Smita Karhade, an Ex-physician who migrated from medicine to technology. She holds MS (CS), and Product Management from the HAAS School of Business. Smita has multiple patents pending with USPTO. Smita is a visionary person, empathetic listener, and inspiring speaker with high integrity & courage. She is passionate about translating conceptual ideas into unique products. A natural public speaker/communicator/presenter with strong leadership and relationship-building skills.
She is also a co-founder of a fundraising platform, Rungmunch - Theater with a Cause, that brings together artists of Indian origin for the betterment of the community. So far, the organization helped raise over $250,000 for various causes.
Madhav Karhade has very strong experience in designing very high performance systems. He worked at many companies and delivered flagship products, including, Juniper Networks, HP, AirTight Networks (Now Arista Networks). His experience ranges from Linux Kernel, Networking, High Availability Clustering Algorithms, AI, Virtualization, Network Security & Protocol Development etc. He has two security patents on his name (Juniper) related to Firewall Policies.
He holds Masters Degree in Computer Engineering from Silicon Valley University and BS from University of Mumbai.
He is also active on Stage and co-founder of Non Profit Organization, Rungmunch - Theater with a Cause.
Shirish Sathaye is a General Partner at Cervin. He focuses on investments in next-generation enterprise software, cloud-based software, AI-powered businesses, wireless and wireline networking, data infrastructure and systems.
For 20+ years, Shirish has served as a General Partner across several venture firms. Prior to joining Cervin, he spent 10 years at Matrix Partners, 3 years at Khosla Ventures, and the remainder at Formation 8. His very first investment was Aruba Networks (NASDAQ:ARUN) which had a multi-billion IPO and acquisition. Shirish’s investment career was preceded by 15 years as leader in category-creating technology companies. He was VP of Engineering and CTO at Alteon Websystems, growing the startup from 20 to 800+ employees and taking it through a multi-billion IPO and acquisition. In addition, he headed the largest engineering group at FORE Systems, which also had a multi-billion IPO.
Shirish has a Ph.D in Electrical & Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, an MSEE from Virginia Tech, and a Bachelor's Degree in Electronics Engineering from IIT-BHU, Varanasi, India.
Outside of the office, Shirish enjoys hiking, running, and reading non-fiction. He is also a foodie who enjoys trying new restaurants and cuisines.
With a diverse background spanning Telecommunication, Aviation, Healthcare and IT industries, Samir bring over three decades of experience to the table. As a former Telecommunication Engineer at Recruit Inc., an Airline Pilot at CARI Aviation, and a two decade long career as Sr. Vice President at Cisco, Samir demonstrated ability to build and manage billion-dollar businesses, lead global and regional channels, and possess deep technical expertise in IT management, software development, and data networking. Samir founded and served as CEO of FixStream Inc., where he built an innovative AIOPs (Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations) software platform, securing $10+ million recurring revenue from major Telco and Enterprise customers globally, which led to its successful acquisition. He also served as CEO and COO of two separate ventures in the Healthcare industry. With notable achievements, including growing business globally, establishing joint ventures, and building start up companies, Samir offer a unique blend of leadership, innovation, and proven success.
Vinay Joshi is a member of the California Bar and has practiced patent law in the Silicon Valley since 1999. Super Lawyers has consistently named Vinay as a “Northern California Super Lawyer” in intellectual property litigation since 2014. Prior to joining the firm in 2009, Vinay practiced patent litigation at Howrey LLP for many years. Prior to attending law school, Vinay worked as an electrical engineer at the Ford Motor Company.
In patent litigation matters, Vinay serves as the lead counsel for his clients and has extensive trial experience in California, Texas, Utah, Virginia and at the USITC. Vinay believes that a small team of motivated lawyers has an advantage over larger teams, in complex patent litigation. In patent procurement matters, Vinay has created many patent portfolios from scratch and routinely manages and prosecutes large portfolios. Vinay and his team have also prepared many inter partes review petitions and effectively used them to avoid or settle litigation. Notably, Vinay and his team prepared and filed an IPR petition for US Patent No. 6,034,419 (titled “Semiconductor Device with a Tungsten Contact”), which had been asserted against a firm client at the USITC. The USITC case had foundry wide implications because Tungsten contacts are commonly used in semiconductor devices. The PTAB Judges held that all the claims of the ‘419 patent were preliminarily invalidated by multiple prior art references, and instituted the trial accordingly. The USITC case settled shortly after the PTAB ruling.
Here is what one client has to say about Vinay: “We hired Vinay as our outside counsel in 2009. Over the years, Vinay has served as a trusted adviser and a steady hand for the company, even as other in-house and outside counsel came and went. I credit Vinay with helping create our excellent patent portfolio, which now includes hundreds of patents and patent applications. He has also served as our lead counsel in numerous litigation matters. He is always well prepared, humble and friendly, even with opponents. He does not engage in verbal duals and instead effectively uses solid preparation and cordial communication to get people to see things his way. Vinay will continue to be our go to lawyer for intellectual property matters.” Behrooz Abdi (CEO of InvenSense) (January 2017).
Vinay has a sound understanding of technology and engineering culture, and is frequently invited to conduct asset valuation, forward patenting, patent strategy and inventions harvesting sessions with engineers and marketing and management executives. Technology areas in which Vinay regularly practices include hardware, software, analog and digital circuitry, mixed signal circuitry, semiconductors, human machine interaction, medical devices, MEMS, optics, integrated circuits and others.
Hemant Habbu focuses on the areas of Corporate/Business, Immigration and International Transactional matters. Mr. Habbu also provides guidance regarding certain tax matters relating to federal and state income tax, California sales tax, and India taxes.
Overview
Mr. Habbu obtained his Bachelor of Arts level degree at Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, Pondicherry, India, and his Master of Arts in French from Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. He then earned his LL.B. from the Government Law College, Mumbai (erstwhile Bombay), and began his legal career by working in India for the first few years. Mr. Habbu began by initially working for a small boutique firm and then by joining in his family’s extensive law practice covering such varied areas as customs, excise, labor, corporate, intellectual property, international trade and general litigation. Mr. Habbu graduated with an LL.M. degree from Tulane University, and he then worked at a law firm which focused on business, corporate, and tax matters for some years. In 1993, Mr. Habbu founded his own law firm in San Jose, California.
Mr. Habbu continues to work with numerous corporations (both domestic to the US and international), cultural organizations, non-profit institutions, multinationals, etc. to assist them in meeting their various legal needs.