive advantage recruiting, retaining, and maximizing talent. We believe that great people and great companies grow together.
SeekOut was founded in 2017 and recently raised $115 million in a successful round of Series C funding with a valuation of $1.2 billion, following a year of 3X revenue growth.
Prior to SeekOut, Anoop had a 20-year career at Microsoft which included overseeing enterprise communications products (Exchange, Skype) as Vice President of Unified Communications. He was Technical Advisor to Bill Gates and a Distinguished Scientist at Microsoft Research, leading work on Telepresence and Natural User Interfaces. Prior to Microsoft, Anoop was a tenured professor at Stanford University and holds a Ph.D. In Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University.
Sharmilli Ghosh
Co-chair, z5Catalyst(April 2016 - Till Now)
Sharmilli Ghosh, is co-chair of the z5Catalyst funding initiative at TiE Seattle, focuses on early-stage B2B SaaS startups in the PNW. Sharmilli is also ex-president and current board member of TiE Seattle. Z5 Catalyst is an early-stage funding initiative from TiE Seattle, Z5 Catalyst partners with Z5 Capital, an early-stage fund based out of the Bay area to fund companies. Z5 Capital brings its own network of successful entrepreneurs and technology executives in the Bay area that can assist our portfolio of companies.