Shirish Sathaye joined Khosla Ventures (KV) as a General Partner after a decade of investment experience at Matrix Partners, and a long operating career at several technology companies. He joined two tech companies—FORE Systems and Alteon Websystems—when they were still nascent, and led the design and development of their core products. Both companies pioneered important new product categories and had very successful IPOs.
Shirish has a Ph.D in Electrical & Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon, an MSEE from Virginia Tech, and a Bachelors Degree in Electronics Engineering from IT-BHU, Varanasi, India. He started his career at Digital Equipment Corporation first in the Semiconductor group, and then in the Network Architecture Group, spending a total of eight years at Digital Equipment Corporation. Shirish moved on to FORE Systems, where he ran Engineering for the ATM switch group and later join Alteon Websystems, a young Ethernet switch maker backed by Matrix Partners, as its vice president of engineering and later, its chief technology officer. As the promise of the Web unfolded, Alteon began to load-balance Web servers for Internet companies. Alteon went public in 1999 and the next year sold to Nortel for $7.8 billion.
As a venture capitalist, Shirish works closely with entrepreneurs to assist them with developing and refining concepts and strategies and putting together strong teams. In some cases, Shirish will get involved very early, before the idea for the company has been fully formed. His current areas of investment focus are Networking, Cloud-based Systems, and CleanTech (including Biodiscovery Nz, a soil microbe company).
Michael O’Connor, Active Chairman
Michael O’Connor was a co-founder of Novariant, Inc, a leading supplier of high-precision GPS, wireless and machine control solutions for industrial markets. The company delivered the world’s first sub-inch, hands-free steering solutions for farm vehicles in 1998, and continues to be an innovation leader in precision agriculture. Michael served a variety of executive roles within the company, including CTO, Vice President of Business Development, and interim CEO.
While a graduate student at Stanford University, Dr. O’Connor led the team that invented the first-ever farm tractor steering control system using GPS. The project, sponsored by John Deere, ultimately produced four Ph.D. dissertations and was the seed for Novariant’s AutoFarm product line. Michael obtained his B.S. from M.I.T. in 1992, M.S. in 1993, and Ph.D. in 1997 from Stanford University.
Dr. O’Connor was named to the list of the world’s Top Young Innovators by Technology Review Magazine in 2003, and was included in GPS World Magazine’s inaugural list of 50 Faces to Watch in GPS. Dr. O’Connor was inducted into the Space Technology Hall of Fame in 2006. Michael is currently on the Board of Directors for iKare Corporation.
Dean Fairchild, Board Member
Dean Fairchild is the Worldwide Agronomist for the Mosaic Company. Before the formation of Mosaic, Dean was the Worldwide Agronomist of the Cargill Fertilizer Platform starting in 1995, where he was responsible for technology and information transfer for the Fertilizer Department. Prior to joining Cargill, Dean owned Agri-Information Services, a consulting company specializing in Precision Ag services. Fairchild worked for Cenex Cooperatives for 15 years as Lead Agronomist.
